Pokemon Trading Card Game

 Growing up, a lot of the games we played regularly ended up with nicknames for one reason or the other.

It was pretty common to call Goldeneye: 007 just "Goldeneye," but we eventually just started calling it "Bond." Sure, there were other James Bond games out there, but at the time, this was the only one that mattered. PS1 skating titles 2Xtreme and 3Xtreme were "2X" and "3X" respectively.  Vigilante 8 came to be known as "Tomato Juice," get it, because V8? Final Fantasy VII was so essential to us that it was simply "VII," though not too many console series had seventh entries at that point anyway. This week's game, simply called the Pokemon Trading Card game, also had a nickname, one of my good friends came up with it and it stuck like glue: "The addiction game." Yeah, that pretty well covers it.

Even after playing it some 20+ years later, I can't put my finger on just what was so enticing about a digitized version of the Pokemon TCG, or why we gravitated to it so much. Yet I still couldn't stop playing it, even as an adult, and was disappointed when it was over. At the time, it was novel to have a digitized version of a card game, especially on a handheld console that you could take anywhere. But that isn't the case anymore in a world where Magic Online, Pokemon online, Magic: Arena and Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links exist. And yet I still couldn't stop playing it. Full disclosure, I did play the actual Pokemon TCG for a few years, but my interest in it was beginning to wane as the peak of PokeMania began to pass. Yeah, everyone had the cards, but maybe a quarter of people that collected Pokemon actually knew how to play. I get the appeal of collecting sports cards just to collect them, but why would you spend so much on TCG cards if you had no interest in playing? Sure, fewer people were interested in Magic: The Gathering at the time, but everyone I knew that collected MTG also played. It was impossible to play Pokemon without entering a tournament, whereas I could easily play MTG without doing so (and being a kid and going to an MTG tournament in 1998-99 was rough, because you were playing your random pile of cards against all of those fun combo summer decks. Stupid Tolarian Academy is stupid). Anyway, I was familiar with the Pokemon TCG, but wasn't playing all that often, so the game didn't feel extraneous, or like a waste of time.

I think the best thing about the Pokemon TCG is that they managed to get a full, unspoiled version of the card game onto a game boy cartridge. It isn't the most efficient way to play, but anything you could possibly do in paper you can do in the digital game. Each game starts with you drawing a hand of seven cards and placing prize cards, just as you would in an actual game. You then place your basic Pokemon in the battle zone and on your bench, or re-shuffle and draw again if you have no basics. A game ends when a player claims all their prize cards for knocking out the opponent's active Pokemon, or when a player has no more eligible active Pokemon. Once the game starts up, you are given a menu with options to look at your hand, attack, inspect the play area, have your Pokemon retreat or pass the turn. From your hand, you can inspect cards to see what they do and play them with the touch of a button. Inspecting cards allows you to read all of their text, with the A button scrolling through multiple pages where necessary. All of the important information is simple and easy to see, and readily available, you won't get caught out of nowhere because you can't see your opponent's board. There's a lot of information in a game of the Pokemon TCG and they did the best they possibly could to make all of that information readily available. And speaking of having lot of information, I'm pretty sure the game includes every single English Language Pokemon card that was available at the time, as well as a handful of unique promos. I haven't looked at the list, but I am almost positive every card from the Base Set, Jungle and Fossil are here, as well as the more famous promo cards like surfing Pikachu or Mew. They even have the special Mewtwo promo from the Pokemon movie (I'm pretty sure that's where it was from at least). I know it really isn't that many in the grand scheme but let me reiterate: this was a Game Boy game. That's a lot of stuff in a little cartridge.

Of course, they couldn't just have a never-ending string of card games against random opponents. But how does one structure a game about a game? By having it play like the game it's based on, of course. Your character is given the choice of three decks to start, based on either Charmander, Bulbasaur or Squirtle. You travel to one of 8 card clubs, where you must defeat three members before battling the club leader. Win that duel and you will earn a medal, which can be used to auto-build decks based on the corresponding type. So basically, it's like any other Pokemon game, which I think was a good design decision. Anyone who plays the TCG is likely a fan of the games, so it would feel familiar to dedicated fans. However, this was likely the introduction to the card game for a lot of players and the having it play like a mainline Pokemon title would go a long way in easing in new fans. There are obviously no wild Pokemon battles, you get booster packs from winning games, but otherwise it's almost identical. You even have a rival and an NPC you can trade with. The goal in all of this is to inherit the legendary Pokemon cards, which can be acquired after defeating the four grand masters. Again, it's not the most involved, but it fleshes the game out just enough to keep you playing. There are also tons of multi-player options, but, for obvious reasons, I couldn't really explore any of those here.

I think the biggest issue with Pokemon TCG is the lack of difficulty. It could just be me, as I've spent a lot of time playing card games in my lifetime, but I don't know. The A.I. is at least decent, it's not like it will play trainer cards for no reason or just not attack because it's broken. I think the biggest issue is the decks you have to play against just aren't very strong. I didn't really notice this as a kid, as I had not fully developed and understanding of how games like this worked yet. By the late 90's I was well past the whole "a deck is just an arbitrary pile of cool cards" phase that every TCG player experiences. But I really didn't quite understand synergy, or metagames, or archetypes or just how important drawing cards was. The A.I. decks have some synergy, but they seem more like they are designed to showcase a variety of cards than to actually win. I guess it's my fault for not building decks of a similar power level, but my adult brain immediately went back to and built decks based on the archetypes I never understood as a child. I was able to get through the game relatively easily playing Rain Dance (a deck focused on getting Blastoise out ASAP and abusing his ability to attach infinite energies) and Haymaker (an aggro deck that uses Hitmonchan and Machop to crank out damage early and often). An A.I. opponent is going to have problems beating even a semi-optimized deck when it is running potions and full heals against playsets of Bill, Prof. Oak and Gust of Wind. It's not like the computer doesn't play those cards, but there is absolutely no reason at all to not run 4x Bill in a game where you can just play cards without having to worry about managing resources. I mean, you can just straight up draw two cards. If there was a MTG card that cost zero and let you draw two cards it would be banned instantly and the person who designed it would be fired.

There are other small gripes here and there. For one, I don't understand why the game goes back to the opening battle screen every time someone has to draw a card. It's not a huge deal, but it definitely slows the pace of play. Some of the promo cards leave a lot to be desired, I get that not everyone can be a bomb but some of them are just straight up useless. It also would have been cool to see some sort of endgame, you can challenge any trainer as many times as you would like but it's just the same decks over and over again. Even if it was just powered up versions of their main-game deck. Again, I couldn't really experience any of the multiplayer options and I think that would have gone a long way in increasing the amount of playtime.

But at the end of the day, Pokemon Trading Card Game was just so addictive. I honestly think I liked it better than playing the actual game in paper, which is something I can't say for any of the modern digitized TCGs. It was well structured and built around the card game in a way that made sense for the Pokemon universe. The card game itself was presented as it was meant to be, with minimal sacrifices made to accommodate the hardware. To this day, it still shocks me that they managed to get so much content on to a Game Boy cartridge and make it look and play well. If you are a fan of Pokemon, or any TCGs really, the Pokemon Trading Card Game is worth checking out today. Even with more modern options available, I absolutely think this is worth playing today.

9/10