Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS seems to be mostly back on-track for Namco-Bandai after a short lull a few weeks back. The game pushed a surprising 15,094 copies last week, and returns again for its eleventh week (the period of 06 May 2013 to 12 May 2013) with a bit of a drop to 7,359 copies, putting the total at 184,516 copies according to Media Create.

Dragon Ball Heroes: Ultimate Mission for the Japanese Nintendo 3DS is available for purchase at CDJapan and Play-Asia. As noted in previous updates, 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.

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.