Without Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, modern Japanese RPGs likely wouldn't exist. From his iconic sprites that injected Dragon Quest 3's rudimentary 8 bit graphics with a lease of life, to his timeless character designs that endlessly enrich Chrono Trigger, Toriyama's playful artwork played a huge role in popularizing video games in Japan. Thanks to his box art and in-game designs that endeared anime and manga fans to this strange new medium, Square Enix's early RPGs found huge success – and the late, great Toriyama continued to work on designs for Dragon Quest up until his untimely passing. In other words, Toriyama was just as pivotal to video games as he was to manga.
Now, hot on the heels of the brilliant Disney + adaptation of Toriyama's 2000 manga, Sand Land, Bandai Namco is hoping to harness that beloved video game-esque source material into a quasi-open world RPG. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where water is scarce, Sand Land sees both demons and humans roaming their desert home in search of any last remaining traces of liquid. With the setting's greedy monarch and his Royal Army hoarding h20 and selling it for extortionate profits, plucky demon prince Beelzebub and aging human sheriff Rao reluctantly team up in order to track down the last remaining natural spring.
