DragonBall: Raging Blast (PS3/360)

[Captain-Sora]

The graphics look........ Terrible. Horrendous, even, considering the hardware it's running on. Tons of aliasing, LAUGHABLY low-res textures, and last-gen effects. Folks, this is a current gen game. You seriously need to up your knowledge about what constitutes a visually-impressive game in 2009.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that this isn't the final version. These screen shots look very bland and there is tons of aliasing issues. But part of that may be the compression, expansion, then recompression of the pictures. Remember, I screencapped these from a slideshow displayed in flash. I don't think these were taken while running on an actual Xbox or PS3. Spike has done this before by released pictures of Sparking Meteor that were clearly screencaps from a PC.

I also believe that those shots are not a part of the final product. To add on to your examples of Spike's similar previous "pre-finished" revealings, there was also the early screenshots of the first Sparking game which had a completely different HUD to the final game, as well as Goku's model being completely different with his clothing being darker(especially the undershirt) while he was Super Saiyan(I actually wished they'd kept the dark undershit while SSJ, it made him look cooler...).

[Captain Awesome]

Wow.

Those screencaps look awful, it looks like they just threw some high poly models into the old Sparking! game engine, the environment geometry, the textures and the sprites are all very last gen.

Burst Limit looked gorgeous, and it needed a sequel so badly, I'll be more than a little peeved if this is what we're getting instead.

[Rory]

While a few of the new additions are welcome (a proper dodging feature), the graphics are simply a joke. Play Burst Limit, then look at this, there's just no comparason, even with the backgrounds.
As always Spike puts little to no effort in the shit they pump out.
It's going to take some serious convincing (new gameplay additions, graphical upgrade) for me to even consider purchasing this garbage.

[SSJmole]

Oh so it's 100% another Tenkaichi? Well there goes my excitement for this game. Not even sure I'll buy it. Give us Burst limit 2 damn it.

[Anonymous Friend]

Now, here's the really, really big question for you PS3/360 owners: Will you be importing your copy of the game?

It won't be as much of a hassle as before with the games because both consoles are region free. But in case the music is different or something, some might fell inclined to get the JPN version.

[VegettoEX]

Now, here's the really, really big question for you PS3/360 owners: Will you be importing your copy of the game?

It won't be as much of a hassle as before with the games because both consoles are region free. But in case the music is different or something, some might fell inclined to get the JPN version.

From what I understand, the 360 isn't entirely region free... it's just that most game manufacturers haven't bothered putting on the region coding.

The PS3 isn't region-free, either. The US and Japan happen to share the same Blu-ray region coding (1), which is why Japanese games work on the US console and vice versa. You can't, however (much to my disappointment) play Japanese PS1 or PS2 games on an American PS3.

That being said, unless Atari/Infogrames starts speaking up about these games sometime soon, I'll be doing a little PS3 importing.

[DominatorLost]

I wouldn't worry about anti-aliasing, or low textures or what-not, those are just compressed, resized screenshots, the actual product probably looks a lot better.

Personally though I'm not interested in this game.

[Innagadadavida]

A user on the Atari forums posted something that gave me a little hope for the polycount and scored one for the open world theory:

Have a look at the picture of Piccolo and Krillin fighting on Namek. This one. And this one. Now this is just speculation, but look at the ground. I'd very harsh and poligonal. This, in my eyes, makes us sure of at least one of two things. Either it's an open world game (which I highly doubt, no matter how much I want it to come to pass) or the most likely, that the levels are massive. If that were a level as small as Burst Limit's (not dissing it, just stating a fact) Then we'd see a massive polly count in the ground in any small given space like in this screen shot. However, we have established that It is not in fact high polly. With our eyes. This means that it's only a small part of a huge map.

Here are some new screenshots. Some are some smoother versions of the ones I already posted. These are much larger too, so I'll link to them instead.

http://i40.tinypic.com/2agojsk.jpg
This is kind of odd... What the hell is Goku aiming at? Have you ever seen somebody miss like that in a SPARKING game. I guess Vegeta could have just moved out of the way but the position he's in doesn't look like he did. So the stage they're in looks like a canyon. I'm telling you guys, I hate invisible walls. We'd better be able to fight at the bottom of that canyon too. EDIT: I think that's over X teleportation.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2pooysy.jpg
Okay, WTF? This is the same image that they had before... but now Goku is in it!? Did they photoshop him in? How the hell does a character just appear there? Maybe in the last image the view was zoomed in. I do notice that you can see more on the left. I dunno, I'd have to compare side to side.

http://i41.tinypic.com/250m1ky.jpg
Uh ohhh... Veggie's chargin'

http://i44.tinypic.com/2zf3asn.jpg
Same as before, but without the blurry white stuff.

