Cards From The Abyss #6: Universal Fighting System
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- "Universal Fighting System", or "UFS", was one of the first big Mega-License games, where a game brings in multiple franchises under one system, freeing those franchises from the restrictions of their limited content as a one-and-done.
The game initially had a huge presence before fading into obscurity.
Still love the game and excited that the My Hero Academia license will breathe new life into the game.
@@nmr7203 My hero is one of the most popular new set for ufs/universus since forever, it's selling really fast everywhere. Sadly jasco is putting more attention in playing the set like it's own thing and is taking their time to add it to the standard rotation.
I'm loving MHA
I absolutely adore this series! As someone who is making a TCG, these kinds of videos are indescribably helpful! Thanks so much for making these!
What are you making
Drop us a Link!
This channel is a gem within a gem. So good.
@@nocsha4119 th-cam.com/channels/UC0nwCJVmnzNorEgXQ_Rcw.html
@@arcanistgamestcgs interesting, let me know of you'd like another playtester/designer under your belt
As an old player of this game, a few scattered thoughts and facts.
This game has had 3 different companies own it. It was created by Sabertooth Games, which folded relatively shortly afterward, picked up by Fantasy Flight Games, discontinued then acquired by Jasco Games.
In addition to the licenses, both FFG and JG inserted original IPs into the game.
Winning a national or world title would earn yourself in the game as a tournament legal character card! Winning the teams events would put your local game venue as an asset card.
Top 8 cuts for this game had a diversity rule. Only one of each character could appear in top 8, and anyone placing lower with the same character but still in top 8 would get skipped.
I still have the world champ card from when my friend won it. That was always such an amazing prize.
While it has been rebranded into Universus, UFS has had steady releases since 2006! Some of us have been playing the whole time ^^
There were new sets based on fighting games as recently as 2020
When you eventually get to Future Card Buddyfight (I say “when” because it’s a recent game by a major game company that lasted years that eventually died out), I would hope you make a note about how it’s a game with a silly name and silly cards (there’s literally a Toilet deck) that appealed to kids but deeper and complicated mechanics that appealed to competitive adults…only it wound up being unable to effectively get either. Kids got confused when playing it and adults didn’t want to be caught dead playing a game called “Future Card Buddyfight”. The concept I’m talking about is more complicated than that especially as it did last for like, 5 or so years but those are the basics of why it eventually faded away.
I also remember the naming scheme for that game being a mess. Swear everytime I heard about it they gave it a new name. Something cardfight vanguard, buddyfight vanguard, future card buddyfight
@@aidanquiett668Cardfight Vanguard and Buddyfight are two separate games published by the same company. Of course, said together like that, it just goes to show your point.
I'll never forget when I ordered a 2-player street fighter box from their website a few years ago and they sent me not only the box, but two of the darkstalker decks, some promos, and a note basically saying thank you for ordering. I only ever played the game for a few weeks with my brother, but the cards will always be special to me bc of that
I find it amusing how Dan can fight and use Midoriya's cards against himself (and win!)
This series really gives me nostalgia, I hope that you’ll make a luck and logic, chaotic or a duel masters episode, I know their are millions of dead card games but learning how similar mechanics carry over from game to game, or how they take mechanics from existing source material and make it into a game
I made a Duel Masters episode ages ago. How come so many people seem to not know this?
@@Kohdok Every series you make seems to need another Duel Masters video, its the law of TCG content.
hey kohdok, its nice too see a look at UFS, but UFS isnt actually dead; it got rebraned into universus (universal versus) and expanded its scope to reach into other general game and anime franchises, like megaman, but UFS branded cards are still legal for play with the system. the my hero academia set for it is set to come out soon
also I mean, 20 minutes in after talking about how the games dead, we don't get egg on our face :P it just looks like you are unaware ;)
The basic system of the game was really simple, but god the number of keyword and ability made the game very complicated for newcomer.
I think, the reason for the new look seem to be so the game look more like a boardgame then a card game and yes the old look was way better for the card.
here are the name of the discipline (aka ressource symbols): air (whirpool), water (wave), life (plant), death (skull), void (black whirpool), all (red circle), good (halo), chaos (red pyramid), order (balance), fire (fireball), mountain (mountain oubviously), evil (trident), all (infinite symbol)
I remember my two Darkstalkers Vs Street Fighter Comics had two Promo Cards for this game. And they were playable cards too.
Set's still legal in standard rotation if you wanna try it.
Wow, I didn't know that UFS became Uni-Versus! That's so great to hear, I am super nostalgic for UFS, and hearing that Uni-Versus is just UFS rebranded actually makes me REALLY want to play and support it! I hope they are able to find new life and continue to license other cool shonen anime and maybe even get the fighting games back in there! If Capcom won't give me MVC4 I can make it myself on the tabletop!
