And now to conclude our look at our trio of new games. I was actually going to post these all in one post. Seeing how insanely long it was, I decided to do this 3-day breakup. Could you imagine if I left it all together? You’d never get anything else done for the week!
So don’t think that your friendly neighborhood game show nut isn’t looking out for you. You can invite me to dinner as a thank you later. 
Out of all the new games, this was the one we were the most excited for. In fact, when we decided to create Anime Game Show Super Show, Card Sharks was the first show we all said we wanted to do, before we even created the voting list. We have Francis to thank for suggesting it first in early 2011, because as soon as he said it, we all immediately thought it was so crazy that it just might work.
Since then, I have worked tirelessly on the preparation of this game. As we all came up with these surveys, I’ve scoured the con message boards for places we’ve been to, as well as on cosplay.com, and polled people face to face at our various shows. Everyone that’s taken part has had a lot of fun, and we got some very interesting stories along the way, too. I hope you’ll take our surveys as well and share your thoughts and experiences, too.
But that’s the easy part. What about those cards?!
As soon as we decided to do this, I knew exactly who I needed to call on: my mom. As she works for a formerly family-owned printing & pre-press company, I knew I had a shot at this with her help. Amazingly, she agreed to help, and after several months of finding down time at the shop, the cards were made. I then spent the last few weekends leading up to I-Con spray-gluing the cards together. The decks were finally finished at 3AM the night before the con! We got a lot of compliments after the show about them. Heck, a couple people wanted to buy them off us! True story. But trust me, for how much these would have cost us, I don’t think these cards are ever getting made again unless we have to replace some. But none of this would have been possible without my mom’s help. Mom, we bow to you for all the help. Thanks!
We will, however, replace our rack setup. We just used simple children’s picture frames from IKEA, and to make things more interesting, it was raining the day of the con, and when I went to pick Robert & Francis up on the way, half the frames fell out when we opened the door into a giant puddle, along with my cell phone! Everything was fine, but those frames, wet or dry, can’t hold the weight of two cards leaning against them. We’ll work on it, don’t worry.
Incidentally, Card Sharks once went into the statistics on their cards, so we will as well. Each deck weigh about 9 1/2 pounds, give or take a few ounces, and each card measures 16×12 inches, the same size as the real decks created for the show. (Jim Perry said the cards were 24×12, but that was wrong. I measured both a real playing card and the pixels of a screenshot to confirm this.) As far as the images on the cards go, I was originally planning to only have the royal cards (10 through Ace) have character images on them, but it was the team’s decision to go all the way with all 52 cards representing 52 different anime. We took the characters that are the faces of their respective anime… or the villains for the 8′s (Robert & Trevor’s idea)… assigned them to their cards, and now you see the result. Coming soon, as I promised during the show, we will post the full list of the deck so you can see who else will be popping up. Feel free to take guesses in the meantime.
And if you’re wondering about the graphic overlays this time, they’re there because Francis had to do a LOT of moving about with the camera to see past the player’s heads as the game went on. It’s not his fault, though. When we went back for the cards after our early shows, they were so bulky to carry that we had no way to carry the tripod with us, and none of us had the energy to go back to the car for it. We’ve got a hand truck ready for next time to work past this.
So with that, our first set of new games from the Anime Game Show Super Show came to an end. Now I know that you might consider Hollywood Squares a new game, too, but that’s I-Con’s show, not ours. Sara Dorchak simply asked us to host that, too, because she liked our ideas so much, and decided to help us get more panel time so that we could get our badges comped. Once again, Sara, you rock!
And now, I’m beat from writing all this. I’m gonna go recharge and get ready for AnimeNEXT. Seeya there, gang.
