The Magic Box has a great new post with tons of images from the newly announced “Legacy of Goku 2” for Nintendo’s GameBoy Advance portable video game system. Everyone looks so cute, but in our opinion, this second game will have to bring a lot more to the table than its predecessor, which seemed to have been the very definition of “boredom” to fans.
The father of Gen Fukunaga (founder and president of FUNimation) is apparently a professor at Purdue University. His students have set up a game — called “Fukunaga Snipe” — where you gain points by taking pictures of Professor Fukunaga in various DBZ t-shirts and guess which color shirt he will wear next.
The recent April 2003 issue of Viz’s Shonen Jump magazine featured an advertisement for the upcoming “Graphic Novel”-sized release of the company’s Dragon Ball manga translation. The advertisement’s artwork features generic illustrations on the spines instead of the running images that span the entire 42-volume length of the series, which caused concern among some people.
We reached out to Shonen Jump editor Jason Thompson about these concerns and received the following statement:
Thanks for asking, I knew some people were getting anxious about this. Don’t worry, they WILL have running spine-images. The promotional artwork in the ads was made up by some freelancer who didn’t know what he was doing.
Based on this response, fans should expect the proper spine art in the upcoming releases, which hit store shelves 16 April 2003.
The reports are pouring in: Dragon Ball GT has begun airing in England on CNX. It has an English version of “DAN DAN Kokoro Hikarete ‘ku” (the original opening theme to the series), uses the original musical score, and from most accounts sounds to be at least decently dubbed.
Unfortunately for us in the United States, this is once again an Ocean-associated production, this time done with sister-studio Blue Water.
Seemingly flying in the face of this international development is FUNimation’s preview for their own production of Dragon Ball GT, included on the “Kid Boo — A New Beginning” DVD (which contains the final episodes of the Dragon Ball Z TV series):
[pro-player type=”mp4″]http://www.kanzenshuu.dreamhosters.com/media/video/think_you_know_gt_320x240.mp4[/pro-player]
This month’s Dragon Ball issue (Part 6, Number 2) was the last of the monthlies — Viz has apparently decided that the monthly-comic format is just not that economical for manga, and as such, the rest of the chapters (4 volumes worth, plus the end of vol. 12 and the beginning of vol. 17) will be published in their respective graphic novels only. Additionally, the graphic novels are being re-released in the new, smaller, and more-economical “Shonen Jump” format. These will be roughly the same size as the original Japanese tankōbon and retail for $7.95 each (half of what the larger ones sold for, before the price drop to $13). The new editions of Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z volumes 1-7 come out later this month.
There are an enormous amount of rumors flying around, particularly in light of FUNimation’s strange rap music for the series: Dragon Ball GT‘s earlier episodes will be released later as part of Dragon Ball Z, they are not doing the earlier episodes at all, their site starts with episode summaries around episode fifteen, etc.
Special thanks to Derek Smith for passing along this link to the first volume of DBGT on DVD at RightStuf — the description definitely describes the first episode of the series. However, Rild (the blue character on the front) absolutely does not show up the first 62 minutes of the series. Correct description, incorrect representation? More to come on this one, for sure.
We do not know what it is, how it is going to be used, or why it was created. Quite frankly, it does not matter.
Zstore.com has “Ultimate Battle 22” up for pre-order, though clicking through on the link will bring you to a page that does not list the item.
This more or less confirms the release date of 26 March 2003 other sites have been giving for the game domestically. For now, you may be better off ordering the game at ebgames.com, which has it for a mere $19.99.
Thanks to Gregor on alt.fan.dragonball for the tip.
You can currently find the “Red Ribbon Army” DVD box set (two-discs) up for pre-order on Amazon for a ridiculously low $22.46! It does not come out until the 25th, but if you know you are going to be purchasing it, do yourself a favor and save a bit of money — FUNimation’s ZStore.com has it listed for $39.95.
Thanks to all the folks at alt.fan.dragonball and our visitors e-mailing in for the tip.
Apparently, Infogrames really is translating “Ultimate Battle 22” for PS1… at least in Australia.
According to the Australian site, the game is being released on March 14th of this year. However, their main site (and more specifically, the DBZ games section linked off the main page) makes absolutely NO mention of this game.
It would seem that the game has been released in Europe before, and now they’re RE-releasing it, along with “Final Bout”…
(UPDATE: GameStop is offering the game up for pre-order on their site with a release date of 25 March 2003 and a price tag of a mere $19.99.)
Thanks to the kind folks in this MadMan forum thread for pointing out the link to the Australian site.