In honor of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, Xbox is celebrating the mangaka’s legacy with a free dynamic dashboard background of character designs for Xbox 360’s fantasy RPG Blue Dragon.
Akira Toriyama, the legendary creator of beloved comics such as Dr. Slump and illustrations for games such as Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, passed away on March 1 from an acute subdural hematoma. passed away.
Since his passing, the anime community and manga creators of series such as Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece have celebrated Toriyama’s undeniable impact on pop culture. Now, Microsoft is joining us in celebrating Toriyama’s legacy with a free dashboard background for one of his most popular hits, Blue Dragon.
In honor of a true legend.
Added a new dynamic dashboard background featuring the Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 with art and character design by Akira Toriyama. pic.twitter.com/ZFj20fX2ed
— Xbox (@Xbox) March 29, 2024
“In honor of a true legend,” Xbox wrote on its official X/Twitter account. “We’ve added a new dynamic dashboard background featuring the Blue Dragon on Xbox 360 with art and character design by Akira Toriyama.”
The dashboard background features protagonist Shu posing on a mountaintop with his fellow dragons, just like on Blue Dragon’s Xbox 360 box art cover. Xbox encouraged players to show off the Blue Dragon in Toriyama’s honor this weekend, along with displaying the Blue Dragon background.
Blue Dragon was a 2006 role-playing game released exclusively by Microsoft, ostensibly as Xbox’s answer to the popular and ongoing Final Fantasy series. This would not have been possible for any other game without Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and acclaimed composer Nobuo Uematsu involved in the game’s development.
The RPG follows a group of adventurers with the power to summon shadow dragons as they embark on an adventure that travels the world. The series became very popular in Japan and was later adapted into an anime series by Naruto and Bleach Studio Pierrot.
In our review, we wrote that “Blue Dragon isn’t the most original RPG when it comes to design. It’s also not the first “must-have” RPG on a Microsoft console. The pacing of the first half of the game is too slow for anyone but hardcore JRPG fans. You’ll find this interesting, and the story isn’t as epic as the multi-disc, 50+ hour game might suggest, but for those who need a solid traditional role-playing experience on the Xbox 360, Blue Dragon will be a good fit.”
Isaiah Colbert is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow us on Twitter @ShinEyeZehUhh.