Club Penguin's Complex Ninja Lore 

the fact that you managed to get an ORIGINAL club pengiun composer to come back and compose a whole new theme for the unused shadow element is incredible

It's so sad that the original creators and team absolutely loved this game and put so much time and heart into it, but then Disney got hold of it and everyone started quitting because they lost all creative freedom, and Disney ran the game head first into the ground (Edit so people stop commenting the exact same thing over and over again. If you read the first few comments, you can see that all of these points have already been made. I understand that Disney owned Club Penguin while it was still popular, but Disney still ultimately caused it's downfall. Their decisions and treatment of the game are the things that eventually ruined it. I stopped playing because their ad campaigns and events go so ingrained into everything it didn't feel the same, and most of the new content had to be paid for so I was getting bullied by members for being poor. They restricted the creator's creative freedom, which led to them leaving and to the events being less thought out. Disney owned it for years, but their actions also slowly ruined it. I stand by my statement that Disney ruined Club Penguin.)

club penguin’s lore, myths, and special events, are something truly special. sooo ahead of it’s time and props to the team and everyone involved mann

I love how the club penguin creators did everything in their power to encourage children's imagination and curiosity about the world. Making previous "theories" turn into the reality of the game instead of simply doing something else. They looked at the club penguin audience and said "ok we can roll with this" and really stepped up to make a lot of kids childhoods by simply acknowledging their ideas that ultimately brought the entire fanbase and creators together. Sadly later club penguin got taken over by disney crossover events rather than cool original stories lines.

When developers like these rework their thought process to be like that of a child’s then it always makes a more fun and imaginative game. I seriously commend these interviewees as well as the people they previously worked with on Club Penguin for making such a beautiful final product. It is a shame the game isn’t around for future generations, but it certainly cemented an idea that children’s content doesn’t need to be geared towards only a specific audience, and should still have effort and care put into it.

MAN, Chris Hendricks is an absolute genius, the Elemental theme is the "Oh yeah, it's all coming together now" that theme sent chills down my spine

The amount of TIMES I tried to defeat sensei before getting a black belt, only to now find out it was impossible? THE HOURS IVE SPENT

1:01:20 I like to think that, lore wise, Sensei's original plan WAS to have card jitsu snow introduced the same way the other two elements were (snow disaster, fixing the island, new chamber in the ninja room, new fun snowball minigame), but Tusk's resurface forced him to.... change his plans a little

"you cant just introduce random characters" introduces random snowmen

Can we talk about how ahead of its time club penguin was with its monthly content updates? It seems so normal nowadays to play games that constantly expand upon themselves with new things to do every few months, but CP did this effortlessly, consistently, and 10 years prior before this became an industry norm. What an amazing game wow

about the gender neutral thing, as young girl i was so glad that club penguin gave me a lot of different games without the judgement of liking boy or girl things. I could dance, i could be a spy, i could be a ninja, i could fish... it was really freeing

i remember buying the physical cards in elementary school, and i would battle the boy i had a crush on with the cards during recess. nearly half of our entire grade/recess population would crowd around us and be deadly silent as they waited for us to play our cards, before screaming at the top of their lungs after every play to the point the teachers would try to break it up and end up getting invested as well.

Honestly I really wish all the Card Jitsu games could be standalone games online. They're just so good, and the private servers never have enough players for proper games.

“My sister was now in middle school so she was too cool for club Penguin” Me who played up until high school when it shut down with millions of coins on my account 💀

When you said "Our penguins are still waddling on and making new friends," I literally got chills and a smile beamed up on my face. 'Club Penguin' is always going to have a special place in all of our hearts.

its literally SICKENING that the ninja hideout doors and amulet stuff was never finished . it would have been so satisfying . should have finished it!!!!!! shaken to my core

I remember one time where I was playing the Tusk boss fight and all the players went offline before the battle started except for me. I was the snow ninja, the one with the lowest damage output. Me and sensei alone almost defeated Tusk by a sliver and it's the best achievement I did while playing Club Penguin.

I had a completely different experience with card-jitsu snow. I would sit and play for hours as the snow ninja and remember winning pretty often.

I can’t stop laughing over the petty “Thank you Kayla” over your sister being 12 and too cool & old for Club Penguin, leading to you getting a membership. Real sibling stuff.

