Other : Mars-16 Japanese Collectible Cards

Have you heard of the Japanese variant of the Tomb Raider CCG?

In around 2001, Japanese T-shirt company 'Mars-16' were given the opportunity to create merchandise for the Tomb Raider franchise. According to the website, Mars-16 "is a space-like game that you play with 16 cards and a T-shirt". For the Tomb Raider franchise, the company produced a range of t-shirts and a collection of cards. The idea was that you use the t-shirt as a game board. These goodies were then sold by Capcom or on the official Mars-16 website, scheduled for release at the end of October 2001. Sadly we have been unable to find any rules but we do have images of both the t-shirts and cards! But the cards and t-shirts were promoted at the 2001 Tokyo Motor Show, alongside the Land Rover Defender that was there from the first movie.

So what was there?

- 2 different t-shirt designs ('Cave' and 'Build'), each in 3 colours.

Design 01 - Tomb Raider (CAVE) MA-005 series

Design on the Back - the game board

MA-005-05 (black)

MA-005-15 (Charcoal Gray)

MA-005-83 (Navy) - Capcom Exclusive

Design 02 - Tomb Raider (BUILD) MA-006 series

Design on the Back - the game board

MA-006-15 (Charcoal Gray)

MA-006-93 (D. Purple)

MA-006-33 (Red)

- Cards

A 'Starter' pack, containing 16 cards and instructions. Costs 7000 yen

- A Tomb Raider Box Set, containing a t-shirt and cards. Costs 4600 yen

- A Booster Pack, containing all 100 card types. Cost 10,500 yen

A deluxe set was only available for purchase through E-Capcom, which included: a set of cards and a limited-edition navy T-shirt. Up until the end of November, the red 'Build' t-shirt was only available from United Cinema Warner Mycal Cinema.

Each t-shirt has a little plaque on the left sleeve, which includes a serial number for each item. According to the website, this number could be used in the game. By the 2nd of April 2008, Mars-16 had stopped the sale of the Tomb Raider products.

So how did it play?

Well sadly we've been unable to find any instructions but upon the t-shirt design on the back of the item is seven key areas, featuring the words 'magic trap deck', 'short range', 'character deck' and four others that we've been unable to read. Certain card types would be placed upon these key areas. But it seems that the instructions are lost to time! There is also no definite list of cards or how many there were. But we do have some imagery. The following images of the cards and the t-shirt were listings on eBay. We've sadly not recorded the eBay user for the t-shirt but the cards once belonged to user angu2216. But by using that eBay listing, we're guessing that there is about 156 cards.

The Cards:

T-Shirt:

Misc. Web Art:

Note: The websites that we've used have been in Japanese and as we can't read Japanese, we've had to use Google Translate, so there may be a few translation errors in our research!

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Sources:

1 - http://web.archive.org/web/20040208170851/http://www.mars16.com/
2 - http://web.archive.org/web/20040209054047/http://www.mars16.com:80/topics/gallery/tomb.html
3 - http://web.archive.org/web/20061113100235/http://www.mars16.com/cgi-local/main.cgi?id=ma005a15s
4 - http://web.archive.org/web/20061114042626/http://www.mars16.com/cgi-local/main.cgi?id=ma006a93s
5 - http://web.archive.org/web/20030223175606/http://www.capcomshop.jp:80/shop/goods/goods.asp?category=0210&shop=
6 - http://web.archive.org/web/20020208034556fw_/http://www.mars16.com/16-tomb/rogo.html