Being a child of the Pokemon generation, I of course collected Pokemon cards. Being one of the geekier of my circle of friends, I actually liked playing the Pokemon Trading Card game. While everyone else was busy in trading circles on the playground (massive numbers of kids huddled in groups, completely ignoring the basketball courts and jungle gyms immediately come to mind), I was busy formulating strategies with any newly acquired cards. I had decks upon decks of specific types, readily equipped to handle any situation that should come my way. I was well on my way to becoming a Pokemon Master. Unfortunately, the other kids on the playground were too caught up in the actual process of collecting, and never bothered to actually see what those cards were for. I was a lonely Pokemon Master. Enter Pokemon Trading Card Game for Gameboy.

Having this game presented to me on a cool Christmas morning in the year 2000 (no doubt a product of my parent's worry that all my TCG skillz would go to waste), I was ecstatic. I played the game (based on a card game which is based on a game) all morning. I chose a starter deck, and began to build my collection.



Basically, this game was Pokemon, except in trading card game form. You battled 8 gyms with specific Pokemon types (along with their specific weaknesses) and collected cards along the way. There were options to trade with your friends (which, obviously, I had none) and options to trade with in-game NPCs. I amassed a collection on Gameboy that was larger than my collection in real life, until those pesky expansion sets came out to ruin my strategies and allowance.

I learned more tricks of the trade, and built invincible decks on the game that, with the help of my trust Gameboy printer, transferred into my real life decks. Eventually I became champion of my local Toys R Us league, (I like to think) but that's a story for another blog entry.

One of the coolest things about having this game and a Gameboy Color was Card Pop. If you had friends, you could align the infrared port and receive a single, random card would appear. The only caveat was that you had to have A LOT of friends because you could only do it with an individual once. I never got some of the more rare cards, because they were only available in this fashion.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game was a huge success worldwide, while the TCG game didn't even sell enough to warrant a sequel. A Pokemon game didn't warrant a sequel, at least not in the US. I pray that this blog post incites a revival of the TCG so that others can learn the tricks of the trade and become Pokemon Masters themselves.