1519 Yu-Gi-No!

I love Yugioh style game cartoons and comics. My favorite is probably Hikaru No Go. They somehow perfectly capture the ridiculous importance we place, as a species, on meaningless competition. For my money no one interjects drama into the mundane like the Japanese. I always thought it was strange that Wizards Of The Coast, or whoever own Magic the Gathering now, never made a play for a comic/cartoon based on the game. Of course their strategy of pro tournaments worked just fine, so maybe they felt everything else was not necessary. Plus, Magic rotates cards out of league play too fast. You need a more static game for an animated series to work. Even so, I would have loved to have seen a Magic anime.
The problem Mike has with Yugioh is the very reason I never played it. Even thought the math is easy if you drop the zeros I always had a mental block that made me freeze up when trying to quickly do the sums. If I had actually given it a go I would probably have learned to do it after a while, but I never made the leap. Plus, it was another expensive game at a time when I didn’t have much money.

For me, excepting for Magic, there were no people to play CCGs with. Pokémon had a big enough following for a while, but X Files, Star Wars, Dragonball Z, never did. So I had cards with no one to play with. I could probably still find a game of magic even in the one horse town near where I live. That’s how good the marketing for Magic has been. Leagues ahead of anything else. Market saturation. I’ve actually been approached twice by Magic players just because I was standing near the display. I apparently have the look of a fellow card monkey. I won’t even attempt to argue that one. I briefly entertained the thought of trying to teach the Teen to play a card game of some sort, but she just doesn’t have the head for it. Not because she’s deficient in maths. In fact she’s pretty good at math on her own. No, she just doesn’t care for strategy of any kind, and has no interest in competition. To that I say fair enough. We can’t all like the same sorts of frivolities. It would have been nice though, to scratch that itch once in a while. She did enjoy Cards Against Humanity for a while, but only because it’s Apple To Apples with swears. The swearing was pretty much the only thing that kept that going for so long.
I still have a complete set of Homelands. A set so obscure now that when I mentioned it to one of the players I mentioned before they had no knowledge of it whatever. Since old sets are cast aside these days it’s little wonder. I expect none of the cards are allowed in sanctioned play anymore. Also, Homelands was a shit series. There were almost no serviceable cards.
I also have all of my Pokémon cards, and Animehem, which was a ridiculously convoluted game based on the handful of Japanese cartoon known in the west at the tail end of the 90s. Tenchi Muyo, Dragonball, Ranma 1/2, Bubblegum Crisis, ect. I’m, fairly sure I still have a box of X Files cards. I bought them out of fervor more than fandom, since I barely watched the show. I’d always intended to sell them off, but never got around to doing so. Most of my storage is like that. I’ve never been one to toss things away if they still had potential value to someone.
My NES collection, for example, is on borrowed time. I’ve accepted, in my heart, that I’m never going to play those games again. They were fun at the time, but I’m not going to have anyone top leave them to. I’ll die and they’ll get thrown away by people who don’t care about the history at all. So, at some point I’m going to sell them, or give them to friends. I just have to get to the point where I have time and can bear to part with that element of my past. The problem is when I look at them I remember things. Playing Super Bomberman with a room full of stoners in art school, Tetris on the back of the bus on school trips, listening to the final fantasy OST as I walked home from school. I fell in love, what I thought was real, true, love, while playing Secret Of Mana, Final Fantasy 2 and 3, Chrono Trigger, Secret Of Evermore, and others. Those games are all tied up in those memories the same way Disney movies of the time are. On some level it feels like getting rid of them will allow me to forget those days for good, and I’m still not sure I want to. Some part of me will always be in love with that red haired girl who played Illusion Of Gaia with a zeal only another gamer could understand.
Getting rid of that stuff will remove an anchor in my mind that holds those memories. There was a time when I would’ve plunged the knife into that version of my past self gladly if I could erase those memories. Even now I don’t look fondly back at them. They just ignite a little bit of the fire that used to power me. They’re just spikes I can rake my heart over when I need to remember how to feel again. It seems like an addiction sometimes. A high I get from the past. A past where I thought I was the hero, but turned out to be the antagonist. Except I didn’t have sense enough to die when the hero beat me. Instead I wander this purgatory of mundanity, grasping pathetically at something like a happy ending. I don’t wander alone though. Heroes are rare. Villains abound, and cling to hope. Hope that maybe in the last act we’ll get a redemption arc and be included on the cover with the good guys before the series ends.

