excuses

Well the only way to get Rare and Ultra Cards besides Virtual Training is to play a ton of matches with the other characters. There is a small chance you will get a Rare card and a extremely small chance to get a Ultra Card. Plus I think the game has only been out for six years. Hope this helps.

What I do is thrash the a and b buttons and it works half the time but wont get ultra just rare

Chris Maclean is wrong.there are 2 ways(that I know) to get the Ultimate and Rare Cards.
1.Virtual Training
2.WHAT CHRIS DID NOT KNOW IS THAT You Can Get Rare and Ultimate Cards In Story

I got Ult. Air Action in Virtual Training and Story Mode.
These are the ones I got in Story Mode

Ult. Air Action
Ult. Air Shot
Ult. Dash(<---IF YOU ARE LUCKY YOU WILL GET THIS ONE LAST)

if you have a visual boy advance(vba) you can go into the cheats link. click "cheat list.." under cheats and click "codebreaker...". type in the description bar all cards and hten in the code box type in 430022300909
000001FF0001. then click ok and click ok in the bottom right corner.

Ok, yes you CAN get it from story mode WITHOUT Virtual Training, I got my air power on the first chapter first time playing O_O". The easiest way to get an Ultimate Card is to NEVER GET HIT while fighting a character. That is the most accurate way without virtutal training. I said ACCURATE but you can get hit and get a rare (not sure about ultimate though), EX: Final Battle - Shadow's Chapter - Emerl VS Sonic And Shadow. Died 3 times. Got the rare rogue color 1.

If you go to tails story in his lab that yellow and blue spot on the floor I beat tails on and got a rare card 4 times