I know in a previous video you mentioned Epic Battles, another fighting game TCG crossover system, but I recall Epic Battles debuted with Street Fighter vs Mortal Kombat, and I was always under the impression that it got one Darkstalkers set and then died. But you had a Tekken box! I would love to hear you talk about Epic Battles, how it compares to UFS, and what happened to it because back in the day those two were my favorite fighting game based TCGs, and I honestly thought Epic Battles was way better and more interesting. But I was also in high school and terminally dumb, so, uhhh, maybe it wasn't ACTUALLY better and I was just dazzled by the use of Udon comic art for the Street Fighter cards, which I absolutely adored back then.
Edit: Oh yeah. I definitely don't remember the discipline names and that was a big part as to why I didn't enjoy the game as much, but I'm certain that skull represents Death/Evil, halo represents Good, and red dot represents Focus (so like, martial artists like Ryu or Dhalsim who's more about peace with the self and calm strategy rather than furious aggression like Ken or Blanka). Now I could EASILY be wrong on this because I certainly wouldn't call Dan evil (nor Batsuko but I could at least see an argument for him), but maybe they were trying to give Dan access to both disciplines to represent the fact that he's kinda neutral, he goes his own way, he's a self-taught man (and, uh, it shows).
Dan's Disciplines are (In Order) All, Death and Good.
Izuku's Disciplines are Good, Life and Order.
Katsuki's Disciplines are Air, Death and Fire.
I don't know why but when I first saw their disciplines I thought they stopped doing alpha order until you listed them out. Maybe cuz Air was wind in my head and Order was Balance.
I remembered all of them except order. Which saddens me, because I used to have an order Victor deck back when I played.
Death fits Katsuki so well.
I never heard about UFS until a game store I usually went to stocked up on various sets that were still in rotation a few years ago. Went building a Tira deck from the SoulCalibur VI: Libra of Souls set and eventually the dlc content from a while ago. I think there's a decent amount of players playing the game in my city
Funny enough I'm making a tcg based on fighting games and comics called Powerline Ultra and it's simpler than UFS (Universus). I learned about this game pretty recently and it's cool that this exists!
UFS has been around for a while still. They had a cowboy beebop, yu yu hakusho, and mortal kombat set in last few years.
The mega license opening reminds me of Ani- Mayem again. That's two videos in a row that makes me want to pull out that tragic game.
I feared this day would come. I adore UFS and would still play it today if given the chance
You picking up MHA, I am loving the new life Universus is bringing into the game.
Jasco made a statement that the rebrand was simply their way of making the game theirs, since they acquired it years ago they never felt it was truly their game so the rebrand was their way of finally making it into their vision. All the old UFS cards are fully playable within universus. Also their rotation system is really extended over ten or more sets and they also gave a legacy style format as well.
Regarding the sin of set rotation killing the game's appeal, there are valid reasons for why UFS/UniVersus had to implement it. Between power creep, an evolution over time regarding the design of cards and mechanics, and the admittedly corporate aspect of maintaining licenses to produce more products representing select franchises, set rotation had to be implement at a certain level for the game's health. The problem, of course, is that rotating a set risks alienating or otherwise losing a franchise's fan base who only played the game for that franchise's representation. It also carries with it many of the other complications that surround set rotation. I would not go so far as to say UFS/UniVersus uses set rotation strictly because of the M:tG bandwagon.
OH snap! very cool to see this. COULD YOU PLEASE DO ONE ON THE ZATCH BELL CCG NEXT?!?!?1
I love how halfway through the video he just uses both Universus and UFS cards, because they're just the same game
This game being in this series scared me for a sec, I just decided to get into it so it being dead obviously wouldn’t be good, and now I know it’s just been rebranded as universus, and I’m also very happy that all old ufs cards can be used in universus since I did buy some soul calibur 6 packs a while back
Aha! This episode is clearly the back door pilot for an origin series of Kohdok becomingThe Box Ghost!! #solvedit 🤣🤣
I really like this system. It is not a perfect game system but it is a lot of fun.
I would love to see the older style decks play against a newer rebranded one
The REALLY early cards had much lower values, I think max 3 or something like that, so they don’t mix well. But on its own - maybe!
This game looks amazing. I'm about to pick this up
The latest set, My Hero Academia just released a couple weeks ago! Game's not dead, just rebranded to Universus.
