Card Battle Game

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A genre of video game that is essentially an electronic Collectible Card Game. It may be an exact conversion of a real-world game, or it may be something entirely new. If it's a new game, there will probably be rules and game mechanics that wouldn't be possible in a real-world game. If the game has a plot, of course, you can expect the card game to be Serious Business, maybe even not being considered a "game" despite the obvious rules workings.

To simulate real Collectible Card Games, you'll have to get cards randomly rather than choosing the ones you want (though in real life, you can usually find single cards in game stores), either by receiving them after battles or by buying booster packs at an in-game shop.

Examples of Card Battle Game include:

• Alteil
• Baten Kaitos, combined with RPG.
• Battle Forge
• Culdcept, combined with a board game
• Duel Masters, three for Gameboy Advance, one for Playstation 2.
• Elements
• The Eye of Judgment uses actual physical cards which are scanned with a video camera. Its PSP spinoff, The Eye of Judgment Legends, (obviously) doesn't.
• Heroic Armies Marching, combined with Turn Based Strategy.
• Kamen Rider Battle: Ganbaride, along with its newly released Nintendo DS spinoff Kamen Rider Battle: Ganbaride - Card Battle Taisen
  • Super Sentai Battle Dice O
• Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories
• Kongai
• Lost Kingdoms
• Magic the Gathering adaptations, the best of which is probably Micropose's one, set on Shandalar and tying up some lose ends from the storyline.
  • Magic Online is a direct simulation of the tabletop game, to the end that the client is actually free, and you have to buy digital cards through the game just as you would buy physical cards to play normally. Furthermore, if you complete a set of digital cards, you can exchange them with Wizards for a physical copy of that set.
  • Duels of the Planeswalkers (and the current version, Duels... 2012) is a more limited simulation; the full ruleset is supported, but the controls are simplified (for example, available lands are automatically tapped for mana when you cast a spell) and instead of building decks from scratch, you use one of several preconstructed decks, for which you can unlock additional cards to add to (in the original) or swap in (in 2012).
• The Mega Man Battle Network series is basically one of these, except the cards are "chips".
  • Played straight with Mega Man Star Force, where Battle Chips are now Battle Cards
• Metal Gear Acid
• Monster Rancher Battle Card Game
• Phantasy Star Online Episode III: C.A.R.D. Revolution
• Pokémon Trading Card Game (a video game based on a card game based on a video game!)
• Pox Nora SOE has a bunch besides Pox.
• Shadow Era, a cross-platform, free to play CCG that was designed to be easy to pick up on and play.
• Sword Girls
• Yu-Gi-Oh has some different kinds. Some of them, including the earliest examples like Dark Duel Stories and Forbidden Memories, don't use the real-world card game's rules, while most of the recent ones are faithful to the real game.
• Weiss Survive
• Bandai's Data Carddass arcade games all feature collectible cards that can be scanned in to play. among them are the previously mentioned Ganbaride, Dice-O, and others that tie into anime like Dinosaur King, One Piece, and Dragonball Z
• Urban Rivals, a browser based card-battle with the characters from their Web Comic.

Games with Card Battle elements:

• EA Sports' FIFA and Madden NFL series have a mode called Ultimate Team, in which players manage a team using virtual trading cards.
• Super Robot Wars Original Generation Gaiden has as bonus mode that tries to distill the classic Turn Based Strategy formula into Card Battle Game. It doesn't work all that well, since it requires cards with amounts of text that would be impossible in real life and rolling huge numbers of dice to determine damage, but it's still a good Guilty Pleasure.
• Xenosaga had a complete card game called "Xeno Card" as a minigame. Unlike other role playing game card games (such as Triple Triad and Tetra Master), Xeno Card was a complete Card Battle Game, complete with boosters, rarity, card types, stack rules, phases, and such.
• Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has a new mode called "Heroes and Heralds" in which there are multiple collectible cards that can be used in normal gameplay; they add many kinds of Status Buff such as speed boost, super armor, new combo strings, and many more.
• 7th Legion, a 1997 RTS that uses cards to boost units.