I got a starter pack of Dragonball Z collectible card game — I’m to write a Finnish translation of the rules. The game seems rather daft: the players attack each other until one drops. Or until one player collects enough anger or a complete set of Dragonballs.

Still, the about C5-sized rule book has about 60 pages. Lots of pictures, advertising and whatnot, but still. The rules seem overly complicated for the game. Especially as the target group is probably kids from eleven to, say, fifteen. Hard to imagine someone older playing this… It’s for the kids, who used to play Pokemon and have grown up a bit.

And the theme… I’ve watched perhaps a half an episode of the tv series (it’s shown just before the Late Night with Conan O’Brien, so I’ve seen several ends) and it seems rather pointless: strange-looking people beat each other senseless. I’m not even sure who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. It’s just pointless violence. Let me quote from the game rules: “Remember. this is a fantasy game. Don’t act out the events portrayed on the cards in real life. Someone could get hurt, and when that happens, everyone loses.” and “Anger: A power in the DBZ™ Universe that allows personalities to advance to higher levels.” So if you’re angry enough, you’ll advance to a higher level? If the rules need to spell out warnings like the first quote, I’d say something is seriously wrong…

And while I think intellectual property is a good thing and so on, the amount of ™’s and ®’s in the rule book is rather ridiculous at the times.