A good friend of mine has had more success with love than I. Natasha, I’ve mentioned her before. She had a comic that started around the same time as this one, but her story arced away from that path. Still, she always seemed to be there for me when I needed support. There were times when I might have walked away from this endeavor if not for her. I try never to forget a good turn done for me. To that end I would like to direct those of you with extra walking around money to her plight. She has been engaged to a nice young man for almost as long as this comic has existed; which is far too long a time to be separated by distance when you are in love. The path to U.S. citizenship is far more costly than people realize. My father has helped fund more than one attempt and it takes years and a significant amount of money. If you have the means I would appreciate it if you might help her out. For the sake of a love that didn’t settle for the convenience of geographic whim I think a small donation is worth the risk. Bring these two together in wedded bliss. Tell them J.T. sent you.

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There were a few small series of MTG comics & novels, but nothing like the anime/manga combos we get for stuff out of Japan (the magic comics did have some nice, oil painting looking art, but the stories were so rooted I tot he lore that you couldn’t get without looking far & wide for it that they were mere novelties)

The novels were their own thing entirely. Basically just fast & easy fantasy stuff, which was fine if that’s what you were in the mood for. Nothing animated that I ever saw though (and with how the comics & books were, that was probably a good thing: they got messy, and we all know how squeamish the US is with messy “kid” products)

Apparently Duel Masters was a Magic based anime/manga although I was aware of it I had no idea it had anything to do with Magic. It deviated so far from the source it was completely disguised from me.

I didn’t know about Duel a Masters at all…I only knew of the comics done by dark horse and another publisher. There were some neat one-shots they did that I particularly enjoyed, and they all came with promo cards of some sort (one had a giant card too, just for the hell of it)

Apparently IDW had a more recent run as well, but I’ve been so out of touch with magic in the last 10 years I have no idea what’s going on anymore.

The amusing thing about Duel Masters is that while the original version was played straight if you watch the dubbed version it’s practically an “Abridged” version of the story. The actual story is still there but it’s really played up for laughs with a lot more of a jokey style dialogue and fairly frequent fourth wall breaking. It’s fantastic.

Well, Wizards of the Coast now belongs to Hasbro, so it’s a Hasbro product by default. Still has the Wizards of the Coast brand, but now Hasbro is trying to branch it out. They did the novels forever, and each release is it’s own mini world with the story told through the flavor text on cards. I think Hasbro just never got around to trying to giving it a My Little Pony cartoon send off.

They actually made a Magic the Gathering boardgame, based loosely on Habro’s Heroscape series. Just in case you’re interested: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/167698/magic-gathering-arena-planeswalkers

Ah yes… All to familiar with this. Used to collect Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and MTG until much like Ed I finally kicked the habit (we shall see how long that lasts) I’ve recently found myself working in a card/tabletop/board game place. A new card game that has shown up in the shop is Force of Will. Which appears to be a mix of MTG complexity with Yu-Gi-Oh!’s colorful art and field setup. Which in theory sounds kinda neat, especially because it has pantheons and mythology characters battling one another but then gender bend some of those characters here and there and suddenly it’s “(Almost) Rule 34’s Waifu War” the card game XD Which has me raise an eyebrow but I’m not really one to judge ^_^U

Dood. Secret of Mana? Final Fantasies 2 and 3? Illusion of Gaia?

Reputation +1.

Throw in Breath of Fire 1 and 3, Final Fantasy Tactics, Super Mario RPG, and A Link to the Past, and you and I have a lot to talk about. :P

all of this! SNES was the golden age of gaming IMO … for all the reasons in Jackie’s post as well as the above comment (i know .. i know . tactics, BoF3 was PSX and FF 2,3 where NES, but still!) Chrono Trigger is still one of my top 3 games ever. Ill never forget my first play through.

Had Chrono Trigger on DS. It is the only game I have ever fallen in love with. I was actually sad when I finished it, and wished there was some way to erase my memory of the game so I could play it again. I tried to play through again but knowing all the puzzles took the fun out of it.