I had NO idea that the three founders left when they did. The new management explains the weird creative decisions like the introduction of time travel to the lore (Which was a terrible idea in my opinion), overabundance of puffle types and puffle related stuff, and the newer art style that just makes the penguins look wrong. However, the story around Card-Jitsu Snow was one thing that I really liked, along with the newer EPF (Although the downplaying of the original purpose of Secret Agents, to act as young community moderator-alikes.) events like Blackout and the addition of Voice Acting.

Narratively speaking, I think Tusk specializing in Snow is a clever story choice. Snow is only powerful when used in tandem with others, as explained by the whole "One snowflake / Many snowflakes" thing and by the interviewed developer. So having Tusk, the solitary villain, devote his life to mastering Snow is incredible as he is destined to fail. Which makes the players and Sensei defeating Tusk as a team a good narrative finale to the story.

The "absurdly long and deep dive essay about a '00 and '10 thing that doesn't really matter" is my favorite youtube category, witch I've only seen Keyan, Quinton Reviews and Lisa Fevral do

The Card-Jitsu Shadow and Elemental themes are actually fire. I wish Club Penguin had never fallen into Disney’s clutches, so that the creators would actually have creative freedom. Who knows what we could’ve had.

52:15 I remember that, I REMEMBER THAT! OH MY GOD, DO I REMEMBER THAT! I was one of those who NEVER had a membership, and thus never got to wear the cool exclusive clothes, play the exclusive games or enter the exclusive. So when this event came along, that turned card jitsu fire and water free for everyone, and allowed me to do all 3, even for a limited time, BOY did I grind the hell out of both games. I think I stayed a water ninja until snow came about because I was afraid I couldn't rewear them afterwards

I love the way these game developers speak about the game. I owe a big part of my childhood to them and I didn't even know it! Also, Chris Hendrick's music still lives in my head rent free to this day. It was so nice listening to those two unofficial themes, I feel obliged to listen to them until they're stuck in my head too lol.

I literally was such a god at this game when I played. I always baited with the white belt when I was secretly maxed lol.

I loved Cardjitzu Snow, but whenever I played, I was always the Ice Ninja. Because anyone who ever played knows that when someone else played the Ice Ninja, he/she always had no idea what they were doing and refused to heal you.

Thinking about it now, if club Penguin had gone on longer and they had put more time into fleshing out Tusk as the main ninja villain, it would have been cool to have gotten, possibly, a villain team up between Herbert and Tusk, where the ninjas and spies had to team up to defeat the bigger threat. Would have been a lot of opportunity for Tusk and Herbert to interact, with their personalities clashing, and bringing the two biggest parts of club Penguin together for one big team up. I could see Tusk and Herbert constantly arguing, with Herbert wanting a future where all the snow has been melted and he could live in his warm paradise, while Tusk obviously would have problems with that as a master of Snow. The two villains could team up to accomplish their mutual goal of destroying Penguin-kind, but ultimately bring their own downfall when they realize they have opposite intentions. Idk it would have been fun, a similar vibe to the fire vs water party only this time it’s ninjas vs spies and ultimately you have to work together to save the day. It also would have lifted up Tusk to be a greater staple in the club Penguin lore, as it is I remember playing the snow ninja game all the time, it was my favorite one, but I don’t remember Tusk AT ALL despite beating the game

The day when Disney announced that Club Penguin was shutting down, I screamed at the top of my lungs "CARD-JITSU NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" and cried for a solid minute. Although I stopped playing the game years before the announcement, I loved Card-jitsu with all my flesh and bones and just abruptly losing it was a big stab to the liver.

Something about hearing him say that Shadow was the first one / original just makes SO much sense. And it might be an unpopular opinion, but I think I prefer that than having a whole separate game and concept

There's no one on the planet quite like a RU-vidr making a documentary about some niche topic. Like, Kevin Perjurer pulls off absolutely incredible twists, Izzzyzzz records various internet topics/legends in detail, and Keyan Carlile gets us these awesome perspectives!

1:04:00 Say what you want about Chris being the best musician, but Norrie made a good effort in Snow, and it's reflected so well in elementals too by him. He clearly got inspired by the theme itself and brought one final masterpiece to us fans.

It's nice to see that there are RU-vidrs who care enough about Club Penguin (as I do) to create feature-length long essays about the game. Brings back memories of saving all my high-value cards 'til the end of the game, and baiting people with a white / orange belt to get easy wins. Thanks for this video!

