I think this goes without saying that you were or knew someone who collected Pokémon cards at one point in time (who knows you m. Those things were totally awesome and every kid I knew wanted a holographic foil Charizard of their very own (I think I probably wasted $200 bucks at the time and still have my good ones kept safe for auction). But for all their cool designs and reference to one of our favorite shows (come on I know someone liked it out there besides me at the time, don’t be shy we were foolish at one point) and games (nothing wrong with those except their all the F&%$@#* same) did you know anyone who actually played the card game? I mean sure Pokémon was famous and all but more people still played Magic the Gathering (guilty as charged) at the time and Yu-Gi-Oh in the year after but I do not remember any of my friends playing with the damn things. We just bought them, see what we got, and stored what we liked in protective cases never to be removed again. Well maybe it was because they made you play with pebbles during the game (damage tokens), maybe it was in the joy of collecting, or maybe people didn’t want to carry their cards around when they could just play:
I remember playing this game for hours and hours and completely forgot about the cards whose protective booklet was collecting dust. This game captured the entire card craze into the game effortlessly and without any other needed peripherals save the link cable. You see every single Yu-Gi-Oh card game gives you the ability to transfer your cards into the actual game via the card code on each card. Sure this is nice when you want to create an ultimate deck but then you see there is no real reason to play through the game to try to collect the cards when you can just import them. It takes out some of the fun of card collection: the mystery of what you could get and the hope that you could get what you want making you jitter all over. While I am not dissing Yu-Gi-Oh, beyond having the most serious show about playing cards since the world series of poker (I do not care what you say about the mystical powers of the ancient Egyptians THEY DID NOT PLAY F&%$@#! CARD GAMES!!!!), if find their card game to have so much ad hoc cards that can change the end result of the game, that the tide of battle shifts between both players so many times before even a turn is up. Still, this is about the Pokémon Trading Card Game review so I should actually get to the game.
Trying to mimic the popularity of the Pokémon video games you start out as a young lad naïve to the world of the Pokémon trading card game in a world where anyone who is anyone is playing it. So you mean up with Professor Mason and play out our first match with his help. It is sort of a quasi tutorial as you can lose but it is really difficult (since all you have to do to win is to follow his instructions). After that you are given one of three starter decks based on one of the starting Pokémon from the original series (Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur). From there you have free range to visit any of the eight clubs (gyms) and beat each of the club masters and get their badge in order to enter the tourney to visit the Grand Masters who each base a deck around a legendary bird or Dragonite. Then you will face Ronald the ultimate card master who uses all four of those. You even have a rival who is always one step ahead of you but makes a lot of stupid moves during battle. However, and I do not know how but this actually works to better the game. Strange I know, but having a finalized goal actually helps in a card battle game. In addition, the ability to give you freedom does not hinder you like in actual Pokémon games. For example, you must remember deciding you wanted to choose Charmander as your first Pokémon but then had your ass handed to you on the first two gyms? I never experienced this because I always picked Squirtle or any water Pokémon for that matter (except for Ruby and Sapphire where I picked Torchic), but I am sure some of you do. Now wouldn’t if be great if Erika’s gym was first and the level of her Pokémon equaled that of what yours would be t the start of the game? Sure it would! That is why this game works so well. You can fight at least two club masters who do not have a direct advantage against you until you can build you a deck to beat the others. In addition, since there is no fluctuation in card strength in the Pokémon trading card game (save for evolved Pokémon) no club was really harder than the next, you just needed the right cards, strategy and it never hurt to have some luck.
Now I am not going into how you play the card game. Sure I remember it but it would take me at least three pages to do so and my reviews are already long enough (if your curious you can look it up on Wikipedia). All I have to say on the subject is that the game takes place during the first generation of Pokémon and the first trilogy of Pokémon cards. That translates into us getting the first 151 Pokémon and a total of 226 cards (that is from memory folks). You can build deck with only 50 cards and from there you have absolute freedom with how you want to build your deck with the cards you have available to you. For neophytes to the game there were structured decks you could unlock and the game would make it for you so long as you had the correct number of cards. However, after a few hours with this game anyone could learn how to make a personal deck. In addition you could keep three decks and switch between battles, which was nice since you didn’t have to keep building decks from scratch all the time. If you needed to take a breather you could always make a quick save in the middle of battle; on top of that you could even choose to continue from your last save if you didn’t want to finish the battle. After every battle you would get a pack of cards and from club members you would get two. The professor was also kind to occasionally send you packages of cards. Since you keep battling anyone in the game you could constantly get new packs of cards. If you ran low on energy cards you could always sit through the professor’s tutorial; sure it was a boring five minutes but it netted you a bunch of energy cards. So just like any Pokémon game, or any RPG game for that matter, persistent grinding and tooling of your deck mean for easy wins and successful battles. The biggest thing it capitalized on was the battles over the link cable. These seemed to flow much faster than actual Pokémon battles and because each card’s stats was equal battles would rely more on skill (and luck) than who grinded longer (although seeing as we were all nine at that time the thought of using that word is slightly pedophilic). In addition, you could not be cheated during a trade, as you could not have a fake digital card. But most importantly no one had to lug around cards so we could play anywhere as long as we had energy on our Gameboys.
Still for being a card game there are a few of the problems. Skilled players could easily beat the game in weekend. After beating Ronald there was not much to do but repeat battling everyone again which got kind of monotonous quickly. You just don’t get the same excitement from creating a strong deck as you get training a powerful Pokémon team. Another note concerning the virtual aspect: all my friends bragged about having three Charizards in their game where as I can laugh at them and know that I had a real holographic Charizard (that is ripe to go on eBay at any moment) in my house in protective casing (ooooooooooh aaaaaaaaah). I mean we were playing with coded cards, which had absolutely had no value since everyone could eventually get every card with little or no effort.
It should be noted that the game’s eternal battery, that manages the save files of the game, dies after four years causing it to only present new game when you start the game up. This is the problem with a lot of the game as only a few were lucky enough to have one that didn’t do this. I was not one of them. So, I sadly placed my cartridge on my shelf, never to be used again, and preceded to download a ROM of this game. Sure call me evil but AT LEAST I bought a copy the game when it first came out that happened to become defective after a few years and that is more than I can say about those who steal hundreds of games online causing some companies to go bankrupt. Say what you want about my situation but that is how I feel.
In addition, there was a sequel to this game featuring another set of Islands and the Team Rocket set of cards but seeing how well those did outside of Japan made it stay in the land of the rising sun. This always puzzled me as I always found that most Pokémon things sold gangbusters no matter what they were. Sure I would have played the game but I am not going looking online for a fan translation, that is where I draw the line (I mean it is no Mother 3).
So this game still fills my heart with the nostalgia of my youth and all the youthful follies that I took part in. This game perfectly emulates the feeling of playing cards, which is great if you like that sort of thing. Otherwise stick to the regular series of games and hope they innovate on the next time round. Since you probably are going to have to get a ROM for this game, the conscious of some might prevent them for playing it.
Sorry for this short review but there was not much to talk about in this one compared to other games. Plus my other reviews are so long this is like a nice rest bit. Also sorry for the Yu-Gi-Oh rant. I am somewhat of a history fan and hated the way they created their alternate history. Hope this generated some sort of memory for some of you as it did for me.
-AceofOpus
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