This is the Digital Devil Story Chronicle trading card set. Or... the Shin Megami Tensei Chronicle trading card set.. depending on whether you read the japanese or english on the box. :P This set of cards was released in 2000 and there are a total of 185 cards, not including the Present Card. A box of cards contains 24 packs of cards with each pack containing 6 cards. The cards are always divided into 4 "Devil" cards, 1 "Character" card and 1 "Checklist" (aka, Puzzle) card. Additionally, 1 "Devil" card may be (1:6 chance) replaced by a "Special" SP card. Each box also contains 1 very rare "Box Special" card. A box of cards originally retailed for 14400 yen, believe it or not. A pack of cards is worth 600 yen.

This set of cards focuses itself on the Devil Summoner and Persona series of games and doesn't have any unique link to Shin Megami Tensei. So... the set covers Devil Summoner, Soul Hackers, Megami Ibunroku Persona and both Persona 2 games. The interesting thing about these cards (and perhaps the reason they are so expensive) is that they are not made from paper like normal trading cards. They are actually made from plastic, like tiny little pencil boards. Another cool thing about these cards is that most of them are translucent (like a stained glass window.) Only the parts of the card with art or lettering are opaque, leaving the image backgrounds capable of having light pass through them. It's pretty neat. Additionally, every card in the set, aside from the Specials, is divided into groups of nine cards which are related. These cards all share a similar background image and color. For example, there are 9 cards depicting characters from Soul hackers, 9 for Persona and 9 for Devil Summoner. This also applies to the Devil cards and Checklist cards. Another little thing you might notice is that several of the romanized names are strangely wrong for an officially licensed product.

Let me explain a little bit about each type of card. The most common type of card is the Devil Card. There are 108 Devil cards and they are numbered 1-108. There is no header like the other cards (unless you want to count the word "No." but I don't.) You have everything from fan favorites like Jack Frost and Nekomata to a whole set of angels (including Power, Principalities, Archangel, Virtue, etc) to heavy hitters like Suzaku, Susanoo, Thor and Odin. You get 4 of these in each pack. The second type of card is the Character Card. There are 27 character cards which are numbered C-01 to C-27. They are divided into 3 sections with the first section depicting characters from Devil Summoner, the second section depicting characters from Soul Hackers and the last section depicting some from Persona 2. You always get 1 of these in every pack. The third type of card is the Checklist Card. There are a total of 36 Checklist cards which are numbered L-01 to L-36. These cards are divided into 4 puzzles, so I sometimes refer to them as puzzle cards. You can see the puzzles below by clicking the appropriate links. Interestingly, although the checklist (which appears on the reverse side of the puzzle image) indicates the Megami Ibunroku Persona cards to be L-10 through L-18, but they are actually L-19 through L-27. The most obvious thing you might notice about these cards is that they are the only ones not made of plastic! They are actually made like normal trading cards. Anyway, there is always one of these in every pack.

And now we enter the special cards. There are 3 types of special cards in this series, one of which I don't believe is obtainable normally. The first type of special is the Special Card. There are 9 of these cards and they are numbered SP-01 thorugh SP-09. These cards are inserted randomly into one in every 6 packs of cards. When this card appears in a pack, it will replace a "Devil" card so there will still be 6 cards total in a pack. So, on average, one would have to spend 3600 yen (retail) just to get one SP card! The second type of special is the Box Special. This card is not numbered, but there are a total of five Box Specials (see below.) These Box Specials are each some variation of the "Frost" character. Another interesting thing about these 5 cards is that most of the image is translucent, not just the background. You can find 1 Box Special in each box of DDS Chronicle cards. (Does that mean you would have to spend a minimum of 72,000 yen retail to get all five!?) Lastly, we have the Present Card. I really don't know anything about this card besides that it's listed on the Checklist as "Frost Five." I'm assuming that it's some kind of promotional card or some kind of rare primium that you have to send in for after meeting certain requirements.

I set up scans of each card that should be viewable if you click on the appropriate links below. Each scan has 9 cards, which works well, because the cards are nicely divided into sets of nine (look at them and you'll see what I mean.) The names of the cards I have listed below were taken directly from the card list, so please don't bother telling me that some are wrong. I do realize that they are wrong, but I'm going to stick with what's on the card. Translucency is not visable on my scanner due to the white backing, but I assure you - anything that's not lettering or a character is translucent.