Card-Jitsu was incredibly cool to kid-me. As for the variants; I can't remember anything about Card-Jitsu Fire (other than the shape), I never got the hang of Card-Jitsu water, and I remember being one of the few people in my Card-Jitsu Snow games to actually heal people as the Ice Ninja. Also all the hype around Card-Jitsu Shadow, as well as my extreme dissapointment when it never released in the entire ~decade I played the game (I haven't got to the point in the video where Shadow is discussed btw). Edit: also, in case you're taking video suggestions, how about a Club Penguin iceberg (not that one)?

Man, I wish I was part of the community when the ninjas were first being teased. The dojo and sensei were both incredibly well known by the time I had started playing. Sensei and the ninjas were always my favorite, but I never knew how important they really were.

Dude the line at the end about the island still being out there somewhere and our penguins still waddling around and making new friends made me genuinely sentimental lol

It's so sad to hear you hated card jitsu snow. Snow was my favorite as a kid, I would always be the water one on it. Knowing now that TRPGs are my favorite video game genre, looking back it makes a lot of sense that Snow was my favorite since my computer didn't handle Water well and Fire wasn't exactly mentally engaging for me like Snow was. Also, I wanted to play Shadow so very badly as a kid, it was really cool to hear them talk about Shadow and Elemental

i was one of the kids whos computer couldnt handle card-jitsu water. i never managed to gain the full water suit from it because of the technology i had. im patiently waiting for one of those club penguin reboot websites to put in the three element dojos so i can finally complete my childhood dream of having all three gems on my amulet other than the whole water debacle, i absolutely loved the card-jitsu games. the original and fire were really fun, but snow was easily my favorite. i loved the narrative it built and the genuine challenge that facing tusk was. i really miss those games, and i wish club penguin was still around so i could go back just to play those and the spy missions boys cry at titanic. men cry at endgame. legends cry at card-jitsu snow lore edit: i now know about New Club Penguin!! these are prime card-jitsu gamer hours

What an excellent video. I genuinely learned so much from the interviews and breakdown. I didn't realize that the game meant so much to the developers as well. I think that's one of the reasons Club Penguin was special: both the developers and the players were so passionate about it and, in a lot of ways, worked together to make it what it was. Developers would create the world and characters and activities, while the players populated the world, gave it life, and even contributed ideas for some of the stories and features that eventually made it into the game. It was just a wonderful experience. I remember I screamed so loud when I finally beat Sensei in the original Card-Jitsu...

Man, not only is this one of the most well constructed and researched Club Penguin I’ve watched, the simple fact you got the man himself to compose CJ Shadow’s theme after all these years fulfills me so much. AND Elemental is insane. Thank you.

Snow was always my favorite one, especially because it was the one that unlocked the backstory cutscenes. It was too bad that not as many people played it (I waited so long just waiting for other people).

11:13 Interviewer: Do you just speak in haiku? Sensei: *with the deep voice of Optimus Prime* No.

I hit my ‘too cool for club penguin’ phase just before snow came out. Very interesting to reflect on all this and see what I missed as an adult now. A bit nostalgic too!

Heading how passionate and excited the developers were about making these games, even a decade later, makes me so happy. I hope they realize how important this important was to so many kids childhoods! All of their work really did not go without appreciation for sure, even if it was mainly appreciated by kids

will the unofficial official themes for shadow and elemental be released individually? love them

Developer insight on Club Penguin is so fun to listen to. It really shows how their thought process shaped the final result of the product, and the obstacles they had to get by.

Seeing all these love letters to club penguin in the comments really make my heart melt 🥺. The creators LOVED Easter eggs which is why I loved this game. You can tell how much fun they had putting secret things. I remember every month I’d click around for secret things. I stopped playing once Disney took over because I knew I’d dislike it. I knew they’d ruin it. To some extent they didn’t (more funding) but to another extent they did 😅

Club Penguin is such a special thing to me, hearing the developers talk about the game so passionately and even the composer coming back and making music for both shadow AND elemental is so amazing and touching. Thank you for this video, it made me incredibly happy to watch :D

Card jitsu was basically my childhood growing up. It’s nice to see a full in depth video about it all. I didn’t realise “shadow” was a thing. I know Club Penguin Rewritten is off brand but hopefully they bring back the element fights in the future to relive some memories.

