Collection essentials #445 & #446: Pokémon Trading Card Game (GBC) & Pokémon Card GB 2 (GBC)

When Pokémon fever consumed the world in the late ‘90s, it wasn’t just the video games that every kid was obsessed with. Early on, one of the companies which developed the video games made official Pokémon trading cards. These cards hit store shelves in America just a few months after the video games did, and they promptly swarmed the land like a horde of locusts. Kids went crazy for Pokémon cards, especially the rare and sought-after holographic ones. It was such a huge phenomenon that some schools banned them.

The vast majority of kids just wanted the cards because they looked cool. But if you actually look at a Pokémon card, you’ll see that it’s not just meant for decoration. Each card lists moves that Pokémon can use with various effects, as well as information such as hip points and weaknesses. Yes, these cards were part of a trading card game. This game was clearly inspired by Magic: The Gathering, a trading card game that had first released in 1993 to great popularity, setting the norms for trading card games going forward. The idea is that you buy small packs of cards, and you make your own custom deck with a series of cards of your choice, whatever you think will work well together. 

Of course, buying enough cards to get maximum enjoyment out of a trading card game can be expensive, and you always need other human beings if you want to actually play the game. And so, it was a great idea to make a video game out of the trading card game. This game features a pretty bare-bones story, which is fine. The protagonist of this game is given a choice out of three starter decks, and must defeat opponents to win booster packs to build their card collection so they can build more and better decks. They must conquer a series of “gyms” and then eventually defeat the four Grand Masters, not unlike the objectives of the regular Pokémon games. However, the storyline here is even more simplistic, and there’s not much to the world aside from the various gym buildings, as you travel the world by simply choosing which building you wish to enter. Pokémon in this universe are not real creatures, so you won’t encounter any. The cards found in this game are mostly from the game’s first three (and most popular) real-life sets: the Base Set, and the Jungle and Fossil expansions. A few cards with effects that would have been difficult to program didn’t make the cut, but there are also new and unique Game Boy-exclusive cards too.

How does the Pokémon Trading card game actually work? Well, I’m not going to explain all the rules, as is normal for these blog posts which I try to keep reasonably short and digestible. But basically, players take turns and try to use their Pokémon to knock out the opponents’. Pokémon need to have enough “Energy” cards attached to them in order to use their moves, and stronger moves require a larger amount of energy, so it’s never as simple as sending out your strongest monster and pummeling the opponent. A player can play various “Trainer” cards on their turn which have a wide variety of effects, such as affecting the status of the Pokémon or allowing the player to draw more cards. In these early days of the game, Trainer cards were the most significant cards. They generally didn’t have much or any cost, and the ones from the Base Set had very strong effects that were perhaps not as balanced as they could have been. Nowadays the Pokémon Trading Card game is still alive and well, and the game plays quite a bit differently since Pokémon are much stronger and Trainer cards are weaker.

When I was a kid, I of course was enraptured by Pokémon cards like everyone else. Unlike my friends and family, though, I was seriously interested in learning and playing the actual card game. I sometimes was able to get “Pojo’s Unofficial Pokémon” magazines which often showed off all the cards from one or more sets as well as a variety of game tips and strategies. I still have my old Pojo magazines to this day! I dreamed of fully getting into the card game and building strong decks to play with, but sadly that never happened. I never had good opportunities to go hang out at card game stores, and even if I had, I would have done an awful lot of losing since I didn’t have the money back then to get all the cards necessary to build competitive decks. But that’s where the Game Boy game came in! With this game, I was able to finally build and play the decks that I had wanted to before. I sunk a lot of hours into this game! The copy shown in the photo is actually not my original copy. I had two copies, and I may have gotten rid of my original by mistake, though it still may be lying around somewhere. It doesn’t matter much to me, since my original save data is backed up in multiple places and that’s what’s really important.

And then, imagine my surprise and excitement when I found out that there was a Game Boy Color Japan-exclusive sequel! I somehow didn’t know about it until years later when I learned about it somewhere on the internet. It’s downright baffling to me that this game didn’t receive an English release. This sequel has a lot more cards, including those from the fourth expansion, “Team Rocket”. Plus, it has a large number of “Vending Machine” cards that were only released in Japan which I knew about back in the day from seeing them along with English translations in one of my Pojo magazines. This sequel, as you’d expect, boasts more content, features and refinements. There’s a little bit more of a story (though still not much) involving the mischievous “Team GR” (Great Rocket). Some opponents in the game must be defeated by building a deck under certain parameters, which is a welcome challenge. Sometime circa 2010 or so, someone made a partial English patch translation of the game’s menus and card text, leaving just the forgettable story in Japanese, and that’s how I was able to joyfully experience this wonderful game. Nowadays a full English translation patch is available.

I think my biggest complaint with these games is that I find them a little too easy. I wouldn’t expect the main story to be overly challenging since they want the games to be surmountable for children, but some more difficult optional challenges for advanced players would have been nice. Still, these games are a very nice and convenient way to experience the early days of the Pokémon Trading Card Game and I’d certainly recommend them to anyone who enjoys this sort of thing. You can actually play the original game right now if you have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, and can even play online against friends which is pretty awesome. If you’re interested in playing against me, then let me know! (I’d have to start a file from scratch on the Switch, though…)