In addition to a complete musical score replacement (almost certainly due to Kenji Yamamoto’s involvement), several other elements of the recently-released Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection — a port of Budokai and Budokai 3 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 — have been altered: some of the more graphic visuals.
Fans began picking up on some of the edits shortly after release in the first game’s cutscenes. Goku and Raditz’s death from Piccolo’s Makankōsappō has its bloody chest hole colored dark:
Interestingly, this is an edit similar to what happened in 2009’s “refreshed” version of the Dragon Ball Z TV series, Dragon Ball Kai.
UPDATE: Many of our European fans have told us that the above Raditz edit has always existed in their PS2 version; it, however, was obviously not present in the North American original (see above), and yet is indeed present in the North American HD Collection (also see above)! Despite the European and North American versions of the first Budokai game in this collection having branched developments at some point — as seen by the different language options (Japanese-only versus English-only, respectively), the same as back in its original PS2 release — it seems at least some of the graphical changes made their way into both regions this time around.
Edits extend even to in-game fights in the third game, with Broli’s ultimate attack flashing to a white screen as he pummels his opponent into the ground.
Which other examples of censoring have you seen crop up in Dragon Ball Z: Budokai HD Collection? Does this, especially combined with the complete music replacement, affect your decision to pick it up?
12 Comments
LAME.
… That is the only word for it.
Its still a good fighting game series and I wish to support them so that another game gets made. But I will be voicing my opinions to NamcoBandai in the hopes that other people will also do it and hopefully this is the last we’ll see of this. To just not pick up the game doesn’t solve anything, it just prevents the developer from continuing a good series of games.
There is no need to kill the games off just because of one or two mistakes on their part. We as a community need to be voicing what they really need in this series of games to get back in our good books. And there have been many other games from developers that have done far worse to the fans only for the fans to keep purchasing the games. I don’t see why any other series of games should deserve a harsher treatment purely because they aren’t the titan’s of that genre or aren’t as well received.
Wow. It’s funny, someone was just asking me about if I’m going to get the HD collection. I told them I was not really interested due to my lack of an HD TV and the fact of the whole replaced musical score. This news just further confirms my decision.
I already have the original games so it doesn’t really effect me. I picked it up for nostalgia sake.
The ground pound was the best part. 🙁
A fighting game censoring fights. That’s not dumb at all…
I hate Namco Bandai so much right now.
I did consider picking this up but not now.
I am totally against censorship and this is just ridiculous.
At least I can always count on this website for good information.
Wow, this is pretty ridiculous…. I mean COME ON censoring Broli slamming someone to the ground! This is too much!
Guess which publisher isn’t taking my money on this one.
Budokai 3 is my favorite Dragon Ball Z game, but I’m not sure if I’d buy this or not. Probably will when it drops to 20 bucks
That’s just sad. 😕
Yeah, this is pretty terrible, I am not going to lie. However, if you own legitimate copies of the PS2 versions, you can use PCSX to unlock resolutions way beyond what the HD collection has to offer, and in the original Yamamoto plagiarized soundtrack offering no less.