Pokémon Trading Card Game (1998)

Replayed this old favorite as an adult and the core game still holds up well despite being just Pokemon card duels at different themed Clubs (aka gyms) with no more plot beyond collecting cards to make new decks to collect more cards to eventually get the legendary cards after beating the Elite 4.

The meta and viable strategies are more limited feeling than I had remembered, and the amount of RNG involved with card abilities that have coin flipping mechanics is obnoxious. A lot of the more interesting Pokemon Powers and card effects feel very situational with no real synergies to increase the odds of these situations. It's still fun to play with deck builds but a lot of cards and strategies feel a lot more samey than I had observed playing this as a kid.

Booster pack RNG is also a lot more annoying than I preciously recalled. Sucks if you want a specific evolved Pokemon to complete the line up but it's pull rate continues to dodge you no matter how many of the correct type of packs that you pull.

3rd Game Completed in 2024

So Pokemon TCG... Just an absolute gem that really doesn't get talked about much, and something I wish would have a modern sequel.

It's really hard to talk about why this game rules without comparing it to what the Pokemon TCG is today. During the pandemic, I actually started playing PTCGO (the modern online game) a lot, largely thanks to a local card shop where I could get code cards (codes for in-game packs) for 10 cents a pop. Modern PTCG... Kinda sucks. Not gonna lie. At any given time, there's only like 4-5 viable decks, and they play so simply and are so overpowered that there's no real strategy. It's just a race to get your big beaters out and out-DPS your opponent. If you don't use the pre-made deck lists from fan sites, your chances of success are very low. There is very little room for creativity, despite hundreds or thousands of cards being released every year.

And that's kinda the magic of this old-ass Gameboy Game. It's from a period where the game was still finding its legs, and it's limited solely to 3 sets - Basic, Jungle, and Fossil. Plus a handful of cards from Japanese sets marked as "GB". These cards are honestly all pretty balanced - there's garbage cards in there for sure, but you can make a viable deck with pretty much any Element. I made a Water deck that leaned on Gyrados, Articuno and Dewgong for big damage and mininal evolution (this was the deck I used 98% of the game), and a gimmicky Fighting deck that used Primeape, Marowak and Sandslash as a funni meme "coin flip go brrrrrr" deck, primarily when dealing with Grass and Electric.

(I looooooove coin flip cards in this game, they are such a emotional rollercoaster).

The game itself is well-designed. I spent around 12 hours beating all 8 gyms, plus the champions league. The UI is great, the animations represent the actions of the cards very well, and the overall speed is snappy.

I know this game has a superior sequel. I played a large chunk of it before my save corrupted. I have it on a repro cart now, so I'm hopeful I can break that in when I do an IPS mod on my GBC.

Really hope there's another single-player sequel to this series in the future, using the MASSIVE pool of modern cards to draw from. We got Pokemon Snap, so who knows? 🤷

OH. And that fucking Mr. Mime card. FUUUUCK that card. It negates any damage higher than 20, but it can do damage that doubles every turn. It is strictly there to stall and piss you off. You can't even damage it unless you lean on weak potato Pokemon, which it can kill quickly. UGHHHH. I hate this thing. XD

This game starts off strong but quickly runs out of steam—the card game itself is quite engaging, but there just isn’t enough content to keep things interesting.

The art of the early sets, which I have a lot of nostalgia for, is surprisingly faithfully recreated in the limited palette and resolution of the Game Boy Color, but actually collecting them doesn’t match the draw of either the real-life cards or the main series games. New cards are collected from booster packs obtained by battling the same trainers over and over again, which quickly becomes a fairly dull grind. Due to the random nature of boosters, progress can be slow—after approximately 8 hours play time, I only had the sufficient cards to build one of the dozen or so pre-made decks I’d unlocked by that point.

While it’s possible (and recommended) to build your own deck to suit your play style, the lack of any sort of quality of life features makes any sort of serious experimentation a chore. My primary complaint is that a card can only exist in one deck at a time. If you have two decks that need a Charizard, but only one copy of the card, you can’t build the second deck without dismantling the first—despite the fact that you can of course only play with one deck at a time. This is a strange and irritating design decision, even for a nearly-twenty-five-year-old game. Following this, the pre-built deck listings tell you how many copies of cards you’re missing, rather than the number of cards absent from your collection, which makes it difficult to see at a glance which you’re close to completing.

Finally, while it’s a fault of the TCG itself and not the video game rendition, it can be frustrating just how luck-based this game is. If your first few draws are light on basic Pokémon, it’s entirely possible for your opponent to sweep you before you can get more than one monster on the field. On the plus side, there are some interesting uses of coin flips to boost the viability of weaker ‘mons, and in general none of the cards seem particularly overpowered.

I would have really liked to have seen a GBA or DS rendition of the Pokémon TGC with a more substantial story and RPG aspect (perhaps following in the footsteps of some of the better Yu-Gi-Oh handheld titles), but there isn’t really enough here to warrant your attention in 2022.

Pokemon TCG delivers as both a single player experience, using card collection in the stead of your typical RPG stats, and as a simulator of the original Pokemon TCG experience. Unless you wish to skip straight to the glamorous sequel, it is a must play.

The main game is about an 8-12 Hour Loop. Progression is consistent and you can win with any 'mons you bother to try. You will find yourself drifting into an 'optimal' style of deck, using accelerator Trainers and bulky Basic Pokemon. This feels very natural and as a single player experience is somewhat perfect. Unlike a real TCG environment, there's no sin in having 'optimal' strategies or trends or 'overpowered' individual cards.

When used as a simulator, it's just a work horse or vehicle for a real game that DID have those cards available.

Outside of giving you more Trainer Cards to begin with (the first 2 hours are slow because of this), I'm not sure you could reasonably expect better. It's speed is unobtrusive and it's never too hard to find a particular card you need.

It is specifically held back by being a Pokemon accessory. There's no difficulty and you are encouraged to save scum your way through the only real challenges. The game does not effectively encourage different strategies and you can beat the last 8 hours with a deck you created 2.5 hours in (seem familiar?). The majority of players will not and cannot complete the card collection. It inherits these memes without giving back the whimsy, exploration, or strong adventure elements that its contemporary Pokemon games delivered.

The game is wonderful but in a world where we have things like AM2R reminding us what unbound design can do with Nintendo properties, there's no wonder people only talk about the sequel.