Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS continues to have a baffling up-and-down sales journey. After falling off the Media Create list for two weeks in a row, the game returns back up to the #5 spot for its tenth week (during the time period of 29 April 2013 to 05 May 2013) with another 15,094 copies sold, now putting it at a very solid 177,157 total copies. In fact, this is the game’s third-best week so far!

At this point, it may be worth it to break down the sales all in one spot to see these trends (using Media Create sales figures unless otherwise specified):

• Week 01: 88,386
• Week 02: 21,915
• Week 03: 11,396
• Week 04: 9,097
• Week 05: 9,414
• Week 06: 11,674
• Week 07: 4,964*
• Week 08: 2,308*
• Week 09: 8,834*
• Week 10: 15,094

* Famitsu sales list figures

There has been no word on shipment shortages or manufacturing problems, so it really does make you wonder what on Earth is going on here. Were there shortages that just went unreported? Would digital sales have filled in that void were the game actually available on the Nintendo 3DS eShop? The sixth-week bump makes sense tying in with the theatrical debut of Battle of Gods, and perhaps these tenth-week sales could at least partially be attributed to Golden Week, but we do have to ask: could Namco-Bandai be making an even bigger killing on this game if they really wanted to?

It’s not dead yet…!

Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission completely fell off the sales charts last week, but the Japanese Nintendo 3DS-only portable-port of the on-going arcade game crawled its way back up onto the Famitsu sales chart for its ninth week (the period of 22 April 2013 to 28 April 2013) with another 8,834 copies sold.

The game is still completely gone from the Media Create sales list, but comparing its and the Famitsu numbers puts the game in the ballpark of 170,000 total copies sold at this point. The jump from approximately 2,300 copies the previous week to almost 9,000 copies this past week is curious, and begs the question of how well the game could be doing were it actually for sale digitally on Nintendo’s eShop.

Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS is available for purchase at CDJapan and Play-Asia. As previously noted, however, the Nintendo 3DS is region-locked and will require a Japanese system to play. There is currently no word on an international release of the game.

It has been a good run for Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission, but in its eighth week, the Japanese Nintendo 3DS-only portable-port of the on-going arcade game has finally fallen off both the Media Create and Famitsu sales lists (for the period of 15 April 2013 to 21 April 2013).

The game pushed itself over the 160,000 copies mark last week, but failed to crack the Top 20 on the Media Create sales list. With the bump in sales from Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods coming and going earlier this month, we are likely looking at modest, slower sales for the game moving forward.

Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS is available for purchase at CDJapan and Play-Asia. As previously noted, however, the Nintendo 3DS is region-locked and will require a Japanese system to play. There is currently no word on an international release of the game.

While Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission on the Japanese Nintendo 3DS continues to lead the pack on the homefront, the original arcade version of the game also triumphantly carries onward. So far 2013 has seen both the “Galaxy Mission 6” and “Galaxy Mission 7” updates, the latter of which has incorporated a wealth of material from the new film Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods.

The upcoming “Galaxy Mission 8″ — previewed in this month’s (June 2013) issue of V-Jump in Japan — brings things back around to villains and characters that had not yet been given a chance to shine. The single-player Age Mission for “Galaxy Mission 8″ has Garlic Jr. as the main boss. The player will have to progress across the map and get to Castle Garlic. Meanwhile, other movie boss characters will enter the fray such as Hirudegarn, Broli, Coola, Tullece, Slug, and Beerus. There are additional characters to complement the villains, as well — for example, Garlic Jr.’s minions from the movie are along for the ride.

“Galaxy Mission 8″ kicks off in the arcade version of Dragon Ball Heroes 18 May 2013 in Japan.

The June 2013 issue of V-Jump – which also contains the eighth chapter of the on-going promotional manga Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission — is available for purchase at CDJapan and Amazon Japan.

Both the current issues of Weekly Shōnen Jump (2013 #21) and V-Jump (June 2013) — released this week in Japan — contain some additional details about the upcoming Chōgashu (“Super Illustration Collection”) book.

As we already knew, the book will contain 400+ images from the start of the serialization up to now, a special interview with original author Akira Toriyama (though it is not specified to necessarily be a new interview), and a special poster.

Both magazines assert that this is the “first” Dragon Ball illustration collection. This is definitely a false statement, considering the release of items such as Daizenshuu 1 (“Complete Illustrations”) in 1995 and The Golden Warrior in 2010, among other books and compilations of art. Still, none of the collections thus far have been this large. The “Super Illustration Collection” is due out 09 May 2013 for ¥3,800 and is available for pre-order on both CDJapan and Amazon Japan.

Earlier this month (12 April 2013), the “Z-Warriors Gather” starter deck for Miracle Battle Carddass saw a release in Japan featuring characters from the “Miracle of God” booster among others.

“Miracle of God” itself includes a number of movie villains, including Broli, Hirudegarn, Slug, Coola, Merged #13, Tullece, and Beerus, though these are not included as a part of the “Z-Warriors Gather” starter deck. This month’s (June 2013) issue of V-Jump covers the “Miracle of God” expansion’s “Omega Rare” cards.

Each starter deck comes with 40 cards, 10 Jumpower, play sheet, and rule sheet for ¥1260 (tax inclusive) and are available for order online at sites such as Amazon Japan.

With the exception of a few minor items before Namco-Bandai brought the game license back in-house from Atari, digital distribution for Dragon Ball video games has been laughably limited. A few demos have trickled out here and there (with the last one being for 2010′s Raging Blast 2), but that has literally been it.

Perhaps change is in the air, as a recent post from Microsoft’s “Major Nelson” reveals that last year’s Dragon Ball Z for Kinect is now available on the Xbox Live Games on Demand service.

The download will eat up 3.26 GB of your Xbox 360′s hard drive and will run you $24.99. The disc version will only run you $18.48 on Amazon right now, however.

Dragon Ball Z for Kinect requires the Kinect peripheral to even navigate the menu system, which includes being able to select the bonus Episode of Bardock video feature. Read our full review of the game.