But did you COMPLETELY beat it, and get all 13 endings? This is an important part of Chrono trigger.

Plus, if you wait a few years and revisit it you’ll have enough little “oh yeah!” moments that preemptively knowing the puzzles won’t be that big a deal. Plus, new game + until everyone has the best gear, because why not (show that Lavos who’s boss)

I had assumed that by FF2 and 3, Jackie was referring to the SNES FF2 and 3, meaning 4 and 6. I think other than the newer (lamer) additions to the FF family (ie: 13+), FF3 for NES is probably the ONLY one I’ve never played, that I’d have interest in playing.

Ah, yes, the curse of the CCG. A friend and I ended up spending way too much money on the Star Trek: The Next Generation game, up through the DS9 expansion. That’s when the Q deck and the station location cards and the tribble side-game became important enough that you needed them in your arsenal, but at least in my luck I never got enough in boosters to make them worthwhile. So I quit.

Though I would still take a Fajo Collection set if one were to present itself at the proper price.

I collected Pokemon cards when I was a kid, but never for the actual card game. I just loved the artwork, I would look at them (and attempt to draw them) for hours on end. I believe I managed to collected all the Pokemon from Gen 1 and 2, and only a handful of Gen 3 because I stopped collecting them around then. I don’t really remember why. Maybe because I started to focus more on video games and creating my own original characters and stories.

Magic has kind of a history of not reaching the fans with neither the comics or the novels. Or neither the comics nor the novels. I dont know english very well. But the point is that they have several novels, comics, online comics and none of them really made the money so now they just kinda of release the lore in this little blog on their website.
A player tip, if you have older cards than homelands, you should research their price online. Some of then can get REALLY expensive. Even shitty cards just because they are old and is a collector thing.

Natasha’s plight reminds me of how easy it is for most citizens of the USA to fail to appreciate what a gift their citizenship is – since most are born with it. The country is far from perfect but there are so many advantages that come with being a citizen -or even just a resident here – that there are far, far, far more people trying to come here than leave…

My favorite CCG will always be Spellfire, in part because I was introduced to it before Magic, but mostly because it was based on the Forgotten Realms books. It was so fun to have Drizzt Do’Urden as one of your champions and using Menzoberranzan to play an extra realm and win!

Wow, someone else who remembers Spellfire! I think it was the second CCG ever made, after Magic. Basically, it was TSR’s response to Magic: create a similar game using D&D art and characters. It was actually better suited for multiplayer games than Magic, but Magic was better for 2-player games, which I think is ultimately why Magic lasted and Spellfire didn’t.

Well, plus the fact that Wizards of the Coast kicked Spellfire to the curb after they bought TSR — can’t have another game competing with ours!

Several years back I went on a binge of buying Spellfire card from eBay and online card shops. Got pretty close to a complete collection of ALL the different sets and editions before I realized how much money I was spending and cut it out. Haven’t had anybody to play it with a long time, though…

OH MY GOD….ANIMAYHEM…….I Remember getting ahold of some starter decks and a full box of booster packs from the core set and a full box of the DBZ expansion.

I had so many card games fail on me that I wanted to play so badly, but had noone to play with. The Battletech cardgame was a lotta fun the few times I played it, I LOVED the shadowrun cardgame, but it died from lack of interest. I remember getting into Magi-Nation Duel (also failed because the game did poorly).

I always got back into Magic at various times, but always ended up selling my cards again. I think I played Pokemon the longest during high school because I had a friend that worked at a Booksamillion and needed help with the old POkemon League thing they did there where basically they babysat kids for a couple hours and he through booster packs to me for helping out.

Nowadays I spend my hobby time painting and playing the Warmachine tabletop game and Hearthstone (because I hate keeping up with all the physical cards)

I actually just spent a couple of weeks watching all of Yugioh. (Dubbed, not subbed. I know it’s considered a great sin to watch a 4Kids translation, but I can’t knit and read at the same time.) I kept having bizaar dreams about the world being saved by a card game and remembered that I used to be crushing hard on Kaiba (I may or may not currently be re-crushing on him). It was a good time, but I’m glad it’s over so now I can sleep properly again.

