Special Feature: Super Dragon Ball Announcement Bonanza

Bandai Namco has been having a lot of fun with Dragon Ball fans lately, and I don’t entirely mean the good kind of “fun.” In fairness, some of this has been out of their control.

The company hosted a Dragon Ball Games SUPER Showcase around two weeks ago that seemed like it would include several announcements. But outside one, there were only teases for future announcements, despite the producers for the Dragon Ball Xenoverse and Dragon Ball FighterZ games being present. Check out that sweet like/dislike ratio to see what fans thought of it. There were hints that either Toei Animation or Shueisha pulled announcements at the last minute, since the little news provided did not justify a stream, especially one with an all-caps “SUPER” in the title.

The main announcements were instead saved for the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour finals tournament. This was despite one announcement being for an action RPG, but a Dragon Ball game reveal at a Dragon Ball-centric tournament was considered close enough.

Dragon Ball FighterZ Season 2 was confirmed during the aforementioned stream, though it would have been a bigger surprise if it didn’t happen. Jiren from Dragon Ball Super was subsequently confirmed as the first character of this batch. He hails from Universe 11, and was the main rival for Goku and several other main characters during the final arc of the anime series. The glimpse at his techniques in the trailer is too quick for me to guess his fighting style, but he looks to have a fair amount of close and long-range attacks, along with counters taken from the series.

Jiren’s appearance is no surprise, something instead reserved for the character coming alongside him: Videl. Very few fans and players who created speculative lists about the characters that could arrive this season had Videl written down (or typed), and those who did either listed her as an out-of-left-field prediction, or because they’re huge fans of her. She’ll be included here in her Dragon Ball Z form, since, well, it’s not like she actually fights in Super. The Great Saiyaman will assist her with certain attacks, and their win pose is derived from a scene from the Wrath of the Dragon movie, where Videl appeared as the Great Saiyawoman. She’s a great inclusion for anyone who felt the game was lacking in female representation, though the source material didn’t provide many options.

It was also confirmed that Broly: BR and Super Saiyan Blue Gogeta from the recent (and very successful) Dragon Ball Super: Broly film, though they weren’t shown in action. They’ll be the fifth and sixth characters released in this season. The third and fourth characters should be announced sometime soon.

It’s disappointing that this season will only have six characters compared to the last season’s eight, but the season pass will be $10 cheaper, and they look to be good additions. The biggest guesses for the third and fourth characters are Ultra Instinct Goku and Kefla, but anything goes here considering no one predicted Videl. Both Jiren and Videl will arrive on January 31st, this Thursday. The others should come within the first half of this year.

The action RPG teased at the streaming event has been given the presumably tentative title of Dragon Ball Game — Project Z. It’s being developed by CyberConnect2, well known for previously handling the .hack series and several Naruto: Ultimate Ninja installments. Of those, this title will take more from the latter, in being an anime adaptation of a Shonen Jump series, and will include a beautiful cel-shaded art style to closely resemble the anime. Like several previous DBZ action RPGs, it will retell the events of the show, though rumors suggest the game will end with the Cell Saga.

There are currently few details about the game, but Bandai Namco should share more soon, as it’s due for release later this year for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.

Bandai Namco isn’t leaving Switch owners out, as they’re releasing Super Dragon Ball Heroes: World Mission for the system and PC. This is a card battle game that will feature several characters from a variety of DB media, including noncanonical installments. This is also a spinoff of the Japanese arcade trading card game, which also received a bonus anime adaptation consisting of short episodes. It’s the ultimate professional DB fanfiction, since it involves characters like Super Saiyan 4 Goku and Vegeta fighting alongside their canonical versions, and several examples of encounters and enemies that seem conjured from the minds of very imaginative fans. World Mission will arrive on April 5 worldwide.

With this large an amount of upcoming games and updates, not to mention other media, Dragon Ball has truly returned. The lineup is reminiscent of the mid-to-late PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation and part of the last console generation, a time when Atari/Infogrames and later Bandai Namco’s lineup always consisted of several DB games. Instead of mainly (though not entirely) remaining in the fighting game realm, DB is covering multiple genres again. The lineup could get even more robust if there’s indeed another Xenoverse game in the works, so stay tuned for the next episode.