I really like how the Eeveelution cards can basically be slotted into any deck due to the colorless attacks. They can help a lot with giving you some extra type coverage without worrying about having more types of energy in your deck. That Zapdos card is also a monster. I used that one in the sequel, and would purposely leave my bench with very few, or no Pokemon, so it was basically always doing damage to the opponent. Combine it with Scoop Up, and you could wreck shop on your opponent.
In the sequel, I built a deck where legendary zapdos is the only basic pokemon. There are so few counters to it, it basically destroys everything. The only counters are Mr Mime and a fully powered up charizard since it can one shot Zapdos
@@Paraspectre I didn't do it as a challenge, but I did build that deck It has 2 of each Eeveelution card (12 total) as well as 4 Eevee and 4 Ditto (to Morph into Eevee) It works surprisingly well for what it is, especially with Pokémon Trader allowing me to get whichever Eeveelution best fits the situation
It sounds like the common factor in the cards that were left out is needing to handle energy as wildcards. For electrode, it's not just "add two energy to a Pokemon," because you need to be able to handle the case of things like energy removal sending it to the discard pile, but also it, as a single card, counts as two energy of any type. Between needing to handle a pokemon card being treated as an energy card and that energy needing to count as any type, I can imagine it would have required a lot of special handling for one Pokemon. In the case of Ditto, there's the matter of needing to be able to use the opposing Pokemon's moves using any type of energy. This would have required some kind of special case handler for "if this card is ditto, allow any energy for it's attacks," or it would have required essentially creating a ditto version of every other Pokemon card with it's attacks replaced with colorless energy, which would have been quite a tall order. The version in this game notably doesn't bypass energy requirements, and from a design perspective that's fine since you're copying one of your own cards, so one can assume you deckbuilt with the proper energies for everything in your deck.
As far as the two energy thing, it’s really not too different from a Double Colorless Energy. That can also be discarded with a Removal. But yeah, it’s gotta be the any energy thing combined with the complications of it being an actual Pokémon beforehand.
My guess is they already made Pokémon and energies handled separately in the code, and didn't run into any issues until later in development. Or limitations of the cartridge made it infeasible.
Fun fact you can't actually get a Phantom Venusaur legit from card pop. It was due to a coding error. The way it worked was that a person's name gave an ID number given that when paired with another hidden ID number from the game file it would either be Even or Odd. The number could only ever be even due to this coding error. So, you could get Mew, but never Venusaur. XD
I was hoping this would be mentioned. It's actually wild that the developers would come up with such a crazed method but not even test all possibilities to make sure it was viable.
Wild guess, but I assume that they were having problems with the NPC opponents just knocking out their own Electrodes for no reason. Most Pokémon Powers back then were, at worst, neutral, so they could code the NPCs to use 1 Power per turn if available. Code in Electrode and then the NPC will play a lightning energy on Electrode, then knock it out to put two energies on a Magnemite. 11:54
Also the fact that those two energy cards would be spontaneously created, not taken from the deck or hand, an otherwise unused mechanic that would overflow the 60 card deck limit. Would require a lot of extra code they must have decided wasnt worth the effort
Except it wouldn't be two energy cards either. It would be one card that is a "double colored energy", and important distinction for cards like "energy removal", which can remove "one energy card" at once, which could either be 1 or 2 energy depending. So they'd have to introduce like 5 additional fake cards that would never appear again under any other circumstance to count as double colored energy. It's really awkward to imagine coding this, because you'd want to write something like "double green energy (electrode)" as the card name so a player is kept aware of the situation. And it's not even clear from the card what happens to electrode/energy when it ends up in the discard. According to the internet the official ruling is it reverts to being electrode, hence the need to alert the player they aren't going to end up with this energy in the discard by noting it is electrode. So you have this obnoxiously long card name to deal with too. It's a mess. And then on the other side Ditto would have required them to double the number of cards coded in the game (because the copies all have Ditto's PKMN power). That's why the GB exclusive ditto removes it from the game and replaces it, rather than letting ditto keep changing. It's easy to just code that the Ditto card becomes an exact copy of a different card and remains that way forever.
