Pokemon exist as both a strategic trading card game and as a computerized stochastic battle game between digital animations.

Computerized pokemon can "evolve". Trading cards, clearly, don't.

The two could be merged. Trading cards have magstrips in them and must be inserted into a "battle scanner" to fight. The scanner displays a cute animation depicting the fight. Experience gained and other properties affecting the cards are marked on the card's magstripe.

Use of the scanner ensures that trading and games are controlled by scanner owners (fast food restaurants, game shops, etc.)

This system lets users and manufacturers easily personalize cards, ideally combining the appeal of trading cards with that of cabbage patch kids.

Magic abilities of trading cards could be consumption-bound. For example, consumption of caffeinated soft drinks adds buzz points to your energy monsters; your frequent flyer miles make bird attacks more efficient.
-- jutta, Jun 20 2000

Isn't this called a 'Game Boy'? <grin> I think the product tie-in is neat, though.

Would also be nice to have such a thing even if it didn't do anything but let you keep track of the cards you have. I play the Battletech card game, and we had this hugemungous Access database to keep track of the cards with. Was a little difficult to get them in the first time, but after that it was fairly easy to update. But being able to just run it through a reader of some sort would be even better...
-- StarChaser, Jun 20 2000


If they don't need to be dynamically updated (which would necessitate the magnetic stripe), printing a bar code on the card adds nothing to the cost.
-- Eeyore, Jun 21 2000


What Jutta was talking about would require either dynamically updating the strips, or connecting the readers to a central DB that would keep track of the cards, likely to be expensive and totally rule out home use.

What I was talking about would work, tho. Would just look bad on the cards...
-- StarChaser, Jun 21 2000



random, halfbakery