ムシキング | Mushiking: The King of Beetles

Originally posted: 5th February 2026

I remember when I was a teenager wandering around a little arcade while I was on holiday with my family, and coming across a machine I'd never seen before. It was called Dinosaur King, and get this- it gave you free trading cards. Needless to say, this was the coolest thing I had ever seen, I only had enough money to play it once, but I remember getting a nice Einiosaurus card from it and managed to play a few rounds trying to get my dinosaur to win against other dinosaurs, until eventually I lost. I kept the card for years, but never saw the machine again unfortunately.

Years later, I found out that Dinosaur King had a predecessor- Mushiking! A similar arcade game with the same mechanics. The machine gives you a random card when you play (and booster packs could be bought separately as well), you would then swipe your card's barcode into the machine, and your insect on the card would become a 3D fighting companion. You would then go through battles with the computer against different bugs, using a rock-paper-scissors type battle system to determine who would win.

Both Dinosaur King and Mushiking were created by SEGA. I've never encountered a Mushiking machine before (it seems that they had a very limited western release compared to Dinosaur King) and honestly when I found out that a bug-centric version of the machine I had played existed, I felt a bit ripped off! Dinosaurs are really cool, but... bugs are cooler! So I've never had the chance to play this myself, or own any of the cards. But if it was anything like Dinosaur King, I'm sure it was very fun.

Mushiking was successful enough to spawn a manga series, an anime, and a few handheld console games as well, although I'm not aware of how much of this is available in English.

There have been a few iterations of the Mushiking arcade games and cards. Over time, the barcode system evolved from an actual barcode which was printed along an edge of the card, to a smaller barcode near the bottom of the card, and eventually the barcodes were removed from the front of the print completely. The cards themselves were re-released a few times with different designs as the game got new versions. You can view the cards from different versions of the game on the official Mushiking website!

Fairly recently, Mushiking had a crossover with the Trading Card Game Cardfight!! Vanguard which features cards very similar to the original Mushiking arcade game, complete with the nostaligic edge barcodes and all. See below for an image! I stopped playing trading card games a long time ago, but I have to admit, I was very tempted by this release to get back into it!

As a bonus, check this out! I stumbled across these really cool miniature Mushiking Arcade Cabinet Gashapon figures! These were released in 2023 for the 20th anniversary of the arcade game, aren't they really adorable? There's a few styles to collect based on specific releases of the cabinet, and they come with different game screens as well. There was also a series of beetle figures that came with miniature Mushiking cards released alongside the arcade cabinet, it's such a cool idea honestly.

Most of my information for this article came from the Mushiking Wikipedia page, and also the Mushiking official website. I hope that one day, I'll get to play a Mushiking arcade cabinet myself! Or, maybe at least get a few of the cards.