And all these are just better quality screens than the ones I posted:
http://i42.tinypic.com/wtaxz4.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/2rfykxu.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/29bod93.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/9ux0k8.jpg
http://i39.tinypic.com/334ivj5.jpg
http://i44.tinypic.com/2ntzk11.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/1z4blo4.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/11ubz8h.jpg
http://i43.tinypic.com/2s1lms7.jpg

EDIT again!!!!!!! Last time I swear.
Do you dare to compare:

The first Vegeta picture is from Sparking Meteor, the second is Raging Blast. The first Goku picture is from Sparking Neo, the second (you guessed it) Raging Blast.
The new artwork is much smoother and round than the last art. It looks like something Booney would make... Booney, are you an employee at Spike?

Also, here's a delicious logo...

[Super Sayian Prime]

The Sparking! stuff looks much better then the Raging Blast stuff. I hated the black outlines at first while playing Sparking!, but looking at the alternative...

The PS3 isn't region-free, either. The US and Japan happen to share the same Blu-ray region coding (1), which is why Japanese games work on the US console and vice versa. You can't, however (much to my disappointment) play Japanese PS1 or PS2 games on an American PS3.

All PS3 games are region-free. I've played Ratchet: Quest For Booty from the EU fine on my North American PS3. The things that are region restricted are the Blu-Ray movies (Japan and NA are in the same region, EU isn't), and as you mentioned, the PS1 and PS2 games. It's in the same position as the PSP, where the games for the platform are region-free, but the movies are not.

[VegettoEX]

All PS3 games are region-free. I've played Ratchet: Quest For Booty from the EU fine on my North American PS3. The things that are region restricted are the Blu-Ray movies (Japan and NA are in the same region, EU isn't), and as you mentioned, the PS1 and PS2 games. It's in the same position as the PSP, where the games for the platform are region-free, but the movies are not.

Ahhh, interesting. Good to know for all parties involved, I suppose! I stand corrected.

[Rod]

I like the new art, I never really cared for the black outlines

[Rory]

I like the new art, I never really cared for the black outlines

You kidding? It looks like more of a rushed Illustrator job than the first games.

[Innagadadavida]

Don't know how useful these are at this point, but here are some clearer scans. Anybody want to take a shot at translating (I'm betting there's nothing interesting).




The first page (the one with Vegeta on it) has a couple of screens that aren't on this official site. It shows some more doging, although it looks like Sonic Sway to me. It also shows Vegeta flying into the sky like Krillin was in one of the website screenshots.


ALSO! I'm on the Daizenshuu EX homepage, like, twice now. That makes me a pretty cool guy.

[Haseowolf]

One thing I found bizarre... the JAPANESE website for Raging Blast features a song from the AMERICAN Sparking! METEOR soundtrack... listen for yourselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SYf_st-53g
http://www.bandaigames.channel.or.jp/li ... gingblast/

Wasn't the music for the NA versions of Sparking!!! NEO and METEOR Japanese made anyhow? Like, Kenji Yamamoto tunes? So it's completely fair game for them, IIRC.

[Onikage725]

Honestly, I kinda like the new-ish look. I don't need to to maximize the potential of the current-gens graphical power. These games seek to recreate the experience of watching a shounen anime from 1 to 2 decades ago. I really don't need this to look like Soulcalibur IV with flight and auras. I'm just glad that the characters kinda look like who they are supposed to now. I really, really, really hated the previous Sparking! games' models. The faces were beyond atrocious, the hands were oversized meat sacks, and characters just looked wrong when standing still. This game improved the face models, put the hands in proportion with the rest of the body, and seems to be improving the basic body mechanics. And if this is indeed a new defense mechanism, and not sonic sway- well my only hold out is for a complete roster (since they clearly are saving some space on the graphics, I want to see everyone that was in Meteor, and more movie and DB characters).