@@kainhighwind2 I watched the video. But I'm a fighting game fan. I want those street fighter packs
Dabbled into this game a while back before the ViRuS. My favourite deck was combo Takeda, copying the combo effects between cards. Exploding Flame Roar was the key card of that deck and it was always fun to hit for stupid amounts of damage while clearing out my cardpool for more combos. Really deserves more attention as a solid tcg!
Yo this game system is actually still going under the name Universus by Jasco, they just launched an awesome My Hero Academia set!
You uh...you didn't finish the video before posting this, did you?
@@pikapuffin368 Nope! Didn't have time.
This game never completely died. It's still going, they rebranded as Universus. They have the anime IP My Hero Academia and have released 2 or 3 sets at this point.
You've got egg on you...
1 card
7 fonts
9 text colours
4 of those having shading, of different kinds, of course
I waited for a video like this since the card game sins ToT Thank you so much.
UFS/UniVersus, one of the best kept secrets in TCG's.
The Acceleracers TCG is a good licensed card game! Expensive to get cards nowadays though...
I love UFS, I still have my old decks when the game was owned by sabertooth games. The new my hero set is just as fun and I am having a blast with it.
TFS and Universes is a good example of how to do a multi-license game well. I am always infinitely annoyed at how WS managed to take the concept and completely gut it by making each individual license into an island that can not be combined with any other license.
Wait, In Weiss Scharz each franchise is an unmixable attribute?
@@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977 Sadly, that is true in a sense. You can't mix Gundam with Fairy Tale or Any other groups.
@@diegoantoniorosariopalomin4977 Despite how much the guy who runs this channel hates unmixable attributes, Weiss Scharz is the way it because the players WANTED it that way. Early on, it was much more mix and match. But people generally wanted to be able to buy packs from series they liked and ignore ones they don't, instead of having to keep tabs on every single set released in case it contained cards that might help the decks they like. Hence, the Neo-Standard format caught on and because the go-to.
Another thing. This game lasted through three publishers. Fantasy flight being 2nd and lasted a year and Jasco games owning it to this day. They also did cowboy bebop and yu yu Hakusho
I have a weird fondness for this game. I like the mechanics and how flavorful they are to fighting games, but the recent change in branding kind of ruined it for me.
I wanna see that maple story one so bad
Dang now I wanna Pull out my old MegaMan Deck again
This was a really fun game. I had an Ivy deck that chained a lot of small attacks in one turn.
The draw check thing is interesting. I'm going to have to note that down.
draw check?
I'm not sure what the exact term is but you draw a card and use the check number in the lower right to determine if you hit the target of the card you're trying to play. It's an interesting variation on mana that I haven’t encountered before.
Decipher made a lot of games with this sort of mechanic, called "Destiny".
That game sounds like it's actually fun
How do you deal with reprints in a game like this? If the license is only good for one set, it sounds like card availability would become a problem very fast.
You could do similar to how Magic The Gathering does most of its crossover cards; release a 'new' set that's effectively reprints of existing cards with new flavor. Don't have the Street Fighter license right now, but do have Soul Calibur? Swap out Vega for Voldo, mechanically you're sitting pretty.
@@EinDose Wouldn't that approach 1) basically make the franchises irrelevant because a lot would play the same? 2) allow you two or more playsets of a single card? Unless you specifically rule out that Vega is in fact the same card as Voldo, crushing the dream of anyone who wants to play them together.
@@fernandobanda5734 Well, the way that MtG handles it is to print the original card name under the new one (so Mothra is specifically noted to be the Luminous Broodmoth for example), and they're treated as the exact same card as far as playsets and card interactions go. As-is that idea wouldn't work for a situation like this (since presumably you can't talk about Vega without rights to him), but you can find other ways to land the same thing.
As for handling making series' then play the same... really, it's not that you'd have to carbon copy the entire set at once, but sprinkle in new-series reprints across a few different ones. Voldo is the new Vega, sure, but eventually reprint all the worthwhile Street Fighter cards across three different franchises, and you're good.
You know a lot more than anyone else I know!
Still alive and going
You should do Cards From The Abyss VS System! That was my shizz!!
I collect the Mega Man UFS cards. Really wish they would make more :(
Oh hey, I got this one. The Megaman and Protoman starter decks.
It'd be interesting to see Dan go against Bakugo 👀
Are we talking about an actual fight in anime form or card game form?
@@kitetenjogalladeknighttosh8863 was thinking cards so it's easier than a bunch of scaling 😕😂
Damn where was this all my life
11:40 I see what you did there, shoutouts to the Internet's lady of the hour! 😇🎃
i love this series because the background music is from "dova-syndrome". they do the music for hololive so basically i'm just thinking about cute vtubers.
