Has anyone heard of the card game Duel Masters? Not as cloyingly cute and childish as Pokemon, nor as mind-boggingly confusing as Yu-Gi-Oh, Duel Masters is a fun game which shares a lot with Magic:The Gathering, which is a good thing IMO. Actually, I have never played the physical card game, but I do have three very fun video game versions of the game:Duel Masters Sempai Legends Limited Edition and Duel Masters Kaijudo Showdown for the GameBoy Advance, and Duel Masters Limited Edition for the Playstation 2.
Very recently I stole...ummm bought Duel Masters Sempai Legends for 50 cents at FYE. Yes, 50 cents brand new. I could not remember if I already had the game (it was Kaijudo Showdown I had), but figured at 50 cents I'd get it anyway. That's less than a candy bar, for cryin out loud.
Anyway, I got all three games for very cheap, and if you have a GBA, DS Lite and/or Playstation 2, you can get a all three of these games for less than 5 bucks, I'm sure. And if you like card games like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic:The Gathering, you will probably like Duel Masters. I know I do.
As I mentioned, Duel Masters plays out a lot like Magic:TG. You have a deck of 40 cards consisting of spells and creatures from 5 alignments:nature (green), light (yellow), water (blue), darkness (grey), and red (fire). Each alignments has it's own strenghs and weaknesses. When you duel someone, you sacrifice cards in your hand to build up mana of each of the five colors. This mana is permenent, and when you have enough, you can tap the mana to summon creatures to battle for you and spells to cast. Creatures have defensive and offensive stats which are compared when two creatures battle. Sounds a lot like M:TG so far, right? Well, instead of hit points, your duelist has five shields for protection which need to be broken. Once that is done, your duelist only needs to be hit once and it's lights out. Also, like M:TG, there are creatures that block attacks and ones that attack only. Duel Masters also has creatures called slayers which win the fight no matter the stats of the creatures.
In the games you play this spikey-haired kid who basically goes around towns and challenges random passerby to duels. You can also enter tournaments and buy or trade new cards. There are 'stories', but I don't pay much attention to them. I'm here to duel.
The creatures are extremely imaginative; light years better than the teletubby like Pokemon and at least on par with the creatures populating the Yu-Gi-Oh world. You get to see them battle it out on the field with different attacks, although obviously the PS2 version has much better graphics for monsters and spells.
It is unfortunate that Duel Masters never became more popular than it did. The game was created by Wizards of the Coast, and the games were put out by Atari. Still, for anyone who likes stratagic card games in video form, starring creatures with strange but also awesome sounding names, I highly recommend Duel Masters. The price is certainly right.
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