While I enjoyed some of the disney parties because I was and am still a huge fan of the content disney produces (because fuck the company) I think they also dove all the original ideas for parties into the ground, the ones that made it so damn unique... and gave no creative control to the original creators. It's tragic, the death of online MMOs always makes me sad

9:50 Dojo music 11:55 Dojo fighting music 28:10 Fire Dojo music 29:50 Card Jitsu Fire theme 30:10 Card Jitsu Fire theme (extended) 39:35 Water Dojo music 40:35 Water Dojo fighting music 1:03:02 Snow Dojo music 1:04:04 Snow Dojo fighting music 1:10:43 Den of Tusk music 1:21:59 Shadow music 1:25:41 Elemental music

man you don't understand how nostalgic 26:47 that card-jitsu fire trailer was for me, I remember just watching it over and over again being so hyped for it back in 2009, I literally remember everything the announcer saids in the trailer even though I haven't seen the trailer in like 11 years wow

I was not ready for that wave of nostalgia. I started playing Club Penguin in 2008 and this brought back so many memories

They shouldve made the thing with Fire-Water-Snow as a prelude to a villain. That Sensei was recruiting strong penguins who could master the elements so they could fight a Shadow-based villain, named Akuma. And that Sensei had spent his life trying to stop Akuma. If Card Jitsu had more villains, it would do way better. Tusk was a good idea to have. I think the Snow combat couldve been a shadow where your allies are trusted to know how to wield the Elements. Unpopular opinion, they could have tried like some forbidden elements like Lightning or Wind, and maybe Darkness/Shadow. So you had to stop Penguins or Villains that used those forbidden elements.

My experience for snow jitsu was very different. Let me start at the beginning. On the Thursday morning of card jitsu snow. My 11 year old self woke up around 5 in the morning. Stuck down the stairs and went onto the laptop the family used. I remembering reloading into club penguin with a shaking anticipation to play the new snow jitsu. I click as fast as I could to go to the dojo and get to the ice temple. I went to battle the snowmen, and I was excited to see that the leaks were everything they said. Surprisingly, I was a very smart 11 year old when it came to video games. I liked the ice shuriken penguin because I liked the range, mobility and healing factor to him. It was also leaked that snowmen would prioritize attacks against the snow shuriken penguin if I was in attack range. Armed with this knowledge I went into a game that took about a minute to find, and I watched the fruits of my study blossom. I stayed close to teammates to maximize damage. I occasionally diverged away to harass the tank snowman because he is the only one that can’t hit me when I’m within range of damaging him. And then falling back to heal and to not get prioritized by the snowmen when my health was mid. My teammates for most of the matches were very competent, surprising to hear that not everyone had my luck. Then we’d combo strategically. Like me using my snow card to heal all three of us. If one wasn’t within the 3 by 3 but was 1 space away. They’d cleverly step in. The combo was usually with the fire guy to stun the tanks that was harassing the water hammer penguin. It was just a lot of fun once I got to the point that we kept getting to the bonus rounds. It just made me proud that our teamwork prevailed against strong waves of enemies. I wish you had my experience though, it was disheartening to hear you didn’t have as much fun.

This brought back good memories. I remember grinding out the original belts fondly and you're right that the worldbuilding really made you feel like things were always happening at the time on the island. My avatar is of a video thumbnail of the cove in the fire scavenger hunt back when that was an option on youtube and I still think it looks nice. Fire was neat and I liked the reactions, Water was barely playable, and I liked the idea of Card Jitsu Snow but didn't really succeed but it got me into Fire Emblem. Very interesting to hear about the developers' stories and all the different prerelease plans that didn't make it in behind the scenes in hindsight.

All the love to Chris Hendricks for composing the lost soundtrack of the childhood we couldn’t live

thank you for keeping this alive

I’d love to see you go over the spy lore in club penguin too! That’s what I got into as a kid, I remember being so upset when they made it less secret and dumbed didn’t the missions :(

I started playing Club Penguin within the first year or so of creation and immediately fell in love with it! I’m 24 and honestly still deeply saddened it’s gone.. It was my whole childhood and like many as I got older I continued to play right up until the end I had a club Penguin boyfriend and we “dated” about 3 years and during this time met up on the site regularly and he would send me a post card every single week consistently for those 3 years (often he would send more but I knew at the end of every week he would send me one) Honestly I still think about it because the commitment was so precious and took actual effort to send me one every week like that plus all the other stuff lol

11:23 That moment the yellow belt is trying to take senseis students away from him This is such a well formatted video, I'm so glad you made this! Thank you!

