Let's dive right in to it. This is Cardcaptor Sakura for the Bandai Wonderswan, and it is amazing. I can't get enough of the monochrome pixel art the system uses, and it's used to its maximum potential in this game. This thread is going to have a lot of pretty black and white pics.
Anyway, we start out on the opening scene of the anime, in Sakura's dream of Tokyo Tower.
Welcome to Cardcaptor Sakura for the Wonderswan!
This is a simulation RPG where you train Sakura up, work on her friendship with various characters, and attempt to collect all 47 Clow Cards.
Like many of the anime games on the Wonderswan, this was not a quick and simple cash-in. The system is surprisingly complex and actually beating and collecting all 47 cards isn't something simple to do. It requires fairly strategic use of your schedule time slots as well as tactics and smart use of each Clow Card in battle.
It's definitely the best Cardcaptor Sakura game out there, and may be one of the best magical girl RPGs.
In this LP we'll be aiming for all 47 cards (I will be using a guide, it's way too complicated to do blind) and showing off 1 of the 3 true endings!
We start on April 4th. The game will take place over the course of an entire year.
We start with Sakura's canonical self-introduction. She's an energetic grade-schooler who is good at PE and bad at math. This will be reflected in the game mechanics later.
Sakura is home alone when she starts to hear spooky noises coming from her father's library. She decides to go investigate.
She finds a shining book, from which she draws a strange card.
This also introduces us to her characteristic noise 'Hoe~'. I'll also be keeping an eye out for 'Hanyan'. Sakura is full of strange vocalizations.
Speaking of, she reads the name of a random card out loud: Windy. As soon as she does a blast of magical wind scatters the remaining cards in the book, blowing them through the walls and out of the house.
After the magical wind dies down a strange winged teddy bear looking guy pops out of the book and introduces himself (in a heavy Kansai accent) as Kerberos. It turns out he is the guardian of the 'Clow Cards', the powerful magical cards sealed within the shining book Sakura found. It is his duty to seal them away to keep them from getting up to mischief with their powers.
Unfortunately, he fell asleep. In fact it was his snoring that Sakura was hearing when she went to investigate the noise.
He is understandably shocked when Sakura (while smiling innocently) tells him the other cards have flown away.
Hey they even put in the spinning card eyecatch scenes from the anime!
Kero (that's his nickname) explains the situation to Sakura and (more or less) strongarms her into helping him gather up the cards that were scattered throughout the city.
Suddenly, a giant bird creature flies over the house, shaking the treetops with the powerful winds it creates with every beat of its wings.
This is the Fly card, and (at least according to Kero) it's up to Sakura to capture it! He conducts a mini chanting ceremony to summon forth a magical staff that Sakura can use to seal cards and pushes her into battle. No worries, he's got her back! (By which he means he'll mostly offer helpful advice).
Here we have the battle screen. It may look like there would be movement but this is actually a still image. Stuff only moves when there are effects or someone is taking damage.
The combat options are Card, Kero, Defend and Dodge.
Card allows us to spend MP (the bottom of the bars across the top) to summon any Clow Card we have already captured. Over the course of this game most of the strategy in these battles will be focused on using the right Clow Cards at the right time.
Kero lets us ask Kero for help. He will usually give some kind of comment on how to defeat the Clow Card we're currently facing.
Defend lowers the damage we take for 1 turn and recovers MP. The amount of MP increases the higher our max MP is.
Dodge attempts to completely avoid an attack and also heals some HP. Again, our total HP will increase the amount of HP we heal. Dodging can fail, with a success rate based on our speed stat vs. the speed of the enemy.
Here is the Card screen. We currently only have Windy in our deck (Windy remained in Sakura's hand after she read it).
This screen also shows us our total HP and MP.
Under each card you can see its power (next to the sword) and its MP cost (next to the circle).
We can also pop up a little description of each card.
This tells us Windy is one of the 4 main elemental forces and attacks by binding its target with wind.
You can see little snippets of the attack effects here. Windy looks like several tendrils of wind wrapping around the opponent, while Fly's attack is a pair of flapping wings.
I use Dodge once but mainly just spam Windy until Fly goes down. This is a tutorial fight, so it's not terribly complicated.
Once we deal enough damage, Kero will tell us to seal away the card. This cuts to some absolutely beautiful stills of Sakura chanting Windy's incantation and then commanding the wild Clow Card to return to its original form.
The Fly. Get.
(can't wait to see if it actually does one of these shots for every card. The art is really good.)
Kero congratulates Sakura on a job well done.
A Cardcaptor is born!!
... though Sakura continues to insist she never agreed to this.
We end on a screen we'll be seeing a lot going forward: Sakura's schedule. Each day we get to choose what she will do to raise her parameters. We'll go into the choices and plan out her days next time!
A work friend started up an account here and is using it to do text LPs like I used to do on Twitter, starting with a pretty nifty-looking Cardcaptor Sakura game for the Wonderswan! (Turns out she did more than show up in cool Tetris games, who would've thought!?)
Anyway, he has his own niches he likes to go down, so if you like what I cover and wanna discover some new rabbit holes, consider following him! I always learn plenty from the games he chooses to cover and I'm glad he's bringing them here now. 
