The future of Card Games? Thread

I've seen already a couple of various ways to use your NintendoDS for more than playing games with a stylus. Furthermore card games for said machine exists a lot in varying quality. Now though this here is a bit a different story.

Trailer of game play

For those not interested in watching a quick summary. The idea is to have a table top you put somewhere. It looks similar to a magic table top or some other card game. The two players but their NintendoDS in a pre-determined spot on that table top. Both have the game in the Slot-1 and a special reader device in Slot-2 connected over LWiFi ( local wifi-fi or adhoc wi-fi ). Now you play with cards like you would the traditional way but if you do a move you simply wiggle the card over the reader which recognizes the card and plays the move on the DS game ( with all the book keeping like damage counting and rule checking of course ).

Could this be the future of card games to mix them up with a handheld console? In some way it looks interesting since the DS does the annoying book keeping which some recent card games require. On the other hand I like playing with conventional cards only since you can then alter a bit the rules while playing with friends. Getting a NDS ( cost point 200 swiss francs ), the game ( cost point roughly 100 swiss francs I assume since an additional device is included ) and a table top starter kit including cards can be rather costly. If though the DS already it is cheaper though.

What do you think about this?

For the records:
Full Name: Jyuushinden: Ultimate Beast Battlers
Region: Japan
A Konami game by the way.

Edited by (in order): Dragonlord, Dragonlord, Dragonlord

Having played Magic up until the Mirrodin block, all the book keeping become impossible, which is what drove me from the game. Counters everywhere. This solution could be entertaining, if it works well. there's a lot of potential for some very interesting games.

That's pretty interesting. I also liked what they were doing with the Eye of Judgement game; now all developers have to do is get a hold of some proprietary touch screen projection technology and then it might really get good. I'm waiting for the day when we can put a card down on a table and a hologram or image shows up in front of you of the creature, which I guess when you think about it probably isn't insanely far off at this point.

I think this will probably remain a niche game, though, for the exact reasons you stated. You'll probably get some people buying it that might already have an NDS, but I don't see millions of people flocking to it and purchasing hundreds of dollars worth of stuff, especially if they don't have an NDS beforehand.

The eye of judgment, was definitely a step in this direction. Where it falls down is it's platform. The NDS is a mobile handset - just like a pack of cards, you can carry it around and play anywhere, making it a far more useful tool. The cost may be an issue, but a DS isn't that expensive - you can pick them up for around 50-60 GBP these days, which isn't all that much and certainly not hundreds of dollars. The market proliferation is also enormous, I see them everywhere I go here in London, and anywhere else.

I actually have the Eye of Judgment, and can say that it's an excellent game.

This portable DS game looks interesting, but it doesn't have the same sort of visceral appeal that EoJ has. The images on the screen are mostly static, so you basically end up with just a bookkeeping program with some crudely animated images for reference.

Eye of Judgment is different, in that you really do see the cards spring to life on-screen. The various monsters you bring into the playing field move, fidget, fight, and die in a very lifelike way, and the additional effects are all very well done. It also features online play, which is a nice touch. And of course it plays referee and handles bookkeeping for you as well.

Who says a DS game can't have animated characters and online play either ?

ambershee wrote: Who says a DS game can't have animated characters and online play either ?

unless its a rom, you dont have too much space to play with and if its a card game, your lost for how many cards you can put in etc

The DS has superior hardware specifications to the Playstation 1 - roughly double the processing power and memory, and a standard DS cartridge can currently hold up to 2Gb of data - four times as much as an N64 cartridge.

I think it's more than capable.

Edited by: ambershee

I guess the stress here is on "play everywhere". I can't imagine you taking your playstation + tv screen to a friend to play a table top game. With the NDS though you can just flash out the table top and place your DS on it and get going. I don't know how EoJ looks like but if it's on PSX then it has inferior graphics to what the NDS is able to do ( yes, PSX is NOT known for good graphics folks )

Dragonlord - the PSX is the console / media system that came between the Ps2 and the Ps3 - it never arrived in Europe because Sony doesn't like us

The Eye of Judgement was unveiled at Sony's disastrous Ps3 E3 conference a couple of years ago. If you google it, you'll probably find it quoted along side the line where they claimed there we no gimmicks, and the bit where they showed a player using a PSP as a rear view mirror for a PS3 game.

It's not actually a bad piece of hardware - I liked the idea, but it never really took off.

Eye of Judgment is for the PlayStation 3.

The setup is basic; a 3x3 playing field, much like a Tic-Tac-Toe board, with the camera focused on the board. Players take turns laying down cards on the squares to play.

Graphically, the game is very pretty. Fully 3D models and animations, and some great art direction.

