As seen on TV.
The Digimon franchise, one of Bandai's many cash cows, is no stranger to the Collectible Card Game—seven prominent official card games have existed, each with generally different rules and mechanics.
- Digital Monster Card Game / Hyper Colosseum was the first Digimon card game, and generally the most famous; this is the game that was featured in Digimon Tamers, and was depicted completely accurately in that there actually were digital card readers able to be used in playing the game. It was brought to the rest of the world, with some minor modifications, as the Digi-Battle Card Game. While it was retired in the west circa Tamers presumably out of lack of interest, it kept going in Japan even through the franchise's anime hiatus, and was only retired around the launch of Digimon Data Squad to make way for Alpha, but even so was revived for special prestige releases.
- Digimon Adventure: Card Tactics was the second Japanese Card game, designed around an electronic card reader allowing for a variety of complex mechanics and directly based on the anime. Lasted only one set though.
- D-Tector Card Game was the second international card game, and the first to be an entirely western creation; it was designed as a tie-in to the then-current Digimon Frontier anime, and specifically Bandai's line of tie-in D-Tector Digivice virtual pets; the game's main draw was that each contained a "Digi-Digit" to input into the Digivice to add that card's Digimon to one's collection on the device.
- Digimon Collectible Card Game was the third international card game, also a creation of Bandai of America. It's a bit of an anomaly; it was released in a period during which there was no anime and Digimon was effectively comatose in the west, nor was Bandai of America doing any other merchandise of the franchise at the same time.
- Digital Monster Card Game Alpha—or just Alpha—was the third, and second primary, Japanese card game, released concurrent to Digimon Data Squad. It was something of an expansion to the gameplay of Hyper Colosseum — most mechanics were maintained, but Digimon cards now had HP and speed values. Special game-bridging compatibility rules also exist somewhere.
- Super Digica Taisen was the fourth Japanese card game, released concurrent to Digimon Fusion.
- Digimon Jintrix was the fifth Japanese card game, released concurrent to Super Digica Taisen and Digimon Fusion. It's a fairly unusual game: cards are purchased in physical form, then codes from them are inputted into the game's website, on which the game is actually played. It's considered particularly notable by the fandom because new releases of card sets would regularly introduce completely new mons, moreso than any previous card game.
- Digimon Fusion was the fourth international TCG, released to promote the anime of the same name. It was short-lived, lasting only one set.
- Data Carddass Appli Monster Card Game was the sixth Japanese card game, designed as one of the tie-ins to the Digimon Universe: App Monsters sub-franchise. Designed to be compatible with Hyper Colosseum.
- Digimon Card Game is the seventh, and third primary, Japanese card game, released concurrent to Digimon Adventure: (2020). It was localized worldwide about a year after its initial release. Unlike Hyper Colosseum and Alpha before it, this iteration uses entirely brand new mechanics for its system.
Tropes present in the card games prior to Digimon Card Game:
- Covers Always Lie: Sort of; looking at the back of a Hyper Colosseum card, would you automatically peg that as a piece of Digimon merchandise? The appearances of the logo on it are both very small and you'd be forgiven for completely missing them.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Hyper Colosseum / Digi-Battle and Alpha follow this principle with the three Digimon attributes: Data, Vaccine and Virus.
- Evolutionary Levels: As in the anime, of course; generally disregarded in Taisen and Jintrix.
- Expy: Jintrix has lately taken to introducing new mons based on classic literature; Set 3 introduced numerous mons based on Journey to the West, while Set 4 introduced mons based on Peter Pan in addition to a few more Journey to the West ones.
- Merchandise-Driven: The role Hyper Colosseum played in Digimon Tamers; one of the better-executed examples.
- Meta Game: In keeping with the Lensman Arms Race of Hyper Colosseum, each new release of cards would have a handful of cards that would become the centerpiece of that generation of gameplay... and it would often have a handful of cards specifically invalidating the centerpiece of the previous generation's. If your card negates the effect of a specific card, chances are that that specific card was top-tier in the preceding metagame.
- No-Sell: Many, many Hyper Colosseum cards explicitly declare themselves immune or unable to affect certain cards of types of cards, usually those that are prominent in the contemporary metagame or that the card game wanted to promote.
- Power Creep: A huge problem with Hyper Colosseum and its successor Alpha Evolution.
- From the earliest days, every new generation of cards was sloppily designed not to compete with so much as completely invalidate previous cards and strategies. E.g. when Armor Digimon were introduced, they overcame the Mega Levels' power with withering special abilities such as reducing the foe's Power Level by halfnote , and once they suffused the metagame, a new generation released and began to propagate the effect of ignoring an enemy's special abilities, turning the Armors into useless weaklings.
This turned the game into a Lensman Arms Race with itself, accelerated by the absolute refusal of the developers to produce a ceiling on the numbers of the Power Levels and quietly imposing the need for players to repeatedly buy the newest packs as they were released. - A good example is to compare Seraphimon cards: the original HC card didn't have a single attack with a power level above 600, but it's earliest AE card had a power level of 1200 for it's strongest attack.
- From the earliest days, every new generation of cards was sloppily designed not to compete with so much as completely invalidate previous cards and strategies. E.g. when Armor Digimon were introduced, they overcame the Mega Levels' power with withering special abilities such as reducing the foe's Power Level by halfnote , and once they suffused the metagame, a new generation released and began to propagate the effect of ignoring an enemy's special abilities, turning the Armors into useless weaklings.
- Powers as Programs: The Item and Program cards of Hyper Colosseum.
- Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage: Inevitably there are plenty of examples; a standout is Digi-Battle's promotional Infermon and Diablomon cards released as part of a tie-in to Digimon: The Movie. Their evolution requirements made them completely useless for several sets until cards of Keramon and Chrysalimon, their pre-evolutions, came along.
