Forgive us, but we haven't kept up with all our youth trends -- do kids still care about Dragon Ball? Has it become passé? Did the disastrous live-action movie kill the license forever? We're guessing the answer to that last one is no, considering how hard a fight there's been over the North American publishing rights to games based on the anime series. Now, Gamasutra reports that emerging victoriously from the kerfuffle is Namco Bandai, who has acquired the exclusive rights following a contract dispute between Atari and license-owner Funimation.
While Atari had been the original owner to the lucrative rights to publish games based on the series, those rights were challenged when Funimation entered a legal dispute with the publisher after alleging they committed certain "breaches of the license agreement" (although exactly what those breaches entailed was never revealed). But this opened the door to challengers wanting a piece of that sweet, sweet Dragon Ball pie, and Namco Bandai stepped in.
Namco Bandai's contract won't officially begin until 2010, but it appears they'll publish three Dragon Ball games this year that were in limbo during the contract dispute with Atari: Dragon Ball: Raging Blast (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), Dragon Ball: Revenge of King Piccolo (Wii), and Dragon Ball Z: Attack of the Saiyans (Nintendo DS).


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