Dragon Ball fans want its creator's 23-year-old JRPG gag included in a new game based on his most obscure manga

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The Sand Land manga predicted Dragon Quest 13 for the PS6, and so should the new game

Sand Land
(Image credit: Bandai Namco)

Now that it’s been confirmed that we’re getting a Sand Land game, fans have but one demand – that this 23-year-old throwaway gag about Dragon Quest 13 being on the PS6 makes the cut.

The joke merely covers two frames of the manga, though it involves the demon prince Beelzebub getting a relic that survived years of war and natural disaster – that being a PS6 and a few games, including Dragon Quest 13. 

What’s truly wild about the joke is that creator Akira Toriyama wrote it back in 2000, and it could happen. Dragon Quest 12 still has no release date despite being announced in 2021. Couple that with the fact that the PS5 is closing in on its third anniversary, and we could see Dragon Quest 13 on the PS6. Toriyama, what do you know?

Jokes aside, Toriyama’s link to Dragon Quest runs way back. He’s been doing character design for the series since it kicked off in 1986. He was pointed toward the project by his Weekly Shōnen Jump editor at the time, Kazuhiko Torishima. This was when Dragon Ball was hitting peak popularity, too, so we can only imagine how busy he was. Clearly, though, he had a good enough time with the JRPG to continue cracking on with it.

Whether or not the PS6 and Dragon Quest 13 joke makes it into the game remains to be seen, though hopefully, we won’t be waiting long. There’s no release date yet, though the action-RPG is coming to PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. We’re also getting an anime film adaptation that’s set to land in August, so there’s plenty to look forward to.

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Iain Harris
Iain Harris
News Editor, Games

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.