Because it’s happening, the only major language in the world that hasn’t had official Yu-Gi-Oh! cards will finally get them starting in January
Introducing for the first time, Chinese version of the Yu-Gi-Oh Zexal Official Card Game!
The Starter Deck will be released on January 29th, 2014.
Each deck will come with a 40 card Main Deck and a 2 card Extra Deck.
The confirmed contents of the deck includes: Number 39: Utopia, Goblindbergh, Gogogo Golem, Kagetokage, Mystical Space Typhoon, Xyz Effect, Xyz Soul and Xyz Energy.
With these confirmed cards, we can see that this is an entirely new product designed just for the Chinese OCG, as it does no match the contents of any other Zexal-Era Starter Deck. Of course, one can conjecture that it will be very similar to them.
The following is an official Proxy of everyone’s favorite Emperor of Reprints:
Several things are worth noting here:
First, the Chinese name is No.39 希望皇霍普 (No.39 Emperor of Hope, Hope), which is a direct translation of the OCG Name, Numbers 39 Kibouou Hope.
Next the language code used is TC, which stands for Traditional Chinese. Why this is important will be discussed later.
The third and most interesting thing to note is that Number 39 here is classified as a 超量 monster. 超量 literally means exceeding, which means, yes, the official Chinese Name for Xyz Monsters will be Exceed Monsters. Now this isn’t really that surprising, and we will get to why later.
Now then, the big question would be, is this going to be released all over China? And the answer is, sadly, no. The Chinese Official Card Game will only be released in Hong Kong and Taiwan territories, both of which already has OCG representation in the form of Japanese Cards, and previously, Asian English Cards. Which makes sense because Traditional Chinese is used mainly in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Mainland China uses Simplified Chinese. No one knows the exact reason why Konami is deciding now of all times to finally release official Chinese Cards, but obviously having cards in a language you can understand is far better than having cards in a language you can sorta figure out.
Now, the reason why Konami does not venture into the mainland of China, where the market really is, should not be that hard to realize. China, as we all know, is the forerunner in everything piracy. If something exists, you can find fake cheap Chinese knock-offs of it. This is no different for YGO. I’m sure most of us have at least seen those hilarious fake cards like “Sealed Dark Big Rabbi”. The fake YGO market is huge in mainland China, with there being multiple fake Chinese versions of every card imaginable. This, along with the the fact that the Chinese mainland government does not look too fondly upon YGO due to its “horrible messages to adolescents”, and the other fact that mainland China has very little IP protection (which is what leads to the huge rates of fakery and piracy), probably convinced Konami that it still isn’t yet time to venture into the mainland.
As for the name Exceed Monsters, this really is not that surprising for something marketed towards Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a tradition of translating foreign materials based upon local preferences and colors. The vernacular used for Xyz Monsters in Hong Kong had long been Exceed Monsters, so it makes sense for Konami to conform to local tastes. Taiwan is much the same way. The localization process that has originalists screaming bloody murder is a fact of life in these territories. For example, the Final Fantasy series is called the Space Warrior series in Taiwan, so yeah.
Oh, but just to make this perfectly clear: This does not mean that Exceed(s) Monster is the correct term for these black cards, the correct name is Xyz Monster, as it has always been.
With that out of the way, let’s move on to release schedule.
A lot of information is still withheld, but there’s already been multiple information leaks about the products.
From just this image alone, we can see that the January release will be the Starter Deck, followed by Beginner’s Edition 1 in March. This is most likely the renewed version of Beginner’s Edition 1 that the OCG got not too long ago.
The information leak suggests that the April release will be Structure Deck 25, the May release Gold Series 2014, the June release Duelist Edition 1, July Duelist Edition 2, October Duelist Edition 3, and December Beginner’s Edition 2. The other releases are unknown right now, but it’s safe to assume they are miscellaneous products like Structure Decks or the Gold Series since they are not colored blue like the “core set” dates are.
Regardless, that’s one hectic release schedule, and they seem determined to catch up to the other languages as fast as possible. Let’s wait and see if how this will all work out for them.
And that’s it for today, in the future, if there is anymore Chinese OCG news, I, Eva, will be the one in charge of bringing the news to you!
Source: Various Chinese OCG news outlets, pictures taken from this thread at Nintendo World BBS. http://bbs.newwise.com/thread-787288-1-1.html
Official Chinese website (currently inaccessible): http://www.yugioh-card.com/chi/cn-t
