Card games are like an extension to the gaming world; it is not video games, but it is still fun and enjoyable. My favorite card game of them all was Magic the Gathering. With over 10,000 different cards to collect, each edition having its own book to read, it was very time consuming. When I was a kid I went to school and bought a deck or two to play against my friends. I was not going to bring in my Sega Genesis system if that was what you were thinking. Years have passed by, I graduated, and my card games have remained the same in its true form. I wished that the card games would evolve as we would grow older, and to my surprise it did, but then again, the attempt was not as awesome as I expected it to be.

On the Windows 2000, Wizards of the Coast came out with a Magic the Gathering game, with an actual adventure mode, but with the same card battling system like all card fans know and love. It was bliss. I thought it was a great start, and there would be more like that on the way. If you haven't noticed it by now, whenever I hope for something, it never happens the way I hoped it would be. Thanks fate! Later on Magic came onto XBOX, with Magic: Battlegrounds. Oh what a fun, crappy game that was. Your interests lasted 5 minutes in that game and for awhile you actually hated the card game. You weren't even using cards, just some spells as they ran across the other side to hit your opponent. If I go into further detail about that game, I swear I might never come back as the same man I used to be.

Then came a new Magic game for the XBOX  Live Arcade. It was good at best, I can not lie, but it was nothing like the original. For starters, I can not edit my decks with my own cards, just cards I win from defeating my opponents. They had over 10,000 cards in the entire game and I get stuck only changing 15 of them? Something is wrong with that picture. It was a small story line, no heart into it. Just battling Planes-walkers, defeating them, and moving on to the next battle, pretty much sums it up. I hope the next game of Magic for any console will be  a lot better, as this game should only be the benchmark for better card games in the future.

Enough about Magic. There are many more card games out at sea, like Yu-Gi-Oh and the Pokemon Trading card games. Both of these titles found their way into the video game world, those lucky bastards. Yu-Gi-Oh came out first for the PS2, and it was simple but yet fun. You edited your decks, beat your opponents, unlocked more cards to edit with, and it had a little storyline. Was it that hard to ask for in a Magic game? It was the same with the Pokemon game I remember playing on Game Boy. It's just one thing that makes me so upset with this logic.

I loved Magic and I always will. But when there are two rivals to the card gaming industry that can make a better video game than Magic, something is royally frakked up. Either the developers are not trying anymore or fate is just crapping on me yet again. Even worse is that I believe these two card games are just a rip off from the original, which was Magic. Screw Yu-Gi-Oh and screw Pokemon. They succeeded due to anime, but Magic still reigns supreme in the card world even though there was no cartoon show or a movie.

Maybe I can't get upset about Magic. Maybe it was just awesome in the real world, the real card category, and not in a video game world. It did not fit in. If that is the case, then the developers should have not played with my mind in the first place. Those guys led me to believe that they could make a great Magic video game one day. All lies! It is a good thing I don't see Pokemon on the XBOX 360, or that would mean someone opened Pandora's Box.