Lol when you said that thing like Card Jitsu Water was ready to play...assuming your computer could handle it because the one thing I remember about card jitsu water was my computer could barely handle it and the hardest part of it was loading in before automatically losing

For some reason, I've been bingign Club Penguin video essays this last week. It's brought back some of the warmest memories I had with Club Penguin as a whole, and even reminded me of a core memory I associated with the game. My birthday falls on November 25th. I was lucky enough that both Card Jiutsu Fire and the end of Blackout fell a day before my birthday, and it was easily the highlight of my Club Penguin profie. No screenshots or anything of Legoman011125, sadly. My penguin is lost to time. :(

As a kid who started playing club penguin around 2011 I absolutely despised the water ninja game, i didnt understand it and it was laggy as hell, i did however love the fire one and spent ages playing that. When the snow game was introduced I was blown away with the new artwork and character models, they looked so damn cool and I only really played the game because of the story element. I wanted to find out what was the sensei's backstory and always felt a little bad for Tusk. This was my experience as a kid, but now knowing all the changes behind the scenes i get why such drastic changes were made for the Snow game and others. I genuinely really enjoyed some stuff that disney did, because as a kid you love to see your favorite characters in your favorite online game, but I will forever find bittersweet how we never got to see the ideal Club penguin game from the original creative team and all these ideas that never got to be finished. I'm so sad that club penguin is gone but it stands as an example that if you're really passionate about something it can truly be a huge project, even if its really silly.

Man this brings me back to the times in Club Penguin where I would sit and just look at the stuff you could get with a Membership. I never had one, but I would always sit there and wonder "What if" Also Card Jitsu Snow was absolutely fire I loved it. I was a Water Hammer Main

Card-Jitsu was why I played Club Penguin. Don't get me wrong, I loved puffles and the EPF just as much as anyone else, and Operation Blackout is definitely my fondest memory of the original, but it was always Card-Jitsu that had me coming back-specifically two of the elemental variants. The original will always be near and dear to my heart, but the modified gameplay of Fire and Water were practically addicting-I got the hang of Fire very quickly, and despite the lag and my shitty computer at the time Water was my absolute favorite to play. I can even remember drawing and sending in concept art for what the hub area for Card-Jitsu: Shadow could look like. I even think I got a response back, which was mind-blowing for me at the time. So when Snow was announced I was excited-probably the most excited I had ever actually been for a Club Penguin announcement! I had joined after Fire and Water had come out, but I had participated in the Fire vs Water party and I was really excited to see what Snow had to offer. I...kind of hated it, to be honest. The party was underwhelming, the Dojo redesign and removal of the Ninja Hideout genuinely upset me, I didn't like the gameplay very much and the progression was painfully slow-made slower still due to lengthy games and even lengthier waiting times. I had already been getting bored of Club Penguin by that point, but what happened with Snow was the final nail in the coffin for me, and I stopped playing entirely. I didn't even bother getting the final gem, and when I heard about the parties and increase in Disney marketing afterwards...it was probably best I left when I did. It's not all bad, though-Club Penguin Rewritten has finally gotten Card-Jitsu working again after Flash died, and replaying it has been a blast. I was genuinely surprised with how much fun I was having re-earning my black belt and ninja mask, and I'm actually excited for the future! Hopefully they'll have an easier time reimplementing Fire and Water-along with Snow, though I think given the size of it compared to the other two it'd be better to just rework it. It might take awhile, but I don't mind waiting. And who knows? They've made a lot of custom content recently-maybe they'll do what the original game couldn't and actually make something of all the Card-Jitsu: Shadow speculation. It'd be cool if that amulet mural opened up once you got all three gems and lead to the ~secret underground lair of the Shadow Ninjas~ or something. But whatever comes next, or if nothing ever does, it's just...nice to have Card-Jitsu back. I missed it a lot more than I thought I would. EDIT: CARD-JITSU ELEMENTAL ALSO GOES VERY HARD, AND I LIKE THE IDEA THAT THE FIRST GAME WAS "SHADOW". BOTH CARD-JITSU SHADOW AND CARD-JITSU ELEMENTAL SOUND SO GOOD.

