Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon.

During my run today, a weirdass memory came back to me. For no apparent reason (except a little bit of personal drama) I found myself remembering the beginning sets of the game...and the drama therein.

It didn't take a genius to see that we were being BS'd at times. One of the excuses for BEUD's late arrival was that Shueisha, the company that manages Jump Festas and therefore Premium Packs, did not want it released. Since BEUD was released in a Premium Pack, it wasn't allowed to come over here.

Let's look at the other contents of the same Premium Pack BEUD originally came in, shall we?

Tri-Horned Dragon -> Secret in LoBEWD. Well-deserving of its position given the environment.
Gate Guardian -> Secret in Metal Raiders. Only looks good in a binder. Way to go, Konami!
Meteor Dragon -> McDonald's promo
Meteor Black Dragon -> Unreleased. WTF.
Fire Winged Pegasus -> Tournament promo.
Serpent Night/Evil Knight Dragon -> Secret in Magic Ruler. Probably should not have been.
Sengenjin -> Tournament promo.
Magician of Black Chaos -> Premium Pack 1
Black Magic Ritual -> Premium Pack 1

So three of them were released within the first three sets, two of them were released as tournament promos (which they originally were- OK), one came in a Mickey D's set, and Chaos + Ritual came in a long-awaited (post-BEUD, oddly) stateside Premium Pack. BMD has yet to be released to the rest of the world, but really...what are they waiting for? Fusion Monsters are about as alive as the Tasmanian tiger - some sightings, but have altogether been replaced by the more-efficient Synchros. If they don't release it soon, people might not be interested enough to even try it.

Now, I realize that the UDE reps on Pojo had to plug their product. I realize they wanted to keep Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon on the low-down for a little bit. I realize that it was probably a marketing ace in the hole for them. That does not mean that they should have held it out like they did; people would have bought a YGO-branded pile of vomit if it had that darn dragon in it!

Don't give Konami your money, kids. You will set yourself up for disappointment.

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.