Spanning 13 discs, the “Dragon Ball Z CD-Box Chōzenshū” (or “Super Complete Collection”) will compile about 200 vocal songs, remixes, movie songs, game songs, etc. It is due out 26 March 2008 with a catalogue number of COCX-34814 and will cost you (and me!) ¥19950.
Thanks to Futabatei Shimei for the heads-up!
Hironobu Kageyama is putting out a little mini-album in April which will contain not only the theme song to “Sparking! METEOR” (“Super Survivor”), but also the theme song to the upcoming “Burst Limit” (“Kiseki no Honō yo Moeagare!!”). The full title of the release seems to be PS2・Wii用ソフト『ドラゴンボールZ スパーキング! メティオ』主題歌:「Super Survivor」or PS2 & Wii Software: “DragonBall Z: Sparking! METEOR” Theme Song: “Super Survivor”.
It is due out 09 April 2008 with a catalogue number of LACA-5770 for just under ¥1500, and will contain eight tracks in total.
Really? Eight tracks? Hrm. What else do you think they will be putting on this disc? These CDs typically break down the tracks into vocal and karaoke versions, so will there be four different songs and then the four karaoke versions of those songs? The only other quasi-DBZ video game theme I can think of that has not seen a CD release yet was the opening theme to “Battle Stadium D.O.N.” (“don’t give up” performed by Hironobu Kageyama and Hiroshi Kitadani). Neither CDJapan nor Neowing have a full track listing yet, but we will certainly let you know as soon as we find out!
Episode #0113 of the podcast is available for download! That’s right, we’re on an absolute roll with the updates this week. For this particular episode, Meri and I were all alone and checked out something rather appropriate… Trunks! We compared “TRUNKS: THE STORY” (the special one-chapter story explaining Trunks’ past) with the second DBZ TV special, which is pretty much an expanded-upon version of the same story. Lots of stuff to compare and contrast in there, most notable of which is Trunks going SSJ for the first time. Definitely check it out.
SHOW DESCRIPTION:
Episode #0113! VegettoEX and Meri compare “TRUNKS: THE STORY” (manga) to the second DBZ TV special. As opposed to the first TV special, the manga came first this time. How do the two differ? Is one any better than the other? Some fun with an e-mail regarding randomness and expanded character backgrounds, combined with all-around awesomeness rounds out the episode.
REFERENCED SITES:
Of course I would completely forget what I sat down to update with yesterday, and instead did a completely different update. Oh, well! Here we go!
Once again, let us go back to the year 2000. FUNimation was finally getting ready to start up the original Dragon Ball TV series again, and had a stroke of brilliance in that they would be asking the fans what they wanted for some specific dub voices. Imagine that…! They threw up some MP3 voice samples on their website and had a little poll for everyone to participate in.
Second in line for this feature will be Pilaf himself. I am presenting the MP3s exactly as they were — no additional tagging has been made, no re-encoding has been done, etc.
Pilaf Potential Voice #1 (279 KB)
Pilaf Potential Voice #2 (313 KB)
Pilaf Potential Voice #3 (283 KB)
Pilaf Potential Voice #4 (317 KB)
UPDATE: Kirbopher writes in to tell us that the voices are Chris Cason, Dameon Clarke, Mike McFarland, and Chuck Huber, respectively.
Unfortunately, I do not appear to have saved the Chibi Goku voice samples. If there are any other old fogies out there who happened to save them from FUNimation’s site seven/eight years ago, please drop me a line!
I definitely have something for you next week to continue the feature, but it’s not what you’re expecting… ^_~
The official website for “Dragon Ball Online” finally has a few updates!
Good to see some developments, here! There are a couple screen shots up on the page, but then there is this:
Man, that is pretty sexy.
Nothing too special just yet, but now you can head on over to the official website for “Dragon Ball Z W Bakuretsu Impact”. It has the trailer for the game streaming at a nicer quality than the YouTube videos, so that is kinda neat.
After two whole months of waiting, Toei has finally unveiled the first two Dragon Ball GT individual disc covers. As with all the other releases, Discs #01 and #02 contain six episodes each, covering episodes 001 thru 012, and are slated to be released 06 February 2008. The official website for these releases has also gone up.
