It was developed by BEC and published by Bandai, and was first made available in Japan in December 2000, with English releases in North America and Europe arriving in June 2001 and July 2002, respectively.

Players sacrifice Digimon in their hand in order to build up "evolution points" or DP.

As the game starts off players are able to choose one of three Digimon to be their first Partner card (Veemon, Hawkmon and Armadillomon).

[3] GameSpot's Gerald Villoria felt that while the title "accurately duplicates the flow and gameplay of the tabletop game, its simplicity will turn off any but the youngest of players," recommending it only to those who either enjoyed the real-life card game or "diehard" fans of the Digimon anime.

"[8] GamePro stated that the game "can become addictive after you master its confounding rules" but that it was hindered by "unpredictable card draws that cause the matches to vacillate between frustrating and extremely boring.