A game of Triple Triad.
The winner gets to choose a card or more from the loser.
The cards originated when a psychic named Orlan modified these tarot cards for games. The game became popular with soldiers passing time between battles. As its popularity spread, each region developed its own rules and picture variations.
Tutorial - FFVIII Info Corner
Triple Triad (トリプルトライアード, Toripuru Toraiādo?) is a popular card game in the world of Final Fantasy VIII available as a minigame. Conceived by battle system designer Hiroyuki Ito, Triple Triad is a sidequest whose cards can be refined into items via Quezacotl's Card Mod ability. Many of the game's rarer items are most easily found by refining the cards.
According to the Final Fantasy VIII Ultimania, the card game was created by a psychic named Orlan who modified fortune-telling cards for use in a game, coining the name "Triple Triad."[1] Triple Triad was initially played among soldiers, but spread to the common people and by the time of Final Fantasy VIII's events, the game is popular among all age groups.
Triple Triad cards depict different monsters, bosses, Guardian Forces and playable characters who each have different stats. Cards are obtained by defeating enemies in battle (the chance for a card to drop is 9/256 or 3.5%), or by using the GF Quezacotl's Card ability to card the enemy. Depending on the current trade rule, the player can win cards off their opponents in Triple Triad games, and there are side quests that yield cards as rewards.
Template:See Also
Mechanics
Setting up and how to play
Bomb, a fire elemental monster.
Triple Triad is played on a three-by-three (3x3) square grid of blank spaces where the cards will be placed. Each card has four numbers (known as ranks) placed in top left corner; each number corresponds to one of the four sides of the card. The ranks range from one to nine, the letter A representing ten. The top right of the card sometimes has an elemental symbol representing the card's element: Earth, Fire, Water, Poison, Holy, Lightning, Wind, or Ice. Pink cards belong to the opponent and blue cards belong to the player.
In a basic game each player has five cards. A coin-flip decides who begins. The player who wins the coin toss may choose a card to play anywhere on the grid. After the first card is played, the opponent may play a card on any unoccupied space on the board. The game continues with players' turns alternating.
Winning
5 rare cards are in play, including 2 player and 3 GF.
To win, a majority of the total ten cards played (including the one card that is not placed on the board) must be of the player's card color. To do this, the player must capture cards by placing a card adjacent to an opponent's card whereupon the ranks of the sides where the two cards touch will be compared. If the rank of the opponent's card is higher than the player's card, the player's card will be captured and turned into the opponent's color. If the player's rank is higher, the opponent's card will be captured and changed into the player's color instead. Capturing can only occur during that player's turn, and no other opponent can capture a card during said turn.
A draw occurs if the player and the opponent possess equal numbers of cards in their color on the board. Depending on alternate card rules, this can be defined by a sudden death scenario where the first person to capture a card in a new game wins, or by playing until a winner is defined. The winner takes one or more of the loser's cards, depending upon the trade rules in effect.
Types of cards
Template:See Also There are ten card levels. Level 1 cards have low ranks like 1's and 2's and 3's, while level 10 cards have 8's, 9's, and A's. The seven cards that Squall gets for free near the beginning of the game are level 1. Multiple copies of most cards in Level 1 to 7 can be kept, whereas the GF and character cards are one-of-a-kind.
| Image | Description |
|---|---|
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Levels 1 through 5 are monster cards, usually possessing weak numbers. With the exception of the PuPu card, there is no limit to how many of each of these cards exist. |
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Levels 6 and 7 are boss cards, depicting various unique bosses met throughout the game. Like monster cards, there is no limit to how many such cards exist. |
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Levels 8 and 9 are GF cards, which the player can obtain by beating the corresponding GFs or by finding them from certain players throughout the world. Most GF cards have two strong ranks and two weaker ranks. For optional GFs whose Triple Triad cards are won in battle, the player may acquire two of each card, but will only retain one. This may only occur if the player does not acquire the GFs until disc 4, after having won their cards from the CC group aboard the Ragnarok. If a player wins a GF card from a battle when they already had it, the second card never gets added to the inventory. |
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Level 10 cards are player cards, depicting the game's playable characters. Most of these cards are held by someone connected to that person; for instance, Zell's card is held by his mother and Rinoa's by her father General Caraway. For others, like Irvine, who have no obvious connections to other characters in the game, their cards can be harder to find. The player cards typically have three strong ranks and one weaker rank. |
Rule variations
Special rules
A series of special rules vary by region. Wherever the player first starts playing they start with the rules of Balamb, which are simple. When the player challenges someone in a different region, the opponent may ask to play a game with both regions' rules. This will only happen if the previous region the player played cards in has at least one rule the opponent's region does not currently have. This "mixed-rules" game uses all the rules of both regions. One of three outcomes will randomly happen regardless of the player winning, losing, or quitting: a rule from the previous region not used in new region may spread to the new region; a rule from the new region may be abolished in the new region; or, there may be no change. The player may choose not to mix rules by continuing to challenge the person and refusing the offer of a mixed-rules game; eventually the opponent will offer to play a normal game with their region's rules only.
