Dating back to the begining of trading cards there have been games played around collectible cards.
I have never been one to play card games based around sports athletes though.
There has been the famous 1951 red back cards and 1968 Topps game cards, but between Showdown and Attax I never could actually get into playing the actual game.
Topps recognized that true gamers might not want to play Attax because the sharp corners would get damaged. This lead to them curving the edges in 2011 from the standard corners used in 2010.
They also went to a standard looking back similar to what Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh use so that you can't predict what card you are drawing.
I haven't bought a collectible trading card game for nearly 5 years and haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh or MTG with friends for nearly 7 years.
