Street Starter Sets & Booster Series 3 through 6
I often get asked about the Street Starter sets and Booster Series 3 onwards and if I have any plans to add them to this site. So I've decided to write up a little article on the topic.
What's the Difference?
Upper Deck published the Digi-Battle card game from 1999 to the year 2000, only actually producing cards for around a year before Bandai took over publishing. Upper Deck released 10 sets and various promos which you can find on this site.
Bandai went on to publish 4 more booster sets and 4 more starter decks. The booster sets continue on where Upper Deck left off starting from 3, which can cause some confusion as Upper Deck also released a Booster Series 3 exclusively in France.
The big difference between the two is card design. When Bandai took over they redesigned the cards to have a new CGI look and feel.
Here's the Upper Deck version of Greymon and cardback:
And this is the Bandai Booster Series 3 version of Greymon and cardback:
Some people have a preference and others love them both, but personally the Upper Deck version is my favourite.
You won't find the Bandai cards on this website for a few reasons and it's not because I have anything against them:
I don't have them
I'm not sure if Bandai even released their version of Digi-Battle in the UK. I definitely don't remember seeing any as a kid, so because of this I only had the Upper Deck cards.
They're EXPENSIVE
I may be wrong but I don't think Bandai printed that many of each set, particularly towards the end, so these cards can be hard to come by. There's also holographic and gold text variants of (I think) every booster set card so there's even more cards to collect.
Add to that the fact that I live in the UK and shipping from the US can get very pricey very quickly. I don't see myself ever having the funds to complete the sets and add them.
It would break this site
First of all I don't even know if the 2 releases are meant to be compatible with each other. As in I don't know if a playable deck of cards should contain cards from both the Upper Deck and Bandai releases. So things like the Digivolution tree found on each card's page would automatically mingle the 2 versions.
There's also duplicate card numbers. ST-84 WarGreymon is part of the Swedish Promo set but also exists in the Bandai Starter Deck so this complicates things. I had this issue with the Cereal Promo and Swedish Promo sets using the same Serial Codes for the Tamer cards but I worked around this in a hacky way that I don't want to repeat.
I would need to contain the Bandai cards in a separate section and database from the current site.
I don't have the time
There's so many cool things I'd like to do with this website that I just can't find the time for. I began work on this during the pandemic when free time was plenty, but now I'm wrapped up in family life and my career. I use what time I have to take small wins when I can.
I'm sorry to disappoint but I wouldn't hold out on seeing these cards here any time soon. But fear not!
Where To Find Bandai Digi-Battle Cards
There are other websites that have taken the time to catalog these sets and I'm only too happy to share them:
Cyberdramon's Digital Index has been an invaluable tool for me and my collection and prodigiouscollecting is a MASSIVE collection of card scans from Digimon and other games. Definitely go check them out!