Specifically this one played for KUREIJI OLLIE for a long time.
I remember The VS system just replacing Magic at the school I went to until Pokemon came out
... Pokémon is older than VS
@@Valtharr your right, got it confused with Overpower. It was a long time ago.
Set rotation could have been an intended way to find that middle ground between innovation and power creep that you might want to do on a mega licensed game. You can find a way to sell people who want to play for the systems new cards even if they aren't strictly stronger while also letting people who just want to play their favorite character compete with friends without worrying about power creep. I don't think it really is a good decision but it might not have been just because of Magic and Pokémon.
Like bringing up Weiss Schwarz, from what I know about the game there is very little in the name of variety where most decks have the same basic play style and there are carbon copies of cards just with different naming and art across sets simply because, well, the purpose of the game is to let people play with a franchise they enjoy so implementing even a slow power creep would take that away from people. But I barely know Weiss Schwarz, I just remember dipping my toes in and finding it a sacky luck game where all the decks felt the same.
I like how Weiss handled it. Yes, there is VERY gradual power creep, that's unavoidable in any game, but they slowed the process down by making franchises not cross compatible. That is, everything can play AGAINST everything else, but you can't mix franchises in a deck. I think that's actually pretty important in a multi-franchise game. I do NOT want to feel obligated to purchase cards from a license I don't care about because it's got some new cards I NEED to make my deck better.
I totally wanna play this series now.
i havent seen a fighting game card game that lasted more than 2 years (competitively), i wonder if its because they make the games too complex to simulate actual fighting games?
Edit: I wanna make a fighting game card game so I'm looking for references
I think a larger factor is simply that fighting games already do everything that fighting game fans want in a highly portable and sharable package. Card games test a different set of skills and always use a random factor that is the antithesis of what makes fighting games appealing in the first place.
@@DeliciousOrange I think you nailed it. Making a game based on another game is a gamble because you compete directly with something they're already enjoying. Making a game based on a series or a movie is much easier because of this.
TBF, UFS/UniVersus has been going for 15 years now with regular releases. There was a new Street Fighter set in 2017, and some Soul Calibur VI sets in 2019/2020
Isn't this still in print? Haven't finished the video yet so sorry if this was addressed.
I forgot they changed the name lol
I was thinking of Mortal Kombat coming out which now that I think about it was probably over 2 years ago.
I played this back in 06 and 07. Void was was the best resource symbol and had most of the broken foundations. Also, you have more foundations in a deck than attacks because you need your deck built that way. The biggest downfall to ufs and new players was deckbuilding. You stuff your deck full of attacks and you can't pass any checks. Foundations generally have a higher control than attacks.
2:38 I've never heard of Weis Schwarz before now. Unless you've mentioned it before in a previous video I watched and just forgot about it.
...That's not the kind of "smash" the bird wants Becky to let him do.
Oooh I still have the Soul Calibur III starters for this! I also have some boosters for Soul Calibur (I got a foil Astaroth!) AND boosters for Street Fighter! Never played it :p never had anyone to play with. If they wanted to include 'set rotation' without actual rotation they could have just included new disciplines...
In any case, I'm still hoping you'll cover Anachronism!
Looks interesting
"im sure you caught on" 🤣
Should probably research what obscurity means. Just because the only store close enough to you in your flyover state stopped running it doesn’t mean the game faded.
I'm interested in the idea of moving cards around on a mat - you touched on it in Huntik but I was wondering if there was a video where you went into it in a bit more depth?
so the check is similar to vanguard trigger? witch came first?
I loved this game when it first came out! Even regularly attended local tourneys for it. Really healthy scene. Then its first set rotation hit and it instantly died oops
This is the exact thing that happened to our local scene. Bunch of pretty large groups and tournaments and rotation hit and everyone bailed.
This serie has been pretty great, and that's cool that they managed to revive a card Game. I wonder if there would be a format that would allow the UFS cards to be used. On another note, are there plans to perhaps open or see the weiss schwarz hololive set? 👀
UniVerses is just a rebranding of UFS. In Standard, the last 10 printed sets are legal. So you could mix and match MHA with Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Yu Yu Hakusho, or whatever. In the MHA exclusive format, only cards from MHA are allowed.
Can anyone who's active with the game talk a bit about power distribution as concerns rarity for this game? I noticed there are two Secret rare cards, and from what I've found that rarity has a 1/3 boxes appearance rate, above the ultra rare 6/box occurrence rate. Are they really strong, or is the value predicated almost entirely on scarcity?
