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.

C21Media reports a couple little updates from Latin America this week. Colombia’s CityTV is on a roll, having acquired all 291 episodes of the Dragon Ball Z TV series as well as the 98 episodes of its 20th anniversary “refreshed” edition, Dragon Ball Kai. Additionally, Ecuador’s Ecuavisa has renewed its license for the franchise, as well as obtained what the site describes as “20 telemovies based on the franchise” — if we had to guess, the twenty items are likely the three Dragon Ball movies, thirteen Dragon Ball Z movies, two Dragon Ball Z TV specials, the 10th anniversary movie, and the Dragon Ball GT TV special.

Dragon Ball Kai seems to have recently debuted on Ecuavisa back on 14 April 2012. The Dragon Ball Z TV series somewhat came under fire in Ecuador back in July 2009 when The Simpsons and other shows caught the attention of the government which was concerned by the impact of “programs and messages that promote violence, racial and gender discrimination.”

Those of you who keep up with the international items in the “releases” portion of our weekly podcast have probably been wondering where the Dutch kanzenban has been for the last year. So have we!

Our forum member Nils_McCloud tossed a note over to Glénat to see what was going on. Last summer’s Volume 13 was the most recent one to come out, now trailing far behind the French release which just hit Volume 19 this past month. The response (translated below) was not an encouraging one:

Dear Nils,

We’re sorry to say issue 13 will be the final release in the series.

Kind regards,
Greet Eskens

Looks like fans of the Dutch kanzenban translation are out of luck!

FUNimation’s more-formal “season” set releases of the refreshed Dragon Ball Z Kai series officially begins 22 May 2012, but as per the norm, RightStuf is shipping out orders early… which gives us all a chance to confirm things equally nice and early!

After the announcement of possible infringing works in Kenji Yamamoto’s musical score to the series, FUNimation’s two-disc “Part” releases of Kai shifted to the Shunsuke Kikuchi replacement score (Parts 1-4: Yamamoto, Parts 5-8: Kikuchi).

It was way back in July 2011 that FUNimation first announced “season” releases for Kai, essentially combining two “Part” releases (each 13ish episodes) into one larger “season” release (26ish episodes). When the first set eventually made its way out for its 18 October 2011 release, it was assumed that, since all of the other subsequent releases had shifted over by then, this newly-packaged release would contain the Kikuchi replacement score; instead, it still had the original Yamamoto broadcast score. The set was strangely pulled from online listings shortly after its release, leading many fans to assume the Yamamoto inclusion was a mistake; however, when the set popped back up again, those purchasing it still found the Yamamoto score on the discs.

This past February, FUNimation’s solicitations noted upcoming releases of “Season One” and “Season Two” for Kai — this left “Season One” in an odd spot, since it had technically already been released, but was now a part of what appeared to be a more-consistent, well-planned “Season” release series.

Well, it has been confirmed — this new (re?)re-release of “Season One” does indeed contain the Shunsuke Kikuchi replacement score, as does the new “Season Two” release (repackaging Kai episodes 27-52 in North America for the first time, which come from “Part 3” and “Part 4” that have now been discontinued). The whole Kai release history can be incredibly confusing even for fans like us who live and breathe this stuff — check out the “Dragon Ball Z Kai TV Series” page of our “Home Video Guide” for a nice breakdown of all the different releases and which options are available on them.

Originally announced back in August 2009, France finally received a proper home release of the first Dragon Ball series spread across two giant collector’s edition DVD box sets, with the second set seeing its release back in May 2010.

Taking a card from FUNimation’s play book, it seems AB Video will be re-releasing the series in smaller, lower-priced sets. All three sets will be released 07 May 2012 and retail for 29,99 €, compared to the 149,90 € each the original two collector’s edition sets went for. As with the original two sets, the Japanese version is included with French subtitles, though since an uncut French dub was never produced, that particular track switches to the original version where it had been edited in the French dub.

Despite Dragon Ball Kai airing in three different incarnations over there (original Japanese + subtitles, uncut dub, edited dub), there are still no hints about a home release for the “refreshed” Dragon Ball Z TV series.

Thanks to our buddy sangofe for the heads-up.

Originally announced back in late 2010 and more formally launched almost a year ago in May 2011, the Japanese, arcade-only, multiplayer fighter Zenkai Battle Royale has still been getting consistent updates, including the most recent revision which includes two new playable characters: Mr. Satan and Majin Boo.

Mr. Satan participates, believing all the fancy energy attacks and such to be a trick (much as he did in the original series). Amazingly (and heading into even more gag-character territory), ki attacks and energy beams have no effect on him. His attacks include high-powered guided missiles, a remote-controlled bomb, “I just remembered some urgent business!”, and “Number One!” — this last one allows him to recover his strength from the cheers of his fans.

Boo’s special ability is to replicate others’ attacks just by watching. The only special technique he starts out with is “chocolate beam”, which turns the opponent into chocolate and allows him to regain strength by punching it (if other players hit the chocolate, it also recovers his health). However, after seeing an opponent’s long-distance energy attack, he can use “Kamehameha” to replicate it, and seeing a close-range physical technique, can replicate it using “Boo Rush”. Additionally, if his health goes below a certain point, “Angry Explosion” activates, causing the people around him to be engulfed in an explosion.

This is still no word on a possible home release of the game, and with Dragon Ball Z for Kinect looking to be this year’s exclusive home console game, Zenkai Battle Royale may be sitting another year out.

Thanks to Super Saiyan Prime for the heads-up.