I see. I just conclude that something is PS( X ) if you say just "playstation" since this is the original name ( and the reason why the others are named PS2 and PS3 ). Those have definitely more graphic power than the poor precedor. That said I think the idea using a hand held console is more adaptable to real world use than using a stationary console. After all in this case you really sit in front of each other like playing real cards without an electronic device in between. It's more fun to sit in front of each other than having a camera or whatever means in between. May be me but playing in person has just certain charm.

Edited by: Dragonlord

What DL means is that they should have made Eye Of Judgment for the PSP as that is basically the same as the PSX. All you have to do is let it hook up to a web cam via the USB and you are away bad move sony

Thats actuall pretty cool Idea, one that I had when like 8-10 years ago (and probably just about every one else as well) I agree that having it on a hand held makes more sence thent having it on the console since the point of card games is to be portable. I remember when Magic became very popular in my school and every one would bring the cards into school to play. You can not do that with somthing like that with the Eye of Judgement on the PS3 but you can do it with the DS.

And if somebody has no DS simply leave out the device and do the book keeping yourself. The DS after all does only rule checking, book keeping and some graphical animations. The table top and the cards alone would work if somebody forgot his DS at home ( or doesn't have one ).

Dragonlord wrote: And if somebody has no DS simply leave out the device and do the book keeping yourself. The DS after all does only rule checking, book keeping and some graphical animations. The table top and the cards alone would work if somebody forgot his DS at home ( or doesn't have one ).

there are homebrews out there that basically help you create magic decks.. i wouldn't mind just having a game to play magic on the ds without the need for cards

Dragonlord wrote: And if somebody has no DS simply leave out the device and do the book keeping yourself. The DS after all does only rule checking, book keeping and some graphical animations. The table top and the cards alone would work if somebody forgot his DS at home ( or doesn't have one ).

Thats another plus I did not think of though I think technicly you could do the same thing with the Eye of Judgement(though I am not positive as I have never played it my self and have only observed one or two games played)

STRATCOM wrote:

Dragonlord wrote: And if somebody has no DS simply leave out the device and do the book keeping yourself. The DS after all does only rule checking, book keeping and some graphical animations. The table top and the cards alone would work if somebody forgot his DS at home ( or doesn't have one ).

Thats another plus I did not think of though I think technicly you could do the same thing with the Eye of Judgement(though I am not positive as I have never played it my self and have only observed one or two games played)

As long as you have some sort of counters around as an aid for tracking HP and Mana totals, you can absolutely play Eye of Judgment without the software. You'd need to create your own modified playmat to track which fields are aligned to a particular element (especially if you're using Fieldquake or Exchange effects), but a handful of modified blank flash cards will take care of that problem quite neatly.

Other than that, the only prop you might need for the game is a coin, for the occasional card that has a coin-flip type effect (50% chance to do .

The difference is in the use though - Eye of Judgment, you have when you're at home, it's plugged into your TV.

Going on holiday? Got a six hour flight? You can easily take a DS and a pack of cards with you

ambershee wrote: The difference is in the use though - Eye of Judgment, you have when you're at home, it's plugged into your TV.

Going on holiday? Got a six hour flight? You can easily take a DS and a pack of cards with you

I can't imagine playing any collectible card game on a plane. The physical space requirements are usually too demanding.

Point taken, though to be fair the whole draw of Eye of Judgment is that it really is a completely different experience, having the cards literally spring into life on-screen. The DS game doesn't really do that; it's just a software facilitator.

To be honest in that case EoJ is not much more than Open Tabletop with purdy graphics and rule checking ( OT does no rule checking ). Maybe it's just me but somehow physical cards have a charm that virtual ones are lacking. After all what is important in these games is the entire tactic play. I felt purdy graphics and lots of animations to hinder the flow of the game.

Dragonlord wrote: To be honest in that case EoJ is not much more than Open Tabletop with purdy graphics and rule checking ( OT does no rule checking ). Maybe it's just me but somehow physical cards have a charm that virtual ones are lacking. After all what is important in these games is the entire tactic play. I felt purdy graphics and lots of animations to hinder the flow of the game.

Oh believe me, I'm well aware of the differences. I have a collection of over 20,000 Magic: the Gathering cards, and was an active player for quite a few years.

The animations and such can be turned off in-game if you don't want to watch all the pretty scenes of giant creatures slogging it out on a virtual board in HD resolutions, but the fact that it handles all the rule-checking for you is a nice touch. Especially nice is the online mode, where you can challenge other players without fear of them cheating, since the CPU is handling all the randomized card drawing off of a pre-registered deck. In this sense, it's actually superior in some ways to a purely physical card game.

I guess cheating is not that much of a problem in a real match especially if you tend to play with friends. After all playing a game is about fun. With online play though where you do not see your opponent it's a much higher chance for cheating to occur since you can't see each other ( people have to be really "hard boiled" to cheat while looking you straight in the face ).