Bandai Namco has announced that work is underway on a 3D Team Battle game using the characters of the Weekly Shonen Jump collection of manga series.  The game is set to be released in 2013 to commemorate the 45th anniversary of Weekly Shonen Jump. Color us massively excited!

Details are sketchy at the moment, but the characters Goku (Dragon Ball), Luffy (One Piece) and Toriko (Toriko) have been confirmed, and a handful of screenshots from the game – which is currently known as Project Vs J  – has been released.

The game is being developed by Bandai Namco the merged company responsible for classic fighter Tekken and the much-improved Dragon Ball game franchise.

In 1988, the first Shonen Jump video game was released for Nintendo’s Famicom (known in the west as the NES) to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday.  The game was a role-playing style adventure where the manga characters joined forces against the villains.

Over the years the crossover game franchise became what people really wanted to see; all the characters going against each other.  The most recent release was Jump Ultimate Stars for the Nintendo DS in 2006.

Updates about the game will be released through V Jump magazine, the video game oriented spin-off magazine to Shonen Jump.

Source: Bandai Namco Games, Bandai Games Channel via Yahoo! Japan (Japanese)