I'm not an expert but I've noticed that rarer cards tend to be more powerful and the SR cards in MHA both seem really good. It's not the worst case of this problem that I've seen, but it was a big part of why I didn't jump into the game before MHA (and I got lucky - bought 2 boxes and each had one of the SRs)
Been playing for about 15 years now. The new SRs in the MHA set are good, but definitely not necessary. They function best with Midoriya and Bakugo, but aren't necessarily the best options to run. We'll see how it shakes out, but honestly they've been going for pretty cheap considering how rare they are.
The SRs are pretty middle ground. They have high up swing but are pretty situational.
You should do a video on the hot wheels accelerators tcg
I'm interested in UFS a little, because I have my own fighting card game on the shelf somewhere...
Crap, where did I put it?
It's a shame the original game didn't work in the long run. Only got a deck and a few boosters back then, but using my Nightmare against my friend's Ken was kinda hilarious.
Didn't work? It's still around. The player base is small but very devoted.
May I request doing the Kingdom Hearts Trading Card Game? Maybe for the 20th anniversary of the series on March 28th next year
didn't even know they had one
There was a TCG?
Upon looking it up i am immensely disappointed That the cards arent modeled after the ones from Chaín of memories.
@@Klonoahedgehog I don't even remember how CoM cards looked lol. But I'm assuming you mean the card model and not the gameplay
@@RarecuisineGaming the shape of the cards, where the top had three spikes in a crown like shape.
The closest i can think of to those cards being actually Merch Is the 3DS AR cards That we're KH themed which had a similar shape.
could you make a video on berserk tcg (not the anime one)? do you even have it? have people even ever heard about it? it was kinda big in russia
I am so offended. I love UFS
You should do an episode on inscryption or runeterra
Inscrption is the tripiest card game. Ever.
UFS didn't die, it's the hand we draw in every card game :)
Wondering if you haven't did already a video about card boxes and sets, I personally hate the boxes from the American versions of some structures or special editions, too much packaging and too much waste compared with the European
Rotation isn't what killed UFS at a competitive level. Excessively bad tournament rules were (regardless of the format).
It's still going, though. Nats 2021 was going to happen in Richmond, but the convention hosting it cancelled due to Covid :/
I'm a bit rusty, but I also feel like balance was also a huge problem early on. Like, so many characters and versions were completely unusable because of hand sizes and the fact that folks like Cassandra and Zas were just ungodly monsters.
Nice 😎
I hope they do a universus Kamen rider set!
Most of the community in my country will probably quit soon thanks to Jasco not getting theit shit together.EU has been waitimg for 2+ years for a new set
Shit, I got a ton of these, mostly of the Warhammer variety
I'll just say that I personaly disagree with the Exceed vs UFS comparison.
I think Exceed nails much more the fighting game feel than UFS imo.
Same, Exceed is also a lot easier to explain to someone than Universus.
That said, I do agree that you do NOT want to be using the cards in the starter box to set up your playing field (and the official playmats accommodate both players' decks/gauges/boosts along with the playing field, so it feels a little cramped especially for the Seventh Cross characters).
If you have the money to do so, I like ordering custom playmats with fighting game backgrounds to symbolize the arenas (and movement spaces) to be in the center, while the players bring whatever playmats they prefer to sort their deck/gauge/boosts/transformations.
@@KetsubanSolo I agree with your points.
You definitively want a playmat. And hell if you can have a standee for your dude even better
A Crossover Card Game?
as someone who knows and understands yugioh, this game seems overwhelmingly complicated. there's way too much poorly labeled information on every card, too many rules to memorize... did UFS seriously have gender and blood type on some of those cards? how does that factor in???
It was mostly just a neat thing to put on the cards for collector purposes. A couple cards referenced that information, but it was mostly just a bit of flavor.
Blood Type disappeared much earlier than gender, with cards like Nut Cracker in the MKX set actually caring about one of those stats as part of an effect/ability condition.
i hated this game, a friend and i grabbed a bunch of them, and after hours of guides and tutorials we couldnt get through a single turn
They still release new sets.... They just got my hero and are making a set of it.
I know you're not a fan of exceed but it does a much better job of imitating fighting games. This might be a better overall card game but exceed wins in that regard.
At 17:12 You mention that rotation is a big no-no for mega-license games, but it's more of a damned if you do, damned if you do scenario. Obviously you touched on alienating players who have bought in for a particular property, but the flip side is that you will inevitable have licenses expire and create a subset of cards you cannot reprint. Unless you decide to go full Yu-gi-oh and power creep cards to invalidate this older releases (which is also an issue), you end up with a scenario where new players entering the tournament scene have to obtain cards that they have no reasonable way of doing so, or playing against cards that they cannot reasonably test against.