Sunday, May 22, 2011

Gone but not Forgotten

Back when TSR came out with Dragon Dice a few friends and I played it for a while, along with nearly every CCG that came out and 2e AD&D. Then life got complicated, games got put on the back burner and due to some unfortunate circumstance I "lost" most of my games and comics. (FYI, just because the judge says someone has to give you your stuff back doesn't mean that the law will do anything about it if they don't. Especially if that stuff happens to be comics and games.)

Recently I fond out that Dragon Dice is still alive and enjoying a small revival thanks to some devoted fans. Apparently a company called SFR bought the rights to the Dragon Dice and have been putting out starter sets and expansion backs. I bought a starter set and now enjoy the occasional game.

Once I found out that a game I thought was long gone was actually still alive and kickin', it got me to thinking about others. Games like Spellfire, Decipher's Star Wars CCG and Wyvern (Wikipedia entry) were ones that I enjoyed a great deal back in the day, but that, for one reason or another, are no longer officially with us. I know that Spellfire has been the butt of a lot of jokes, but my friends and I had a lot of fun with it and while it was a bit sad compared to Magic: the Gathering, I still remember it fondly. 

While I do not know of anybody that is still supporting Wyvern, it appears that Spellfire was turned over to the fan community and the fan forums appear to have been active as late as 2006. Fans created a program called Crossfire to enable online play and apparently there were a few more boosters released (have not confirmed this yet), but other than a few active fan pages it seems like there has been no noticeable activity over the past few years.

Of the other games I played back then not all are lost to memory, some are still thriving or at least surviving in one form or another. Everyone is familiar with Magic: the Gathering, Legend of the 5 Rings, the World of Darkness games (Vampire, Werewolf, etc), but I can't help wondering if somewhere out there others fondly remember the games of the 90's as fondly as I do.

Along with Spellfire, Wyvern, and Star Wars I would like to know if anyone else has games from the 90's that they remember fondly that are no longer around. I want to know if games like the Vampire/Jyhad CCG (I just found out that this was actually active till 2010), Rage CCG, Overpower or anything else (CCG or not) that I may have forgotten about from that time are still active anywhere out there.

If you are a publisher of one of the smaller or forgotten 90's games or if you happen to have any information about games from that time feel free to leave me a link in the comments.

6 comments:

jasonjames said...

We have a few players in our area stil dedicated to Deadlands Doomtown the CCG. All of us have kept our cards and still blow the dust off of them from time to time. I still have all of the Hero Clix that I collected though I never really play it anymore.

Geek Gazette said...

Hey Jason! Been a while.
I've never actually played Deadlands Doomtown. I honestly can't say that I even remember that one. I'll have to check it out.

Browncoat said...

I see JJ beat me to the punch.
Doomtown is my personal fave. I think JJ said it best when he commented,"It's not even the game as much as it is that it reminds you of a simpler time." True enough, but I love the game anyway. The other one I loved thatnever really caught on with my group (and has since died) is the 7th Sea game. Sure, it was simple. But does every game need to be over the top complicated?

Geek Gazette said...

I'm finding that I want simpler games. There are a lot of games that appeal to me but I just don't have the time to invest in them that I did when I was in my teens or twenties.
Maybe that's why I find myself drawn back to 2e and why I only play core rules Magic.

Browncoat said...

Plus with the older oop card games you can ussually pick up a ton for cheap!

MarcD said...

Some of us still love playing (and blogging about) Spellfire!

http://spellfiretav.blogspot.com/