Tecmo

I wasn't interested in giving Battle Card 2 any praise when I first saw the game because I have come to view these "battle card" games as cheap opportunities for publishers to milk a popular franchise. But after playing it, I found that it held a few surprises that almost made me overlook the static 2-D graphics, inadequate translations, lack of a multiplayer and uninteresting cast of characters.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Mild Animated Violence

Taking the concept of playable and collectable cards one step further by bringing it to an electronic format and succeeding fabulously, Tecmo brings us Monster Rancher Battle Cards. Based on their two other virtual pet/monster raising niche titles, Battle Cards takes the same previously established world and characters and gives them an entirely different style of play.

Game Description: Episode II, the sequel to Monster Rancher BattleCard, shares many of the same elements of its predecessor. The idea here is still to collect game cards and use them in "battles," where the cards represent attacks, defenses, and improvements to the player's skills. But this game has added a very interesting twist to the addictive trading-card-game genre. You can swap the Episode II disc out of your PlayStation console for virtually any other audio CD, CD-ROM, or even another PlayStation game to create new game cards that you can then save to a separately sold memory card and share with your friends. In Episode II, players are off on a search for the indispensable monster assistant, Colt, who has vanished to the Paradise of Monsters. To find him, you'll have to battle your way through a series of islands to collect all the cards.

Nearly a decade later and dozens of other entries into the genre, things have changed quite a bit. In Tecmo's newest Dreamcast fighting game, Dead Or Alive 2, the gender of playable characters has shifted dramatically to a near equal five to seven ratio; still in favor of males.

According to ESRB, this game contains: Animated Violence, Suggestive Themes 

Game Description: Dead or Alive 2 brings more phenomenal fighting action to the Dreamcast with the gorgeous graphics and incredibly fast gameplay that Sega fans expect. Dead or Alive 2's character-against-character action takes place in gorgeously rendered locations ranging from a cathedral to a moving elevator cage. In a special twist, characters can battle in multiple locations in many of the areas and interact with the environment. This means that the cathedral window is more than just a pretty background—it's just waiting for an opponent to be hurled through it and onto the fighting platform below. Perhaps the coolest feature of all is the Tag Battle mode—available to one-, two-, and four-player games—that enables fighters to summon a teammate into the action. A total of 12 male and female fighters are available, each boasting a slew of basic and special attacks, tag-team combos, reversals, and throws.

When I first learned about the Dead Or Alive series, it was while perusing the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly Magazine; the editors were openly salivating at the overtly 'jiggly' nature of the female fighters in the game. This was a few years back when the first game hit the arcades and was then ported to the Sony PlayStation.