ROBOBLOG III Archives: Speaking of cards ...

Back in the mid-1990's, anime distributor Pioneer released a semi-entertaining CCG called Ani-Mayhem, which drew from several different then-popular anime franchises -- Bubblegum Crisis, Ranma 1/2, Tenchi Muyo, and El Hazard. The game had two expansion sets; one focused a little too much on lower-tier and eve then older properties, like the all-but-forgotten Phantom Quest Corp and Dominion Tank Police, and the latter was 100% Dragon Ball Z, which if you may recall didn't really take off and soar in its initial syndicated release in the United States -- DBZ only got popular after it went onto Cartoon Network's Toonami block years later. The game died a slow death after that, with decks and packs lingering at Suncoast Motion Picture Co. and Musicland stores at ever-increasing discounts for years after.

I'm pretty sure it was a little after the game's time, probably around 1998 or so, that I Photoshopped-together the following ROBOTECH cards based on templates that are probably still floating around on the internet. I had really hoped for a ROBOTECH expansion during the game's life, but if I wasn't going to get one, I was going to make one, dammit! Ani-Mayhem is simplistic and not terribly fun game, more entertaining in principle than practice (lots of very amusing cards in the actual game), but I always liked the look of the cards. Very striking. And yes, the font on the actual cards kind of looked like the one I used -- I tried for a close match.

Primarily I'm presenting these because, well, from the first word of a ROBOTECH CCG I got all nostalgic for this game, and even moreso for these cards I threw together -- honestly, I hadn't taken a look at them in years before I dug them out of the external hard drive yesterday. I never actually played the game with them -- like I said, not a terribly fun game -- but I always thought I did a pretty good job on 'em overall in terms of blending in with the actual decks and reading like honest-to-god Ani-Mayhem cards. Here's hoping when I get around to bashing together some ROBOTECH CCG cards they come off this well, especially bearing in mind the fact that I'll have to pick apart the cards to make my own templates -- cripes!