Memories of Edo.

Yes, I got another Digimon lot in the mail today. It reminded me of an old YGO guru and card translator named Edo.

WAY back when (as in, when the game first hit the States), Edo discussed vital issues plaguing YGO on his webpage. Among his essays was one about YGO's distribution; it had the same issue as Battle Spirits at first (i.e. no presence in retail stores whatsoever), but, more importantly, it showed that UDE fails repeatedly when it comes to card games.

YGO? 'Failure?' Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Kuro?

At first, YGO had the same problem that Battle Spirits is currently having: It was sold in select hobby stores only. Edo gave UDEnami a gentle nudge in the right direction, saying that they had to get their product out there if they wanted it to succeed. So powerful was this nudge that hobby stores were suddenly at a disadvantage. He wrote another article on that (which Konami also took to heart), but that's not what I'm trying to get at.

As I mentioned earlier, however, he brought up that UDE has a bad track record with card games. Digimon was one of UDE's hotter properties. When I got my lot of animé series trading cards today, I realized how right Edo was:

UDE sucks at handling card games, but when it comes to trading cards? Woah.

You saw all that shiny up there, right? Yeah, that was all UDE's doing. So were the shiny Digimon logos on the series two cards. The Japanese cards are noticeably more bland. Even the prismatic foil is less creative over there. Remember, chase cards are good in trading cards; they keep people buying packs if the set is small.

But the Digimon: Digi-Battle Card Game? Not only were the rules botched, UDE inserted another, invisible rarity. From what I have seen of Japanese cards, rares automatically have a golden title. The English 'gold-letter' rares were not one per pack. It was impossible to tell that the one-per-pack rares were rares at all; they looked exactly like regular 'common' cards. I don't know who to blame for this botch job, but UDE certainly did not help. Unneeded rarities contribute to a game's decay; for trading cards, however, they are a blessing.

This is a difference that Konami needs to see, even though their contract with UDE has expired. Insane rarities are hurting their game. Heaven forbid that they release good cards that are reasonably easy to get.