The longest journey begins with a single step

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Or, the longest wall of text begins with a single word.

I thought I'd kick off this thing with something I've been wanting to do for a long time. After lusting after them ever since I learned of them during the late 90s, recently I've finally managed to get my claws on all 135 Rockman X Mega Mission cards. What will I do with them? Why, share them with my fellow Rockman freaks, of course! After I figure out the best way to scan these things, I'll try to get some high-quality images up. In the meantime, I'll be posting translations of the cards, bit by bit until the entire story is up.

Before we get started, some background info. Carddass (aka Carddas) is the name of Bandai's Japanese hobby collectible card line. In January of 1992, Rockman and Carddass teamed up to promote the new game Rockman 4 with Rockman's very own card series. As the Rockman games continued so did the cards, and in December of 1993 the Rockman X Carddass line accompanied the release of the game itself.

The X series set differed from the original cards, in that the card backs now contained information about the game's characters and story rather than just having the game's packaging image on the back. The storytelling aspect of the cards gave way to the idea to tell a completely original story through the use of cards alone. Thus, in 1995 Rockman X Mega Mission came to be, a prequel-of-sorts to Rockman X3. The success of the cards resulted in expanding the line of Rockman X merchandise, such as gashapon mini-figures, model kits, and of course, more card sets. Mega Mission went on to spawn 2 sequels in 1996, helping to tide fans over during the long wait until X4 released in August of 1997. Manga artist Hitoshi Ariga even created a manga adaptation of the first card set in 1996 as well, which was included in his first Rockman comic compilation book, Rockman Remix.

No Carddass sets were released for Rockman 8 or Rockman X4, so Mega Mission 3 became the last of the line. It would seem that the explosive popularity of the cards had burnt itself out just as quickly, but as the Master would put it, for one brief moment (actually a year), they shined as bright as the sun! For Rockman fans, at least.

Mega Mission has held a mythical status for the English-speaking Mega Man fanbase, where images and reliable information about the cards have darted elusively about the internet. It's probably most famous for introducing the character known to many of us as iX, an evil version of our protagonist X. It's also renown for introducing shiny new armors for both X and Zero, and its use of "Limited" versions of the X1-X3 bosses--revived, revamped and remodeled. Sound good? You'll know soon enough.