Tulunk Village

An interesting series I accidentally ran into today. This game was released in three versions on the same day of its release - X Hunter version, Treasure Hunter version and Monster Hunter version. I don't know much about the actual gameplay itself. It was published by NetVillage (which later became GameVillage? and then fonfon) and was released for the Game Boy Color in 2001. Later, there was a Cross Hunter manga series and apparently one of the authors Kai Makoto, plagiarized artwork style from Dragon Ball, Berserk, SD Gundam and Street Fighter Zero II manga.

Gameplay battle against two pumpkin monsters
Screenshots
Japanese Wikipedia article
Video comparing Cross Hunter and Dragon Ball manga.
Game Village website
More on the plagiarism

So there was plagiarism involved then...I always thought the artwork looked like Akira Toriyama's work from Dragon Ball. At first I thought the series was actually made by him since the art style was so similar. I've got the games, but I haven't played them yet. There was a card game as well and a packet of cards came with the GBC games. I was interested because of the three versions and the monsters on the cover, plus it looked like an interesting RPG.

KenjutheDenjuu wrote:So there was plagiarism involved then...I always thought the artwork looked like Akira Toriyama's work from Dragon Ball. At first I thought the series was actually made by him since the art style was so similar. I've got the games, but I haven't played them yet. There was a card game as well and a packet of cards came with the GBC games. I was interested because of the three versions and the monsters on the cover, plus it looked like an interesting RPG.

As for Dragon Ball and it technically being plagiarism I'm not sure... Supposedly, Shueisha (the same company who published the Dragon Ball mangas) also published the Cross Hunter manga. If this is true, the author(s) may have got express permission from Akira Toriyama or one of his associates beforehand(?), but that wouldn't explain Street Fighter?

It's the first time i've heard of plagiarised material being in something like Comic Bom Bom. If it wasn't for your post I would have never have guessed, since I haven't read any of the Dragon Ball mangas before.

KenjutheDenjuu wrote:It's the first time i've heard of plagiarised material being in something like Comic Bom Bom. If it wasn't for your post I would have never have guessed, since I haven't read any of the Dragon Ball mangas before.

I haven't read any either. I found out about this game from the first video (which was listed in related videos about something Smilesoft related), then when I searched for クロスハンター on Google, there was an image comparing a character from Cross Hunter and Cell from Dragon Ball, and I was curious.

P.S. I actually can't remember half of Dragon Ball. I used to watch Dragon Ball Z, but only up to when I was about 7, or something like that.

There's a website here that shows more plagiarism of other Japanese mangas as well (it's got a bit about Cross Hunter too). Although it's not surprising that there's plagiarism in Japan too, it's not something you usually hear about regularly...

I wonder if it's just the manga that has plagiarised material or whether the gameboy games did too?