And why can’t that have an HD remake?
Growing up, I had a friend who was much at the Customizable Star Wars card game. He carried two folders with him throughout the fifth grade: one for his schoolwork and one for all his cards. I don’t know if he really played with other people – he certainly didn’t know anyone at school who liked that – but he loved to break that binder at lunch to show us all the new cards he bought over the weekend. If YouTube were one thing when we were kids, it would probably have a channel of nothing but opening boosters that earn $ 125,000 a year.
I did not receive the appeal of collectible card games, and as I grew up and was introduced to more of them, that opinion has not changed. But in 2004, I started to soften up with the idea of playing a game based on card collecting and deck management. That was the year Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories he left, and although I know that his battle system is an important point of contention, he grabbed me with a hook, line and sinker. I They loved going through the menus trying to build the best deck possible, and outside that game, I found myself ready to give the genre a chance. Or, at least, a video game version of it.
Unfortunately, the first two games I played were SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters DS and Marvel collectible card game. Nothing will keep a newcomer away from card games faster than something as bad as these titles. Any goodwill in the genre Chain of Memories planted on me was dead the moment I happily exchanged them on GameStop for $ 2.
In recent years, I’ve opened myself up to collectible card games once again with Shadowverse on my iPad. This game allowed me to dive back into the genre without committing a lot of time or money, and it provided me with a sufficient amount of fun. This allowed me to be a casual fan of card games, but after last month, I think I’m ready to dive head-on. Because in 2021, I played Pokémon Trading Card Game for the first time, and all I wonder is why the hell did I take so long?
If you’re not familiar with this, Pokémon Trading Card Game is an adaptation of the table Trading Card Game (TCG) that was first released for the Game Boy Color in 1998. It gathered more than 200 cards from the first three sets of TCG, recreating them in the best possible way on a 8 bits and packaged them in an adventure that would be familiar to fans who started working on the series with Pokémon Red and Blue. There are clubs to conquer, NPCs to challenge, great masters to defeat and legendary cards to collect. And all of that is fucking brilliant.
One of the best things about the game is its non-linear approach to progression. There are no routes to travel here without crushing for XP. You can challenge any of your opponents in any order you like to get the sweet boosters that they cough when defeated. You can jump back and forth between two clubs or just keep changing your deck until you win. It is really the player who decides how he wants to proceed.
Unlike mainline games Pokémon series, this has a very small number of opponents for players to face. But it is probably best because the battles against them can take some time. After entering a battle, Pokémon Trading Card Game does an amazing job of recreating the TCG experience with a single-screen 8-bit device. Today’s card games are hampered by advances in technology, but Hudson Soft and Creatures Inc. has dropped the park’s presentation by being restricted to 160×144 pixels and far fewer buttons than modern consoles.
Just like the real TGC, Pokémon Trading Card Game limits players to 60 cards in their deck. You can build your deck with Pokémon cards, energy cards and trainer cards, and the decks are shuffled at the beginning of each game. Each player can have one Pokémon in battle at a time and up to five in their bank. Pokémon cards have one or two moves associated with them that require an energy card to use. The first player to collect all winning cards or eliminate all Pokémon from the opponent’s bank wins. But, as you will quickly discover, the path to victory is a mixture of skill and luck, and most of the time, the odds are not in your favor.
Throughout my adventure on TCG Island (yes, that’s what they call the island here), I struggled against bad draws at the start of matches and terrible luck with heads or tails. The battles ended quickly thanks to great starting hands, but I also had to go through struggles that dragged on because of poor initial attempts at me and my opponent. But even when they feel they are going to last forever, they are never boring.
I am surprised at how much I got into the drama of those battles. I had matches in which the certain victory slipped through my fingers thanks to some bad moves of the coin, or I managed to return from the brink of defeat with several draws of cards in my favor. It’s exciting, and I don’t remember the last time a Pokémon game left me on the edge of my seat so.
It can be extremely aggravating as well. I played games where heads or tails went against me eight out of 10. My first battle with the Water Club Master took almost twenty minutes, but I ended up without it. In our second game, she cleaned the floor with me because she was able to evolve her Squirtle into a Blastoise in four laps, while I was still trying to add a second ‘mon’ to my seat.
As frustrating as my bad luck is, it never demoralizes me. In fact, he has the opposite reaction. The more I lose, the more I want to fight. Even when the same opponent beats me five times in a row (thank you, Mr. Master of the Lightning Club), I never want to give up; I never want to give up. Which is not quite as I normally am. I am a quitter even in the face of minor adversities if my article on Zelda II is any indication, but with Pokémon Trading Card Game, it is as if there was this impulse in me that I never knew existed.
Maybe it’s because, in fact, each defeat is a learning opportunity that pushes me back to the menus to adjust my deck. Just like with Chain of Memories, I am spending a lot of time trying to figure out my ideal deck configuration for each encounter, trying to find the right balance between the three types of cards. At first, I was just mixing things up to see what would happen, but now that I have just finished my sixth club, I became obsessed with building unbeatable decks.
And obsessing is not something I thought it would be with this game. I have to thank our own Dan Roemer for putting the idea in my head last year to try, because I have no qualms about saying that this is one of the most addictive games I have ever played. It is a pity that we never have an official western release of the sequel, because I know that when I finish this, I will want more. I think my only hope is when I watch the credits roll Pokémon Trading Card Game, SNK will be ready with this Switch port from Neo Geo Pocket Color’s SNK vs. Capcom: card fighter clash that we are all just waiting for your announcement.
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