You can still order any of the previously released discs or any of these discs from Amazon Japan.
Let me preface this entire update by saying that it should not in any way be misconstrued as “news”; there is nothing factual about mere speculation. However, it has been on my mind as-of-late, and this website provides me with a great outlet to ramble to an audience!
Ignoring the frustrating PSP/PS2 –> Wii ports we have seen since the system came out, another recent trend has actually been to stay within the PlayStation family, and go directly from PSP –> PS2. Notable titles such as “Silent Hill Origins” and “Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters” are going to be making the jump/port from the PSP to the PS2. Why is this? Well, perhaps it is because other than the Nintendo DS (which only just took over), the PS2 is the system with the largest installed base in Japan — we are talking over 120 million systems. Furthermore, with games like “God of War 2” only just coming out last year, it is not like the PS2 is dying any time soon.
While the PS3 has been picking up steam over in the Land of the Rising Sun, the 360 remains the bastard step-child of gaming that no-one over there wants anything to do with (save a few “Halo 3” players, which are far from the norm). The PS3 has been picking up steam over here in the US, and the 360 has been strong since its launch… but it is still nowhere near the PS2’s asinine number of consoles (Hell, I have two: a JP and a US one!).
So let us think about this. The upcoming “Dragon Ball Z: Burst Limit” will be coming out exclusively on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. That may work in the US, but it will be a tougher sell in Japan… where the game is being developed. Additionally, it seems like it would be impossible to put this game out on either the Wii or PS2.
But what about the “Budokai” series? Dimps kept on going over on the PSP with the “Shin Budokai” series, and as we told you just a couple days ago, “Dragon Ball Z W Bakuretsu Impact” (while simply being a card-based arcade machine with no traditional fighting-game controls) is running on an upgraded “Budokai” game engine.
So… wouldn’t Namco-Bandai like to cash in on that PS2 audience…? Maybe some ports would not be such a bad idea…
Last December we passed along information that FUNimation was going to start putting out additional “remastered” DVD / Blu-ray releases of the Dragon Ball Z movies. Up until this point, there has still been no official announcement from FUNimation about these releases.
Check out ICv2’s interview with Gen Fukunaga, CEO of FUNimation. In addition to a lot of intriguing responses regarding things like piracy, fansubs, and season box set releases, we get the following quote:
This February we’re going to do the remastered Dragonball Z movies, several of those, which should be huge sellers for us.
There you go. It will certainly be interesting to see where the year takes us. If you still want to pick up some of the old FUNimation releases of the DBZ movies, RightStuf has a few left in-stock for about $5 a pop.
We all know that Dimps (developers of the “Dragon Ball Z / Budokai” series) have kept busy over the last several years creating some card-based fighting games in the arcade which are further based on their own “Budokai” game engine (and also games like “Shin Budokai” on the PSP). Well, it looks like a fourth entry in their card-based arcade series is coming soon, this time entitled “Dragon Ball Z W Bakuretsu Impact”. They have been releasing one of these every spring since 2006, and they do not appear to be slowing down any time soon.
A full promotional trailer, narrated by Masako Nozawa (as Goku), has been released. You will see some of the new graphical upgrades, new characters (#19, DBGT Goku, Pan, San Xing Long, Arale, etc.), and a whole lot more:
[pro-player width=’320′ height=’240′ type=’video’ image=’http://www.kanzenshuu.com/media/video/w_bakuretsu_impact_trailer.jpg’]http://www.kanzenshuu.com/media/video/w_bakuretsu_impact_trailer.flv[/pro-player]
If you are not sure how these games work, there are not any typical joysticks or buttons like a traditional fighting game setup — everything is controlled via the Carddass materials (read: cards) that you swipe. For those who really dug the “Budokai” games, it is kinda sad to see a game that is so heavily upgraded from “Budokai 3” but you cannot actually control anything your own.
Yes, these games are primarily played by little school-children — that is an image of one of the games from a couple years ago, but it should give you a pretty good idea, none-the-less.