>>8567201the downfall of the card game was in how much shit you needed to have, and how eventually- gate cards- the objects on the field that one would be trying to navigate to were made essentially pointless. as their point bonuses meant very little in the grand scheme of all the shit you were attaching to your dude.
there were trap pieces that let you change the color to get a better point bonus from whatever card you landed on- there was battle gear, which were weapon backpack things that snapped onto the butt of you bakugan- that added points to their total. there were guns and mechs to clip them into. theyre all cool looking toys- but it was a bit overkill. it made it impossible to compete without all of the extra bits and bobs. because if you had them youre getting potentially 1000+ points added to your guy. where at the initial launch, most figures and cards capped out in the 50s and 60s.
and new bakugan themselves started rising in power too. this meant if you actually wanted to compete, you *had* to be buying new stuff every wave.
not to mention. imagine carring this stuff around with you.
its one thing to sneak a deck of yugioh or pokemon cards to school. but your backpack would be half filled with your stack of cards, bakugan, traps, battle gear, weapons, and mechs. its also a lot more money to loose, so i can totally see parents being against letting kids bring their $80+ collection of toys needed to actually play the game to school.
the one thing that saved it was how easy it was to make up new rules. you didnt *need* to play with any of the new pieces- you could just rule them out and play with the balls or cards only. which im sure many kids did.
in the end, i'd still say that the original card game was at least successful in what it was trying to do: coming up with a game that revolves around playing with these glorified marble transformers. i had a lot of fun with it whenever i could convince people to play it with me.
-> continued
