Before heading off to Animazement this past weekend, we caught a very strange listing on eBay: a copy of the unreleased/canceled Dragon Ball Raging Blast 2 Original Soundtrack Overseas Version CD. The listing was for $999.00 and based out of San Francisco, California from seller “h2oness”.

What makes this listing so curious — beyond just its price — is the fact that this CD was never officially released.

The three “Blast” games (Raging Blast, Raging Blast 2, and Ultimate Blast/Tenkaichi) all received newly-synthesized versions of Shunsuke Kikuchi’s musical score from the TV series and movies in their Japanese releases. For the international versions, newly-composed soundtracks were inserted to replace this music; this mirrored the trend with the three Sparking! games during the previous video game generation, where Kikuchi’s music was replaced in the same way (the first Budokai Tenkaichi recycled music from the prior Budokai series, while the second and third games received completely new music). No soundtracks for any of these games were ever released beyond CD singles for the new vocal opening themes (with the exception of the “Collector’s Edition” of the first Blast game in Europe coming packed with a music CD).

That was the case, anyway, until January 2011 when a listing popped up for a proper Raging Blast 2 soundtrack on the Lantis record label. The disc was listed as due out 23 March 2011 in Japan for ¥3,000, a rather quick turn-around time compared to most other announcements and releases.

More details were finally revealed just a week before its supposed release, including its cover art and formal title: Raging Blast 2 Original Soundtrack Overseas Version. This at least confirmed the music would be from the international release of the game, itself yet another curious move considering it was a Japanese release of the soundtrack with music that was not even in the Japanese version of the game.

Unsurprisingly, due to the tsunami and earthquake that week, Lantis officially announced that all CD releases planned for March 23rd, 24th, and 30th had been postponed.

This was also a few weeks after Toei publicly acknowledged the potential for infringing tracks within the Dragon Ball Kai TV musical score. Both the Dragon Ball Kai score and the Raging Blast 2 replacement soundtrack were composed by Kenji Yamamoto, so it probably comes as no surprise that the Raging Blast 2 Original Soundtrack Overseas Version never saw the light of day. Listings were either updated to “canceled” on retailer sites or were flat-out removed entirely. Furthermore, Namco-Bandai stealthily re-released the international version of the game several months later with a replacement musical score (itself for a replacement musical score!): the old Budokai Tenkaichi 2 music.

This is why it is so curious to see the soundtrack pop up on eBay. It appears to be a “legit” product, as much as one could be under the circumstances. Various pictures show the item from different angles, and all information (release date, catalog number, price, composition credits, etc.) match up with the actual information from the game, from what we know about the soundtrack, and is written and presented in a style that also matches up with other products for the franchise and from the record label.

We have reached out to the seller with an inquiry as to how they came into possession of the CD, but we do not necessarily expect an answer. We do wonder, though: if this CD found its way to at least a few folks, did the Dragon Ball Kai OST IV / Complete Collection (which was officially canceled) also see the light of day somewhere?

UPDATE: The seller has informed us that the CD was a sample version given out to composers and game developers in 2011, and (as we mentioned) was not formally/officially released.