[Captain Awesome]

I wouldn't worry about anti-aliasing, or low textures or what-not, those are just compressed, resized screenshots, the actual product probably looks a lot better.

In that case we'd be seeing a lot of compression artifacts, which aren't present in the image, the aliasing and the low resolution sprites and textures don't have anything to do with the way the image was saved.

[Thanos]

One thing I found bizarre... the JAPANESE website for Raging Blast features a song from the AMERICAN Sparking! METEOR soundtrack... listen for yourselves:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SYf_st-53g
http://www.bandaigames.channel.or.jp/li ... gingblast/

Wasn't the music for the NA versions of Sparking!!! NEO and METEOR Japanese made anyhow? Like, Kenji Yamamoto tunes? So it's completely fair game for them, IIRC.

Oh, that's true. They may be owned by Spike or something. Good call.

But dammit all, if this isn't released in North America, I will import it. I've never imported before, and I'm not sure how it works, but I'll figure it out for this. Sure-shootin'.

Although I do believe it will be localized -- Atari's license with the Dragon Ball franchise does indeed expire in January, but who's to say it won't be renewed? Many contracts meet there deadline and are merely renewed... maybe that was their year because they weren't sure if there would still be DBZ games by then. Even so, I think they'll probably get this here before January, so at the very least, this and the Wii DB game would be their last Dragon Ball-related games.

Also, thanks Innagada, for not only posting the original pictures of this, but the bigger, higher-quality ones as well. It confirms that the game looks even better than the original screens you posted... maybe it was from size-alteration-induced quality-reduction? By the way... in the original picture of Freeza shooting a ki blast at rocks, you can in fact see the edge of Goku dodging out of the way. Just in case you didn't notice.


One question for Mike (to end this necessarily-long post): Would you mind me posting a fact sheet topic? If it doesn't work, it'll just sink to the bottom and die. My editing it with new info won't bump it, y'know.

[Innagadadavida]

In that case we'd be seeing a lot of compression artifacts, which aren't present in the image, the aliasing and the low resolution sprites and textures don't have anything to do with the way the image was saved.

Did you check out the updated screens? They look much better than the ones I originally posted. I posted screencaps of screenshots that were bitmap images zoomed in through a vector SWF. The ones I updated were ripped directly from the SWF file. Although they're not the highest quality possible; they're moderately compressed JPEGs.

Although I do believe it will be localized -- Atari's license with the Dragon Ball franchise does indeed expire in January, but who's to say it won't be renewed? Many contracts meet there deadline and are merely renewed... maybe that was their year because they weren't sure if there would still be DBZ games by then. Even so, I think they'll probably get this here before January, so at the very least, this and the Wii DB game would be their last Dragon Ball-related games.

Simply put... Atari may not have a future with Dragon Ball.

In North America, FUNimation signed a contract with Atari before any of the DBZ games we know and love were created. The contract stated that Atari would license and distribute Dragon Ball games in North America. Atari then went on to create the Legacy of Goku games. Then they had a hand in the development of Budokai. That's why Budokai saw a North American release before Japan. After that, the Budokai games were made in Japan and Atari continued to be the official licensor of Dragon Ball games.

In January 2010, however, the contract between Atari and FUNimation will expire. FUNimation might be the one that gets to decide who will license the games. Many have speculated that Namco-Bandai will be chosen as they are the official licenser everywhere else.

I learned all of this in the chat. I forget who it was that informed me though.

[Chuquita]

I love how with the current-gen games, practically all the awkward, polygon-ish stuff is gone. TTuTT

Look at the bottoms of Vegeta's boots, and at Goku's fingers. X3

[Thanos]

Okay guys... I have a couple of Japanese-speaking friends. One only knows basic, so here's what he has from the magazine scans:

IT IS SPARKING! "Raging Blast!!"

Raging System - Realistic and super-speedy visual battles
3D Battlefield
Attention to feeling like the series

Sounds like in the first sentence, they're emphasizing that this is indeed a sequel to the Sparking! games.

"Raging System"... how very Spike.

I'll get a hold of my other friend who is actually native Japanese to get the whole thing translated, but that's a nice preview for now I think.