I like to watch the subbed versions of anime ’cause it’s the closest I come to practicing my Japanese. But generally, if I’m gonna read a movie I might as well get the book. In my opinion, a good dub is better than any sub (I’m not really interested in making sure the lips move with the dialogue, as long as the translation is accurate.) Of course, a bad dub is no better than a bad sub, but at least I can fill in some of the gaps (assuming I’m familiar enough with the language, that is ). X[

I used to play Yu-gi-oh with my high school boyfriend. We’d just put our scores on our calculators so we didn’t have to worry about keeping track.

Nowadays, magic carries a large variety of formats, some include all sets. My favorite is commander, which has you choose a legendary creature and build up from the colors of that creature into a 100 card deck. Modern which is basically standard but lets you use most sets except for the really old ones does let you use homeworld. If you wanted a more stable format I would look into those two.

I was out of the CCG game, that a friend got me and my ex into. Now my daughter has back into CCG with Force of Will.

you know, if I could suggest a card anime thats…uh…cultural… Chihayafuru ^_^ although not gonna lie, its pretty girly and it uses the first 4 episodes to set up character relationships before anything starts moving along…and its a shoujo… erm, its a really good anime though.. if anyone is bored, give it a shot :P You won’t regret it, just…try to give it at least 6 episodes before you decide to quit it, since like I said, the first 4 are kinda setting up relationships… (its a character driven anime, and its 26 episodes so yeah…they really kinda flush it out. In fact it got two seasons, so thats 52 episodes. its actually good. I’m rambling. Kay, I’m gonna stop now)

Awwww, this one didn’t get any comments. It’s a really good anime too. Also the manga for it is finished and complete, so it has that going for it. The anime got a 3rd season also.

Thinking of pop culture celebrating the mundane:
For some of my fun, I like to watch TV cartoons, + Japanese TV cartoons.

It might be a thing about different cultures, I don’t know, but in a lot of Japanese, action cartoons, like in the 1980s Dragon Ball Z cartoon, it seems to be a thing: That when you face down an enemy, you take 1/2 of the show + talk for years and years at your enemy.
Wow. That’s a lotta talk.
Maybe most Japanese cartoons have a demand for these characters doing a lot of [brave talk or intimidation talk], but you’d think these cowboy-types, or Luke Skywalker-types, would just pull out a laser pistol or a power ball, and just blast these talky guys. I wonder. I like these shows, anyway.

A lot of that had to do with the fact that the animated show was running alongside a manga print run, and would often outpace the source material. Different shows have dealt with it in different ways. DBZ just strung everything out to ridiculous lengths. Sgt. Frog is effectively running parallel continuities. Naruto just went “@%#$ it” and ran over a thousand consecutive episodes of filler while the manga was building up a new plot arc for Shippuuden.

Anime that’s not based directly on a manga tends to be a lot more to the point. (cf. Cowboy Bebop).

Cool. Thanks for the info! I’ll probably look for shows like Cowboy Bebop, since sound less talky than others.

The only CCG I deal with is Pokemon, and for none of the reasons you’d expect. I get to teach basic English to kids on a regular basis, and you’d be amazed at how many ways you can use the little monsters to teach the little monsters ;)

It originally started with simple comparison grammar, because the examples in the books were never enough for a good round of practice. They’d be too dull (which stick is longer?) or too easily mucked up by argumentative students. But ask them which is bigger, a Snorlax or a Pikachu? and they’d be more than happy to answer, and accept the answer as well.

Get enough of the cards, and you could even get them to mix and match to ask their own questions based on whatever adjectives you felt like teaching them that week — often far beyond what was in the book, because the cards were more flexible about stuff like that.

But that was just the beginning. I’ve got a small library of games and grammar drills for use with my large library of cards, including color identification, questions with “be” or “have”, comparisons of various sorts, and a memory game where the kids have to match evolutions and give sentences in past, present, and possibly future (if they’re a bit older).

And all the extra and unnecessary cards get bundled up as Christmas presents or bingo prizes… >_>

I buy Pokemon cards infrquently, but when I do I’ll buy a ton of cards until I get the one I need for a strategy. My rarest one is probably a rescue scarf from 2011 or so, that’s when I started collecting.

still buying yu gi oh cardds, even though i have no time to play with my cousin, and never went to a tournament, maybe someday… but no idea if i even manage to make a proper deck

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