Fantasy Flight Games of Roseville, Minnesota announced that it has acquired the rights to create board games based on the hugely popular Dragon Ball Z animated series.  Fantasy Flight plans to publish several small fast-paced board games under the title: Dragon Ball Z Battle! Boardgame.  The first two games, which are scheduled to come out this winter, are based on the Majin Buu and Fusion sagas.  No information about price and content are available at this time. 

 

Dragon Ball Z, which is perched atop the Lycos Top 50 list of Internet searches once again, remains the most popular anime series in the US and the mainstay of the Cartoon Network's Toonami block.   With over 500 episodes of Dragon Ball and DBZ available in Japan, it appears that DBZ's run in the U.S. could be a very long one indeed.  Already the subject of a very popular collectible card game (see 'Score Announces 2002 DBZ CCG Releases'), Dragon Ball Z is also going to be one of the 'anchor' titles of the new American version of Shonen Jump (see 'DBZ and Yu-Gi-Oh Headline U.S. Shonen Jump'), and Fox is even planning a live action version of the DBZ saga (see 'Fox Plans Live Action DBZ'). Clearly DBZ remains one of the hottest properties in pop entertainment today. 

 

Fantasy Flight also produces board games for another hugely successful pop culture property, The Lord of the Rings.  Fantasy Flight's first LOTR board games sold very well in conjunction with the release of the first LOTR film.  Now the DBZ license will provide Fantasy Flight with another proven property and major license to balance the year-end, movie-related LOTR board game releases.