[2] It has inspired several children's card games in arcades released by Taito, Sega, Konami, Bandai Namco, Takara Tomy, Atlus, and Square Enix.

A long time ago, there was a forest full of trees inhabited by insects and fairies.

The following things can happen during a battle: Tournament mode is a 2-out-of-3 match between two players, and Tag Battle mode allows players to cooperatively play two beetles as a tag team against an opponent, where they can perform joint attacks if they are compatible types.

This was presumably to prevent people from simply printing out an image of the card online, and scanning the bar code on the reader.

Special Skills are activated when certain conditions have been met, such as pressing a move on the first count of the countdown, experiencing a tie, etc.

If the right skill card is scanned with the right beetle, the result will be a "Super Max" Compatibility and will deal tremendous damage if used.

These cards are normally awarded by Sega and other officiary bodies to winners of major Mushiking championships or tournaments, and are not dispensed by machines.

The story follows the adventures of Zach, who is continuously searching for a treasure on a fictional planet, Dekaiya, while at the same time another, rivaling protagonist, Kabuto Maru, is seeking Mushiking.

A Mushiking anime, produced by TMS Entertainment and broadcast by TV Tokyo, aired from April 6, 2005 until March 3, 2006.

In July 2007, Sega released a Nintendo DS version of the game in Japan to commemorate the five year anniversary of the franchise.

The game comes with a starter deck that includes 7 cards, three of which give a random beetle in a specialized section every time they are used (rock, paper, and scissors).