Types of rules are as follows:
| Rule | Description |
|---|---|
| Open | Enables the player to see which cards the opponent is using. |
| Same | When a card is placed touching two or more other cards (one or both of them have to be the opposite color), and the touching sides of each card is the same (8 touching 8 for example), then the other two cards are flipped. Combo rule applies. |
| Same Wall | An extension of the Same rule. The edges of the board are counted as A ranks for the purposes of the Same rule. Combo rule applies. If the Same rule is not present in a region that has Same Wall, Same Wall will not appear in the list of rules when starting a game because it can have no effect without Same but it will be carried with the player to other regions, and can therefore still be spread. |
| Sudden Death | If the game ends in a draw, a sudden death occurs in which a new game is started but the cards are distributed on the side of the color they were on at the end of the game. |
| Random | Five cards are randomly chosen from the player's deck instead of the player being able to choose five cards themselves. |
| Plus | Similar to the Same rule. When one card is placed touching two others and the ranks touching the cards plus the opposing rank equal the same sum, then both cards are captured. Combo rule applies. |
| Combo | Of the cards captured by the Same, Same Wall or Plus rule, if they are adjacent to another card whose rank is lower, it is captured as well. This is not a separate rule; any time Same or Plus is in effect, Combo is in effect as well. |
| Elemental | In the elemental rule, one or more of the spaces are randomly marked with an element. Some cards have elements in the upper-right corner. Ruby Dragon, for example, is fire-elemental, and Quezacotl is thunder-elemental. When an elemental card is placed on a corresponding element, each rank goes up a point. When any card is placed on a non-matching element, each rank goes down a point. This does not affect the Same, Plus and Same Wall rules where the cards' original ranks apply. |
| Retry | The Retry rule does not appear in the game but was dummied. It is unknown what the rule did. |
By playing the game with a fishing Balamb Garden student in Balamb's harbor, the player can reset Balamb's (special) rules, leaving only the trade rule.
Rules per region
List of default rules per region. These are the starting rules; playing with mixed rules may spreads rules to new regions or abolishes rules in a region, and the Queen of Cards can be paid to introduce new rules to a region. See individual location articles to see which rules are played in each location.
| Region | Rules |
|---|---|
| Balamb | Open |
| Galbadia | Same |
| Dollet | Random, Elemental |
| FH | Elemental, Sudden Death |
| Trabia | Random, Plus |
| Centra | Same, Plus, Random |
| Esthar | Elemental, Same Wall |
| Lunar | Same, Plus, Elemental, Same Wall, Random, Sudden Death |
Trade rules
Trade rules dictate which and how many cards the winner can take from the loser.
They are as follows:
| Rule | Rank | Description |
|---|---|---|
| One | 1 | Winner chooses one card from loser. |
| Difference (Diff) |
2 | Winner chooses one card per score difference (2, 4, or 5). |
| Direct | 3 | Players take cards that are their color at the end of the game. |
| All | 4 | Winner takes all. |
Every time a challenge is made there is a chance of a region's trade rule being changed. Rule changes, if triggered, are made when asking someone to play (by default, talking to a card player with 
), before going to the rules screen or playing through the game.
The current trade rule can be changed in three ways.
If the Queen of Cards is in a region, every challenge in that region (including to the Queen herself) has a ~1/3 (90/256) chance of the Queen's current region adopting the Queen's personal trade rule. Every challenge to the Queen will have a ~6/7 (220/256) chance of increasing or decreasing her personal trade rule by one step; this change would occur after the chance of changing the region's rule.
Second, every challenge has a chance of the dominant region's rule being adopted by a random region (possibly itself). The Queen of Cards will tell which region is currently dominant if one asks her about trade rules. The chance is ~9.76% (25/256) for every Dominance level the dominant region has. Playing in the dominant region (or an opponent from that region) increases that region's Dominance by 1, up to 10.
Playing in a non-dominant region (or an opponent from that region) decreases that region's Dominance by 1; if Dominance is 0, the current region becomes the new dominant region with a Dominance of 1.
Finally, every time Dominance is triggered (even if the random region is itself), there is a chance that a random region will adopt the One rule. Every challenge adds about 0-2.7% (0/256 to 7/256) to the degeneration chance. It resets when the chance is above 98% (250/256). If degeneration chance is at least 128 (50%), then asking the Queen about trade rules will have her tell that people are avoiding risky trades.