I love the staff playing into the kid’s imagination with the ninja part so they actually feel heard i wish this stuff could come back

I absolutely LOVE that they put in lore and a backstory for Senei Wu and his friend turned nemesis Tusk. Ninjas were always my thing. It made me happy that they decided to make a story out of it.

YES! Finally someone is talking about the best game of Club Penguin! OMG, I loved card-jitsu sooo much as a kid, and when the element-specific jitsus came? A true master piece! Edit: The more of the video I watch, the more nostalgia I feel. Oh man, I miss club penguin and playing card-jitsu so much right now.

I can tell this is gonna be a BANGER of a video, I loved Card-Jitsu so much as a kid. This is gonna be nostalgic Edit: Holy shit, the fact that you got the original composer to make 2 BRAND NEW TRACKS is amazing! That talk about Card-Jitsu Shadow was fascinating, and I didn't knew that Shadow set existed at all! I thought it was fan-art or something haha. And the original idea of Card-Jitsu's 4th game being Elemental instead of Shadow... it just makes me sad that we never saw that realized in the actual game at all

I consider myself pretty immune to FOMO, but I would give my right leg to play all the Club Penguin events in order

Who would have thought that a penguin game would have such an extensive and somewhat complex lore, totally epic

I hate the fact that I was too young to understand any of this, as the TCG addict that I am now, I wish I could experience all of this

This was the closure I needed. I spent so many years wondering where cardjitsu snow was since I quit the game before it was released. This was immensely satisfying

I always loved the idea of becoming a ninja in Club Penguin, and the Card-jitsu was a complete blessing (as someone that never got a membership) I remember I managed to get the complete fire and water suits and gems in one day, which felt pretty amazing for a kid. Regarding the gameplay mechanics, I really enjoyed each one of them, Card-jitsu fire really felt a little messy, but I was able to comprehend the mechanics after playing it many times. For Card-jitsu water, I have to be thankful for the resolution controls which made the game run as good as possible, and I remember that this one of the three get me the most stressed of them all due to the rush of to not fall into the waterfall. As for Card-jitsu snow, I have sorta like an opposite experience with it as I always picked the ice shuriken and for some reason it felt like I was the only one player that actually care for the other players as I was always concerned about their health level while the others only managed to poorly timed their attacks. Which finally translated in that I never got to defeat Tusk, somehow all the achievable items in Card-jitsu snow made the game a little tedious for me, as I always faced some issues to successfully complete any round, whether lag, players going AFK or whatever. Having said this, as a kid that didn't know about the actual struggles for this game to be, I was always happy for playing.

Damn watching this makes me really miss this site. The songs were all bangers, the games were actually fun, it was so *chock full of charm.* These people actually cared. RIP Club Penguin 😔

watching hour long videos about freaking club penguin lore... what a time to be alive. i love it

I personally though card-jitsu Shadow was the Classic Card-jitsu since it always matched the format of the dojo (the 3 elements surrounding the Classic card-jitsu)

This is like one of the best and most unique and thorough RU-vid vids out there. Loved it. Thanks for the nostalgia trip, lore, background info specifically with the workers, ANDDD THE BANGER UNOFFICIAL OFFICIAL SOUNDTRACKS

The way I was nodding along to this video like "omg I remember all of this!! My childhood!!" and then you got to Card Jitsu Fire and the rest of the member-only content and my broke ass completely checked out. Love this vid a lot!

This was such a fun game I wish there was a way I could play again. I was so into card jitsu that I would make my dad buy me the decks to add extra cards lol and he grudgingly did even though he didn’t understand the game. (My parents are boomers 💀) I kinda feel cheated that I can’t access the game I spent money on anymore 😔

*grabs popcorn*

I didn’t play the most club penguin as a kid but cardjitsu was always my favorite. I never got to play snow but I loved the original 3. And now that I’m 22 I can actually understand the behind the scenes part of it as well. Thank you for introducing me to some of the people that built a part of my childhood.

