Triple Triad

The game board of Triple Triad as depicted in Final Fantasy VIII. Six cards have already been placed, with three remaining.

Triple Triad is a digital collectible card game and minigame first included in the 1999 Square-developed role-playing video game Final Fantasy VIII. Revolving around collecting and battling cards with images of different in-game monsters, many NPCs within the game world could be challenged to a match, which played out in a diegetic, in-universe manner. Triple Triad is known as one of the most popular minigames of all time, and was seen by many critics as equally as enjoyable as the game itself, if not moreso, gaining a large cult following. It was made into a homebrew PlayStation Portable massively multiplayer online game by fans in 2007, and was later included as a minigame in the MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, where it became a regular fixture. In 2015, an official freemium Triple Triad mobile game was released by Square Enix as part of the Final Fantasy Portal. It is sometimes played in real life using fan-made physical decks. Future games in the Final Fantasy franchise introduced similar minigames, such as Queen's Blood in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.