Why the Dragon Ball Z Collection is missing a game

The world probably didn't need a Dragon Ball Z Budokai HD Collection, but Namco Bandai's giving it to us anyway. According to Namco Bandai senior global brand manager Jason Enos, fans have been asking for a way to play these games on their newer systems. "Fans who have don’t own a backwards compatible PS3 can't even play these games anymore. For Xbox owners, it never even came on their platform." This collection affords fans the opportunity to play the Budokai games.

Curiously, this HD re-release is incomplete, compiling only the first and third game in the Budokai series. We needed to know why the second game was omitted from this odd collection. Was the second game not popular enough to be included?

"No, but when you look at the three games, one and three are actually more straight-up fighting games. Two IS a fighting game, but it also introduced some other elements of gameplay that kind of broke off the fighting aspects a little bit," Enos attempted to explain. "So when we finally decided which games to go with, obviously fans love different ones, but we decided we would bookend the compilation because the first game set up the Budokai series, defined what it was, and the third game was a final resolution of the Budokai series."

One could argue that choosing to port all three games would have been the most straightforward decision for Namco Bandai to make. Regardless, Dragon Ball Z Budokai HD Collection will instanteous move onto the PS3 and Xbox 360 this winter.