Fans Think They’ve Spotted The Next Dragon Ball Z Game’s Title

Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi teaser

Fans rejoiced earlier this year when Bandai Namco announced that a new Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi game was in development — the first new game in the series for over a decade. While details at the time were fairly light, and remain light to this day, there is one new piece of information that could tell us a little bit about the game.

As reported by Gematsu, Bandai Namco Entertainment has filed for a trademark in the US for the words “Sparking! Zero,” with the trademark being filed on September 26. Without any context, this seems pretty banal, but if we look to Japan we can start to see a spark (sorry) of something interesting.

While the popular series was called Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi in the US, in Japan the series is known as Dragon Ball Z: Sparking!, with subsequent games in the series being titled Sparking! Neo, and Sparking! Meteor. The exact reasoning for the change in English is not really known — some speculate that North American publisher Atari wanted to tie it to the completely unrelated Budokai series, while others think that the change was because the “Sparking” moniker comes from the Japanese theme song, which was obviously changed for the West.

Whatever the reason, Sparking! Zero being trademarked in the US is a curious choice. When Bandai Namco announced the new game during the Dragon Ball FighterZ World Tour finals, it called it “a new Budokai Tenkaichi”, which suggests the company intended to use that title in the West.

Fans have been speculating ever since the trademark was discovered, and there are a few interesting theories out there. The most popular theory seems to be that Bandai Namco is just covering its bases, trademarking its titles in as many countries as possible just in case somebody tries to muscle in on it. That’s certainly possible, and something we’ve seen in the past from a number of companies, but it’s probably the most boring of the theories.

The more interesting ones fall into two camps: the people who think that the series is going to be renamed to match the Japanese title, and the people who think it’ll be additive. It’s not impossible that Bandai could drop the Budokai Tenkaichi name to more closely align the series’ title in all regions, but it would be losing some serious brand recognition in the West, which makes it the least likely of the two options.

That said, we could see Bandai Namco going with Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi Sparking! Zero. It’s a bit of a clunky name, but so is Naruto X Boruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections and Bandai Namco has no problems publishing that. We’ve also seen somewhat similar situations with, for example, the Yakuza series, which had a title called Yakuza: Like A Dragon before transitioning to the Like A Dragon title altogether.

Still, we won’t know until Bandai Namco tells us for sure, and who knows when that will be.