In August 1993, Wizards of the Coast would set the gaming world on its ear with the debut of Magic: The Gathering, ushering in a totally knew form of gaming: the collectible card game.

Many designers and companies have attempted to profit on the frontier of CCGs. A few have managed to endure and become major names. Some have settled into niche followings... while others have failed with amusing and disastrous results. Elephant Graveyard gives tribute to the lesser known card games that have populated your hobby stores shelves over the years...

This installment of Elephant Graveyard comes from Sir Exal!

Digimon Digi-Battle (1999-2002)

Today, I show you the Digimon Digi-Battle Card Game, produced by Bandai. What we've got here is, naturally, a card game attmpting to capitalize on a series that was trying to capitalize on the Pokemon boom. Both sides had their rookie, or starter, Digimon and both tried to make their monster better than the other monster by "Digivolving" it to a higher stage. The attack the Digimon used was determined by the little shape in the corner of the opponent's Digimon. After the attacks, the monster who had a higher attack power than the other one "defeated" his oppenent, and sent it back to its first stage. The player then scored the number of points designated on the bottom of the card. You could augment the Digimon's strength by playing "Power Option" cards.

The cards came out with hand drawn art in several series, followed by another series with a different back (incompatibility!) and purely computer-generated pictures, as well as a quicker version of the game. With the release of seasons 3 and 4 of Digimon, neither of which was very related to 1 or 2, there was another two card sets, but I didn't buy any of those.

THE GOOD

Simple rules. Unlike the highly complicated rules of most CCGs, the Digi-Battle Card Game had rules that made sense to even the youngest members of the target audience.

The pictures--especially the hand-drawn ones--are well done, (I still ogle my Angewomon card) and always looked straight out of the TV show. And speaking of the TV show, that's also what made this so cool, the fact you were fighting it out with your digimon that played to the child in all of us.

THE BAD

First, there was the problem of the Digimon boom that went on. A series of "Digimon Trading Cards" was released at the same time. This resulted in massive confusion over what cards were which and what could be used, and eventually the death of both.

The rules being so simple was also a hinderance, because there was very little strategy invovled in the game. You just played a card, and hoped it was stronger than what your oppenent had. Speaking of which, there were never that huge a number of cards released in the series, so you would see the same first level and second level cards over and over.

 

 

 

THE UGLY

The players. Many never got around to reading the rules, and therefore, their eyes gravitated to the numbers at the bottom, the score that said what each monster got after winning. This lead many to believe the one on the digimon's respective stage was his attack strength, which was almost always 100. Futhermore, if the players looked closely, they might realize the numbers higher up would be the attack strength, but would have no idea how to use which one, and figured it was like pokemon, where you chose which one to use.

If the players actually read a part of the rules, another problem arose. Say, for example, the Kokatorimon card to the right...

• [red circle]Frozen Fire Shot-440
• [Green square]Feather Sword-360
• [Yellow Diamond]-Defend-190

This made players think if he was up against a Yellow diamond monster, he somehow defended against the attack and repelled some damage. (Wrong!)

CAN IT BE SAVED!?...

Not without Digimon coming back instead of only playing on Toon Disney, and the popularity also returning. This is not going to happen.

The Digimon Digi-Battle Card Game's just one of the many CCG casualties you can find collecting dust at your local comic shop, or wandering on eBay looking for a home. So consider parting with a few dollars and try something new, they're usually pretty cheap, and you might be surprised and enjoy it!

'Til next time, Sir Exal says, farewell. Oh, and watch out for Mamemon's Smiley Bomb attack. It's nasty.

WEBMASTER'S NOTE: As an aside to Sir Exal's article. Bandai has launched a new Digimon CCG as part of their current push of card games. It cleans up much of its rules for more straight forward action, and gets rid of the Highlander (one of each card title) rule. Also... it appears to play much like Yu-Gi-Oh.

Click here to check out the new game and also check out some of Bandai's other new CCGs.

 

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