Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection is hitting the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 this winter, but will only include the first and third games, skipping over the second game in the process. While the first game contained a story mode many fans still hold up as one of the franchise’s best, and the third refined the fighting system and other aspects into one of the overall best-regarded games for the franchise, the second game still had its charms: a board game style of story mode with a few “What If?” scenarios, new absorptions for Majin Boo, an entirely new fusion character (Yamhan, a dance fusion combination of Yamcha and Tenshinhan), an alternate form of theoretical-fusion Gotan (a Potara fusion combination of Goku and Mr. Satan), the first new vocal theme song for the franchise since 1997, and much more.
So why skip the middle-child in this upcoming HD collection? Speaking with Shack News, Namco-Bandai Senior Global Brand Manager Jason Enos stated:
“No, but when you look at the three games, one and three are actually more straight-up fighting games. Two IS a fighting game, but it also introduced some other elements of gameplay that kind of broke off the fighting aspects a little bit,” Enos attempted to explain. “So when we finally decided which games to go with, obviously fans love different ones, but we decided we would bookend the compilation because the first game set up the Budokai series, defined what it was, and the third game was a final resolution of the Budokai series.”
Unfortunately, that is not really an answer so much as it is a simple acknowledgement — but it is thankfully at least more than we had at first. The game collection is already looking as if it will contain a complete musical replacement score and possibly not even some of the minor additional content from the re-release/Japanese version of Budokai 3, so the hardest of hardcore fans may want to just break out the original PS2 versions this winter.
If you North American fans never picked up the “Greatest Hits” re-release of Budokai 3 and go out in search of it these days, be aware that Atari suffered a major misprint error which resulted in the game being stamped with the original, non-“Greatest Hits” version (thus missing the extra content, the most significant of which was the optional original Japanese voice cast). It was eventually corrected, but picking up the game used does come with the risk of grabbing a mis-printed disc.
9 Comments
This collection sure is a waste of time and money. All they did was crank up the shiny effects so every character looks like they are made of plastic instead of the original cel-shades charm. Then they fail to include Budokai 2 and give a piss-poor excuse for it. Do they expect this to sell well?
Actually, no, I’d argue this is the reason the forum’s been throwing around for a while- Budokai 2’s board game breaks the flow of both the fighting itself and the other two very dramatically. Anyone whose actually unlocked all or most (me) of the capsule in Dragon World can and will tell you that. Still not a valid excuse to exclude it, of course, there is none.
I still don’t see why they felt that Budokai 2 should be excluded from the HD Collection. Even if it broke the fighting aspects a little and is radically different from 1 or 3, that should be the person’s choice whether they want to play 2 or not, but the option should still be there. Not just remove it and give a piss poor excuse of “oh, well, it’s the fan’s least favorite Budokai game so it shouldn’t be included.”
Most HD Collections contain three games, with only a few containing 2. I’m pretty sure it’s not storage capacity because blu-ray on the PS3 is more than capable of holding all three games in one disc. So this just seems like a gimped collection to me. Pass.
Isn’t Infinite World they resolution to the Budokai series? 🙄
“Oh yes, Budokai 2 existed. And it had some extra stuff in it too. By the way did we mention that, in Budokai Collection, we included BOTH the first and third game?”
Just a note, you said Gotan was a dance fusion of Goku and Mr. Satan, but it was Potara.
wow, Budoaki 2 was my favourite…. I can’t believe they would leave it out. Well, at least it won’t be subjected to a replacement score.
Maybe they just didn’t like Budokai 2’s story mode. It is a bit random after all. Doesn’t sit nicely with the more story-mode centric missions of B1 and B2
All Budokai 2 had going for it was some interesting What-If characters, like Gokule (or Gotan, whatever you wanna call him), Tiencha, and Super Buu Frieza Absorbed. That was pretty much it.
The story mode looked tedious and dull, and it didn’t seem like the fighting mechanics improved too much compared to the first game. Though, I would’ve added Infinite World to the collection. Or at least try to sneak in characters that were Infinite World-exclusive into Budokai 3.