1:02:25 I can't express how much I hated the fact that Cardjitsu Fire became pay-to-win. With regular Cardjitsu, you could beat a special card with a regular one from a different element, but in Fire you had to just deal with the fact that the member had 80% of their deck filled with specials and would beat you every time they chose the element they wanted to fight you with

i was too young to understand strategy games nor had the membership to access the special dojo rooms [when water n fire were the only ones.] so being able to learn about them is like looking at a delicious cake that i'll never get a bite out of :( it's a bit of a shame to see snow, a very well anticipated element, not really be given the fun new installment/challenge card game it should've been [though it seemed like companies at the time thought card games weren't so marketable anymore so i could understand why change was needed] very cool video! i hope to see more cool documentary-ish videos like these!

club penguin was literally my life as a child edit: hey man, thanks for making this content, its incredible quality and great vids keep it up, youll blow up huge doing this stuff...

If you were wondering, the “den of tusk” theme at 1:10:42 was used in a pretty popular Roblox game called “Bear (ALPHA).” This track was used in a Christmas themed boss battle against a teddy bear called “Sam” who was in a Santa costume. This boss fight took place in the map called “arctic valley.” The boss was pretty easy, but is now gone.

Watching this makes me so happy I was here for most of it, and seeing the effort the team went through to make all our childhoods this much fun makes me so grateful for them!

Love this I was not expecting developer interviews when I clicked it, and I certainly wasn't expecting 2 new compositions from Screenhog himself. I do want to ask if there's any chance of those themes being released in their entirety anywhere.

Why am I getting chills hearing this dojo music 😭😭😭. This was my literal favorite game and the only online game I played until I was around 11 years old. My favorite mini game though was the one where you type along with the storybooks to practice your typing, and I was devastated when they removed it lol. Spies/Ninjas tied for my second

I was on a big nostalgia trip this whole time, unlocking memories. I thought I had quit before snow came out, but when you showed the waiting screen and mentioned never getting to play because no one was joining, that’s when I remembered that I had still been playing. Crazy

This was so cool to watch! I definitely left before knowing about some of the later Card-Jitsu variants, so I learned a lot here. The interviews with some of the developers and the absolute banger instrumentals really added a lot! Thanks.

Card-jitsu was all I ever cared about in Club Penguin. I remember I finished fire and snow, but my computer was always too slow to get very far in water (I made it to the shirt I think). Watching this now is so interesting, as I am now almost 10 years older. Learning all this about the development and what could have been is both intriguing and heart wrenching. This game was such a huge part of my childhood, and I know I'll never forget it. I'll always have a soft spot for card-jitsu fire though. And getting the original composer to compose new music for what could have been is absolutely incredible. I watched your Blackout video (which I didn't know about at all as a kid), and I'm really glad you tackled this topic as well. Also props for editing an hour and a half long video because wow that sounds like hell XD All in all a fantastic documentary. Great work!

What was that ending line... kinda broke my heart man. Makes me realize how much I miss club penguin, and how much I would love to show it to my siblings, and maybe to my own kids some day.

this is amazing! so much has been lost to time when it comes to this game and this documentary, creator interviews, strapped concepts? HMMM LOVE IT KEEP IT GOING!

This was my entire childhood. The most fun I’ve had in my life really… it was all so simple back then. Thanks for taking the time to make this video. God this game was so good. I can’t imagine the amount of money my mom spent on Club Penguin 😂

I loved snow card-jistu. I had gone all the way in the snow ninja items. Easily my favorite of the elemental games

Came up with a rough idea for Card Jitsu Shadow on the spot while watching. Not just shadow, but sort of a shadow vs light sort of thing, and you can progress down the 2 different paths. You start off choosing to either play a game as light, or a game as shadow. You and the opposing player would go against each other in a cave, and it's sort of that area-capture games where one player tries to light up the cave, and the other tries to engulf it in shadow. Whoever fills the cave wins. To tie the cards back in, maybe you have to combine three, and their sum total represents how much of the cave you cover. I'm sure you could also use cutscenes and tie this back into the Tusk storyline if you wanted to. And at the end we could have some big lesson about how shadow and light can't exist alone, they don't need to fight, etc. Basically it's sort of two journeys for the price of one

This is one of the best videos I have ever watched. Part of it is due to nostalgia yes, but every part of the video from every recap and analysis from events, parties, additions, and even interviews from some developers, it was phenomenal. Especially with Chris' pieces, GOSH those were epic. I'm 9 months late, but better late than never, it was an amazing 90 minute video that I enjoyed every second of. If you ever see this comment, thank you for this expedition down memory lane. :)

Great video, amazing that you were able to get the input of so many important voices! The conceptual compositions were such bangers.