might have spent the last two decades as one of the late Akira Toriyama’s more niche releases, b💖ut that’s started to change over the past two years. Although Beelzebub isn’t likely to become a 🐼household name like Goku or Midoriya, is helping it reach a wider audience than ever before.

Perhaps the biggest push to bring Sand Land out of the harsh sunlight of the desert and into the spotlight is the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:upcoming video🍬 game adaptation developed by ILC♎A, the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:team be𝄹hind last year’s One Piece Odyssey. While Luffy certainly doesn’t need an introduction,ꦏ the Fiend Prince and his companion’s adventure to bring life back to a desolate wasteland is one that the team wa🐻s excited for more people to experience.

“When you hear the name Akira Toriyama, you will think of ”, Sand Land producer Keishu Minami tells me. “It is so well-known that there is no one in the world who does not know about it, but the worldview that Toriyಞama-sensei depicts is not limited t🐻o Dragon Ball.

“We wanted to bring to the fans the variety of perspectives and charms his worlds have to offer. We can reach out to some audiences through the manga but the game and a♒nime series introduce new ways to deliver the story to a wider audience.”

The passion for Toriyama’s lesser-known work can best be seen in how accurately the legendary mangaka’s designs have been brought to life for the Sand Land game. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Chrono Trigger and have walked this path before,🐻 but Sand Land is one of the most accurate with its bold cel-shading and intricately designed vehicles, down to the interior of the tank being recreated despite rarely being seen in-game.

Bringing Toriyama&rsqu🙈o;s most personal work to life was already a Herculean task, but it’s one that’s become even more important since his untimely death earlier this month. Sand Land was always going to have a lot of eyes on it as a project from the creator of Dragon Ball, but as one of the first projects released since his passing, it’s become something of a posthumous tribute and something Minami and his team clearly has a lot of love for.

“The tank designs drawn by Toriyama-sensei are full of precision and have an appeal that stirs the imagination just by looking at them,” Minami says. ”The entire development team worked very hard to incorporate these designs into the game and strongl🐽y hoped that people would fall in love with them. We hope that you can feel how we have seriously tried to incorporate Toꦚriyama-mechs into the game without compromise.”

Beyond the obvious appeal of being based on T𒐪oriyama’s work, there were some eyebrows raised about Sand Land getting an adaptation. The series it’s based on is purposefully brief and linear at only 14 chapters, but despite this, ILCA has turned Beelzebub&🐈rsquo;s short adventure into an open-world odyssey.

Minami says that the decision to include a big explorable world in Sand Land instead of making it a more linear experience as we’ve seen in other anime titles was centred on allowing the player to “feel the unique world of Toriyama-sensei”. The original story has been heavily expanded upon with side missions, dungeons, racing, and a lot of other things for Beelzebub and the player to discover so that it doeᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚsn’t just feel like a “large map”.

I got to experience one of these dungeons in my preview of Sand Land, but Minamꩵi tells me that there are several others in 🌳the game, from small-scale ones with treasure chests and items to bigger caverns that have multiple levels and are related to the main story.

Making Sand Land an open-world adventure isn’t the only way that Toriyama’s work has been expanded upon, however. One of the biggest things the game and anime add is Forest Land, a lush green ar🐓ea that never appeared in the manga and introduces a new story that follows Beelzebub as he contends with a new enemy with power equal to his own alongside a new ally named Ann.

“Forest Land is a new setting conceived by Toriyama-sensei, depicted as a lush continent beyond Sand Land. Both Ann and Muniel were designed by Toriyama-sensei. Ann is a mysterious girl 🌟joining Beelzebub, Rao, and Thief on their journey. She is a skilled mechanic and supports them in their adventures in Sand Land and Forest Land. We wanted to create a wide range of playability with vehicles like upgrading and customizing them, so Ann was a good match for the game.”

Just like how the original manga was brought to life because of Toriyama’s desire to draw an adventure about a man and his tank (which eventually morp🍌hed into the demon-focused story weဣ know now), one of the big draws of Sand Land is its focus on vehicles.

While the iconic tank is front and centre as the first vehicle you unlock in the game, there are also several others for the player to customise to their liking, including a hover-car tha🎃t can fly over water, a jump-bot that makes exploration over cliffs a breeze, and a powerful mech that can uppercut tanks and shrug off bullets like they were raindrops.

Although these vehicles look like they came straight out of Toriyama’s notebook (including them being summoned by throwing Capsules a la Dragon Ball), they were actually designed by ILCA exclusively 🦋for the game and were inspired by Toriyama’s work.

“First of all, we considered the vehicle designs that would fit the world of Sand Land,” Minami tel♍ls me. “We wanted to create a game which could incorporate Toriyama-mechs to venture into the world so we created the vehicles not from scratch but got inspiration from Toriyama-sensei’s artwork books and other mangas.”

Minami picks the mech-like Battle Armor as𝓀 his favourite because of its melee attacks, abꦜility to guard, and because it “looks really cool.”

Sand Land’s future may seem uncertain following the untimely passing of Akira Toriyama, but from what I’ve seen of the anime and game so far, we’ve only scratched the suܫrface of Beelzebub’s world and the adventures that he could go on. It’s too early to tell what could happen next, but when I ask Minami if he s﷽ees Beelzebub going on more adventures, he seems hopeful.

“We will do our be൩st to deliver the Sand Land game, releasing April 26, to as many players as possible, and we will think about expanding after they have enjoyed it.”