If the Queen is in the target region, it is easy to manipulate the trade rule. As long as the Queen's personal rule is set to the desired rule, the player can simply repeatedly challenge anyone else in the Queen's region (other than the Queen) until they offer to play with the desired rule. For regions other than the Queen's current region, challenges will cause the dominant rule to start spreading (and affect Dominance), but it is not as easy to reset the rule once degeneration occurs.
The Queen's region cannot be changed in endgame (she's always at the crash site), but her personal trade rule cannot be changed either. Her region and trade rule for rule change purposes will be whichever ones she had at the point of no return.
Quests
Obtaining all cards
After collecting all cards a star appears in the main menu.
The main quest of the Triple Triad minigame can be considered the acquirement of all cards, which gains a star next to the Card section in the menu. The player will need to undertake several smaller quests to get all the rare cards, as well as scour the world to obtain the common cards from either monsters or from other players.
Card Club
In Balamb Garden there is a group of elite Triple Triad players that call themselves the Card Club. The members' identities are a mystery until they reveal themselves to players they deem worthy. Their identities range from random NPCs wandering the Garden to people the player already knows.
If the player completes the side quest they can meet the CC members again at Ragnarok during endgame and win every LV8-10 card they don't currently have in their inventory from them. This includes cards that have been modified into items.
Queen of Cards
The Queen of Cards can be first found in Balamb Town, but after the player loses a rare card to her/wins the rare card back from her, she moves to random towns around the world. If the player finds her and takes on her sidequest, they can find even more rare cards. The goal is to get her to move to Dollet where her artist father will create new rare cards that can be won from certain people in the world.
PuPu card
PuPu is a blue alien whose flying saucer the player can encounter in fixed encounters around the world. Several things must be done in dealing with the alien to get its card. It is Level 5 and is the only rare card below Level 8.
Achievements
Template:See Also The player can earn achievements in the Steam version of Final Fantasy VIII. Playing a game of Triple Triad earns Card player; winning 100 games earns Professional Player; losing a rare card earns Loser; defeating every member in the CC group earns Cards Club Master; and collecting all cards earns Collector.
When the player has a full catalog of cards, a yellow star will appear on the right-hand side of the Card option in the menu. The star does not require the player to simultaneously have a copy of each card, just having held each individual card.
Musical themes
"Shuffle or Boogie" plays in Triple Triad matches. A piano arrangement is included in the Piano Collections: Final Fantasy VIII album.
"Shuffle or Boogie" plays in the music player in Final Fantasy XV after the player buys the Memories of FFVIII soundtrack from Hammerhead for 100 gil.
"Shuffle or Boogie" is one of the three tracks included in the Final Fantasy VIII Music Pack available as DLC for Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy. It is also a battle music in the Dissidia Final Fantasy arcade version.
Other versions
Physical Triple Triad
A real version of Seifer's Triple Triad card, produced by Bandai in 1999.
In 1999, following the game's release, Japanese games company Bandai produced a full set of collectible Triple Triad cards. The set was made up of the 110 cards as seen in the game along with 72 artwork cards and a collector's edition playing mat. The cards have a blue side and a red side. Because the set was only released commercially in Japan and was not generally available in America or Europe, the cards have become a rare collector's item. Counterfeit versions also exist, but the one produced by Bandai is the only officially released Triple Triad collection.
Fanmade
The game remains popular with many free third-party internet versions thriving online. These online editions often add new decks, and many have additional rule sets. An unofficial port of the original Final Fantasy VIII version also exists for Android phones.
A fan-made Triple Triad game called GL Triad for Microsoft Windows was developed by Rich Whitehouse and was released in 2008. The game requires an ISO image of the first disc of Final Fantasy VIII to run the software.
Gallery
- Real Triple Triad Cards
Trivia
Orlan in the tutorial background.
- In an interview with the Official UK PlayStation Magazine, it was stated that Triple Triad was added to Final Fantasy VIII because cards are a popular hobby in Japan.
- Orlan, the psychic who invented the card game in the world of Final Fantasy VIII, is a reference to Orran Durai from Final Fantasy Tactics. In the Triple Triad tutorial one can spot a Black Mage in the background, with Orlan shown on the left and a warrior that bares a passing resemblance to Ramza, from the aforementioned game, on the right.
- The cards of Doomtrain, Rinoa and Edea are the only ones to have two A's.
References
External links
- Triple Triad Advance & Triple Triad Extreme & Triple Triad Flash Online online multiplayer versions of Triple Triad
- The 7 Elders single player version of Triple Triad