Box office

At the Japanese box office, the film sold 1.9 million tickets and earned a net distribution rental income of ¥650 million.^[2][3]

English-language versions

Harmony Gold USA broadcast their dub of this film and Curse of the Blood Rubies as a double feature on WPSG Philly 57 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and on other channels and cable systems in a select few test markets. It was also likely to have been released on home video in the early 90s. It was not widely noticed and went under the radar. Their dub changed the names of some of the characters and had parts of it censored, and the opening and ending sequence changed with; instead of the first Japanese sequence they used the second Japanese sequence, with the Japanese katakana removed from the Dragon Balls, the Japanese credits removed and replaced with the Harmony Gold credits, and they changed some of the dialog from the Japanese intro. The ending was changed from the Japanese ending to show a still picture of Goku flying away from Shenron (known as Dragon God in the Harmony Gold dub) taken from the intro, and using the intro theme song instead of the Japanese ending theme with the Harmony Gold credits. The script was more faithful to the Japanese script and all the background music was kept the same, unlike the Funimation and AB Groupe dubs.

There was also another English dub released exclusively to Video CD by Speedy Video. This English version, produced and released exclusively in Malaysia,^[4] features an unknown cast and original music.

Funimation acquired the rights to the film in 2000 and released it with a new dub to VHS and bilingual DVD that year.

Madman Entertainment released the film on DVD in Australia and New Zealand on March 17, 2004 with the 2000 English dub and optional Japanese audio. However, the introduction, which began the narration of the Dragon Balls, a cameo sequence of Pilaf and his gang presenting a global dragon radar to Master Shen, and a different opening sequence to the film featuring Goku and Krillin in training were cut. Instead, the opening sequence and scenes aforementioned were replaced with the TV opening sequence. Another sequence cut was the closing credits featuring a summoned Shenron who fulfilled Upa's wish to bring Bora back to life. The scene was replaced with the TV closing sequence.

Subsequent versions of the FUNimation dub had restored its introduction and its opening/ending sequence. Unlike the Japanese version however, the opening sequence had many scenes in freeze-frame, as a way to block out the original Japanese credits that were in the sequence. The closing credits was restored with English credits censoring half the screen, also as a way to block out the original Japanese credits scrolling from the right.

The film was later available on DVD along with Sleeping Princess in Devil's Castle and Path to Power as part of FUNimation's Dragon Ball Movie Box set released on December 6, 2005.^[5] The box set was re-released as a thinpack on February 12, 2008.^[6] This set has since been discontinued.

The film was re-released to DVD in America on February 8, 2011, as a part of a Dragon Ball Movie 4-Pack remastered thinpack release from FUNimation along with the other Dragon Ball related films.^[7] This release restored all of the previously edited video footage of the film, but no apparent English credits are shown.

An alternative English dub produced with an uncredited cast by AB Groupe in France was released in English speaking markets in Europe in the early 2000s. It aired on Toonami in the UK in 2005.

The film was edited and combined with the second film, into a compilation film titled Dragon Ball, released in the Philippines by Regal Home Video in the mid/late 1990s.^[8][9] The cast is believed to have also dubbed the original Dragon Ball series and the first 26 episodes of Dragon Ball Z exclusively for airing in the Philippines.