Return to the Game Centre! Code of Joker

Well it's been a long time, but today I finally made a return to one of the many game centres of Japan.  Pretty much as soon as I went through the door, I was greeted with all sorts of new games just waiting to be played, but the one that caught my attention today was digital trading card game Code of Joker.

If you have seen my prior posts about the game Mahjong 5, then you may notice that the machine is basically identical to that, however the game is obviously anything but Mahjong.  Code of Joker is a trading card game but unlike other game centre trading card games, you don't actually have to buy any cards, everything is done in game and stored on an Aime stat card.

Due to the fact I was with a group of friends, I didn't really get to play all that much but I did the tutorial and one normal game against the CPU, so I got a good feel of how it works.  I guess the easiest way to describe the game play would be like a strange hybrid of Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Cards in Code of Joker come in 4 types that include Units, Combination Monsters, Trigger Cards and Intercept cards.  Units are your basic monsters that you can play any time and combination monsters are upgrades for your basic units to make them even more powerful.  Trigger and Intercept cards are things that you play like Yu-Gi-Oh trap cards but the difference being trigger cards are activated when you play monsters or call an attack automatically, while intercept cards can be activated any time you want.

While I haven't tried them yet, there are lots of other modes that include an online mode that will hook you up with another player anywhere in Japan.  In the game centre that I was in there was also a "live" version of the cabinet, which I can only assume streams the game somewhere for people to watch but I'm not sure exactly.

The only disadvantage to this game is that if you were only staying in Japan for a short time then it's basically not worth playing.  Also, with it being a card game, knowledge of Japanese language, especially Kanji, is required in order to enjoy the game, so if you were a tourist hoping to try out Code of Joker then unfortunately your out of luck.

If you do know Japanese then there is a really good trading card game in here, so I would suggest checking it out.  I'll be covering Code of Joker as well as many other arcade games in the near future, so stay tuned!