It was back at the end of March that Walmart and a couple other online retailers put up listings for a so-called Dragon Ball Z “HD” / “HD Collection” for both the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The price was set at a full $59.99 with a release date of 02 October 2012, and the game collection’s genre of “Action/Fighting” lined up exactly with both Raging Blast 2 and Ultimate Tenkaichi.
Since then, Dragon Ball Z for Kinect has been announced and promoted a bit. Amazon puts the Kinect game at a reasonable $39.99 with a release date of 31 October 2012.
Along the way, Walmart’s listings shifted a little bit. The “HD Collection” page remained for the 360, but mysteriously disappeared for the PS3, leading us and many others to believe the listing was intended for the Kinect game all along — the genre still made sense, the release date could still make sense, etc.
This past week, Spanish retailer XtraLife.es also had listings for this Dragon Ball Z “HD Collection” for both the PS3 and 360, but now with (very dodgy) cover art and specifically noting it as a collection of Budokai Tenkaichi games (originally released in Japan under the Sparking! titles):
As we and other folks like good ol’ reliable Super Saiyan Prime have pointed out over on our forum, there are tons of issues with this cover art. The most striking is the “HD Classics” banner, which is Sony-exclusive branding, yet is present on both the PS3 and 360 versions of this supposed collection’s cover art. Even on cross-platform HD collections such as Metal Gear Solid, for the European market (which is where these Dragon Ball Z images would supposedly come from), “HD Classics” is Sony-exclusive, while the 360 version uses its standard version of cover art decoration tying in the game’s own name of “HD Collection”.
As others have pointed out, it is worth noting that XtraLife is responsible for first putting up listings for the Devil May Cry HD Collection prior to its announcement. At that time, it was also revealed that XtraLife’s box art for said collection was a mockup created elsewhere… which seems oddly similar to what we are seeing with this Dragon Ball Z listing.
Walmart’s Xbox 360 listing for “Dragon Ball Z HD” remains while the PS3 listing is still gone, while both of the XtraLife listings have been removed.
I suppose we can conclude that something is on the way.
6 Comments
2012 – Year of Spike rehashing old junk.
Even of a fan of the Budokai games more than the Budokai Tenkaichi games, if there actually is an HD collection of the latter, I’d so totally Day One Purchase it. It’d be the first of such discs that I’d buy.
And yet the old Sparking games are better then Raging Blast and the supposed Ultimate Tenkaichi.
For years we’ve been saying, “Oh, this is the same junk that we’ve been getting for years.” If this HD Collection actually happens, then we can say the same thing only a little more literally.
Although the cover art is a bit naff, at least it’s a change from “lots of yellow haired people scream while firing energy blasts to the left and right of the camera”.
Also, I think this might be the first time that Ultimate Gohan is on a video game cover. Normally it’s Teen Gohan. You go, grown-up Gohan who was awesome for 5 minutes!
Ultimate Gohan is on the Japanese box art of Sparking Meteor, But on the NA cover they remover him for some reason.