The Asian Power Hour

A while back, Disney Interactive took a stab at melding a CCG with a video game, and lo and behold, we got Spectrobes. As far as I understand, most of the art assests and programming were done overseas in Japan and India, in that order, with the core creative team at the Glendale studios in good 'ol sunny California.

In Spectrobes, you're basically a space officer/archeologist/alien pokeman trainer. You go around and excavate the fossils of these aliens and then train and evolve them to do battle for great justice. The cool thing about these cards is that instead of using a bar-code (Nintendo GBA E-Reader) or RFID system (Hasbro's Hyperscan System), the cards are basically plastic templates that fit over your DS's lower screen with dots of varying shapes and sizes.

There is a specific order that you have to use the stylus in order to unlock the creature, but essentially, all the monsters are already stored in the game cart. What this means is that yes, if there was a template uploaded online, you wouldn't really need the cards themselves anymore. It's a neat system, however, there hasn't been much ado about the collectible part of the game. I myself picked up a copy of the game a while back, and two of my friends also did, and we all got the same freaking cards. And well...I traded my set to my friend, who traded it to the other guy, and yeah, you see where this is going.

However, it looks like Gamestop and EBgames are offering absolutely free new spectrobes cards. A new one every week, while supplies last at their stores. If you haven't picked up the game yet, if you order it now from their website, you get all three cards at once. Spectrobes did fairly well in the US initially, but floundered, in part of the horrid reviews it got, and the insanely boring gameplay. In Japan, where it was competing directly with games like Sangokushi Taisen DS and Love and Berry, well, it didn't even really dent the market unfortunately. Kudos to Disney for trying something out like this though.

Gamestop Spectrobes Promotion Page
Spectrobes Cards
A closer look at a Spectrobes Card