It’s not quite the rush you’d feel pulling some rare Pokémon card out of a pack, but Wikipedia Gacha does the best to imitate that feeling. For free. A new browser-based game by the name of Wikipedia Gacha has sprung up in the past few days, turning those random Wikipedia entries into a collectable trading card gacha game. It’s awesome.
It’s simple. You visit the website and start opening packs. Each pack contains five cards (Wikipedia articles), each assigned an ‘Atk’ and ‘Def’ score as well as a rarity, determined by the entry’s rank on WikiRank. Cards with a ‘100’ score are classified as Legend Rare, while Ultra Rare is anything with a 90+ score. You get the idea.
This coulda been an NFT
Packs are entirely free, with the website offering 10 ‘Daily Packs’ which you can breeze through in a matter of minutes. While this is happening, a minute-long timer begins, and refills a pack every time it hits zero. If waiting a minute is still too long, you can watch a quick ad to refill all ten. A card’s attack and defence stats are determined based on the page’s popularity and depth, respectively. ‘Gay bathhouse’ is deep, apparently.
Out of 56 packs opened, we managed to snag five Ultra Rare cards and three Super Special Rare cards. Nothing Legendary thus far. You can review your collection under the ‘Collection’ tab, to see how many unique cards out of the *checks notes* 6,746,498 cards that anyone could pull.
Then you’ve got to send your cards to do battle. Well, you don’t have to, but the option is there. We loaded up a couple of battles, entering a 1v1 with our best card as well as a 5v5 team battle. A story mode is coming soon, apparently. Still, we can’t help but feel that the battle mechanics could go a little deeper. As it is, a battle involves little more than selecting the card and watching the health bar trickle down until one of them is dead.
Don’t ignore the educational aspect that Wikipedia Gacha delivers, especially when your computer teacher creeps up behind you during a lesson. Clicking a card you’ve just pulled is all you need to be whisked away to the Wikipedia article, and for learning to begin. Well done, @harusugi5, you’ve got a winner on your hands.
