Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball saga is popular all over the world, with the craze exploding in North America in recent years. Although Japan saw many Dragon Ball Z games released alongside the manga and anime, Long time readers of PGC will remember just after E3 when we confirmed DBZ would come to GBA & GC. Now, official information on these exciting projects is finally coming to light and we’re all too happy to share it with you, thanks to Magic Box and some comments made by Infogrames Senior Vice President, Paul Rinde.

Infogrames is planning two DBZ GBA titles to be released this summer, with more to follow. The first one is an fighter/action/RPG called Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku (check out the screens we’ve just posted) and is scheduled to be released in May. The story line of the game follows the TV series closely and is divided up into a number of sagas. You start as young Goku, collecting the legendary Dragon Balls. As the game progresses, Goku must do battle with major rivals in Saiyan, Namek and Freeza epics. Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku will have a real-time combat system, with Goku's special attacks available to fight the enemies, including his famous energy blast attack Kamehameha. Winning fights helps to level up your HP and Ki before facing the major bosses. Infogrames apparently intends to tell the Legacy of Goku over a trilogy of games. Another note of interest is that the Legacy of Goku will feature "an epic digital soundtrack that you can fully enjoy only if you hook up your GBA to a surround-sound audio system!"

The second GBA Dragon Ball Z title will be based on the DBZ trading card game and is called Dragon Ball Z: Collectible Card Game, scheduled to release in US this June. The game will play identically to the widely popular trading card game. In the game, each player selects a character and a deck of cards that best fits the character, then you can use different attacks, defensive skills and strategies to win the match. In order to win the match, you must either keep your cards until the opponent runs out of card, maintain the highest personality points after the battles, or acquire the seven Dragon Ball or Namek Dragon Ball cards.

The Dragon Ball Z game that will come to GameCube will appear on PlayStation 2 first, but both versions will be very similar and will also be in the RPG/Fighting style. This Dragon Ball Z game will be single player but have over 30 playable characters, with multiple characters able to battle in the arena at the same time. Infogrames is also planning to include online capabilities for the PS2 version once Sony finalized its online strategies; whether this is being considered for the GameCube version is unknown—and is certainly dependent on Nintendo solidifying its network plans too. However, Infogrames is planning to make use of the GameCube and its connection to the GBA. The PS2 version will be released this fall, with the GameCube version appearing shortly thereafter. A version of the game will eventually come to X-Box too, probably in 2003. Everyone’s gonna get some DBZ love!

We should have more on Infogrames’ DBZ games very soon!