AniMayhem and Other Failed Card Games

Many card games have come and gone. While Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering refuse to die, worthy titles were scorned by reviewers, dismissed by gamers and ignored by the public when they were released. Thanks to fan sites, Google, and eBay, these games can be enjoyed again.

Animayhem (1996)

AniMayhem was a post-Magic: The Gathering trading card game (TCG) that focused on the characters of various anime, including Armitage III, Oh My Goddess, Ranma and Tenchi Muyo. Many of AniMayhem's players probably got in on the third edition, which used Dragonball Z cards.

The goal in AniMayhem was to collect items. You spent your turn "scavenging" Location cards, encountering Disaster cards and, if you made it that far, to collect your Item card. The player had to collect more than half of the Item cards to win.

It was a fun game, but the final release -- the Dragonball Z set -- doomed the game. It rewrote the rules for the second time in the series, and its cards were much too powerful for the other sets. Even worse, the game had little to do with the antics of the Dragonball Z crew -- if they weren't beating each other up, they were training. Why would they spend their days searching for Camping Equipment and Sleepy Grass? The later Dragonball Z Trading Card Game got it right, but still manages to grace this list.

Shadowrun TCG (1997-1998)

The Shadowrun TCG carved out a tough spot for itself: not freeform enough for pen-and-paper roleplayers, the card game put off a large part of Shadowrun's fanbase, and like the Shadowrun for the Xbox 360, many jeered its release. The game managed excellent sales, according to developers, but fell apart anyway.

The game had excellent artwork, interesting weapons, and oozed with the atmosphere of the franchise's fantasy/cyberpunk crossover. Like the Sega Genesis game, it had the player running missions constantly. Most importantly, it was a ton of fun -- I still keep a deck around for solo
games -- but it failed, all the same.

Sim City (1996)