You’re probably right, especially considering how bad the trainer AI was for the main series games at this time. I just started playing this game on switch online and was very disappointed I couldn’t use Buzzap Electrode.
Fossil Ditto likely was too hard to program because it's a card that has to change mid-battle, every time the defending Pokémon changes or when its power gets deactivated. And again, when it dies, it would have to go back to being Ditto. Probably a hassle to program.
May I add in that the majority of GB/GBC games are written in raw assembly for the given CPU you think modern programming looks difficult it has nothing on assembly I can see how both cards would have been an absolute nightmare to even try and write let alone actually debug
@loganWolfOfDarkness Transform is broken though. Any wild Pokémon that uses it becomes Ditto when caught. There are two Pokémon that can learn Transform. Yeah, a lot could go wrong.
Not sure if it was a joke or not, but on the off chance it wasn't (or for anyone who missed it), the random line in the surfing Pikachu card isn't actually random, but a stylized Shinkansen, a high speed Japanese bullet train. How it's shooting out of a volcano is beyond me though haha. Great video as always! :)
I used to run that Jigglypuff in my Do The Wave deck, alongside the Marowak he mentioned directly afterwards. I assure you, it works just as well as you think it would
6:56 'Yeah Mystery Jolteon certainly isn't turning any heads' - was surprised to hear that! I love this card! At least, for a purely colorless lightning type, I don't find 30 damage and paralysis to be a bad deal. I like it a lot more than its Vaporeon and Flarion counterparts. Also a fan of its cheap retreat cost.
I feel like it can’t hold a candle to Snorlax - same 4 colorless attack for 30 with paralysis check, except Snorlax is a basic, has more HP, a resistance, and immunity to status effects. And the most relevant water target to want to hit with electric is Rain Dance Blastoise, against whom having 60 HP is a pretty big liability because you’re always in range to be one-shot. I think the GBC Flareon is the standout - although Rapidash does about the same thing for cheaper, trading with Rage is a pretty big threat to anything that can’t one-shot it.
gb zapdos only deck is brutal, not only because the 70 dmg always hits your opponent but because you can run so many trainers in your deck alongside it to keep it healthy and retain draw power
Sorry to say but Phantom venasaur isn't "extremely rare" it's actually "Completely unobtainable" due to how they decided to program Card Pop! Edit: unobtainable in tcg 1 specifically, it is obtainable in tcg 2 because they changed how card pop! Works in tcg 2.
Electrode isn't quite as simple as "attack two energies". Electrode itself is attached as one card that provides 2 energy, meaning that it could be removed with regular Energy Removal or anything else that discards only one energy card. And once it goes to the discard pile it "becomes" Electrode again, a non-energy card. So it probably would have been a little tricky to get that all uniquely programmed.
Well, the Legendary Zapdos card is far from unreliable 😅 Just ask to the speedrunners what's the preferred way to beat the final duels of the game: 1 Zapdos, a fair load of Lightning Energy and some trainers and there you go! A guaranteed turn 1 draw and enough HP to beat any opponent in less than 10 turns 🙃Best regards!
You know it is funny you mentioned about how hard it was to get Pokemon TCG cards back in the height of its popularity. I remember going to the mall with some of my friends and one of the stores were selling the cards but limited how many packs you could buy. So there was this guy hanging out outside of the store and would ask any kids walking by if they would go in and buy the maximum number of packs allowable and bring them back to him. Once the kids agreed he would give them the money to buy the cards and when you returned to him he would open the packs, take what he wanted, and let the kids have what was left. I know today this would be a stranger danger story but things were a little different back then.
That’s awesome. Sketchy Pokémon card sellers. I can’t remember if the stores near me had limits or not but it’s not like I had money to buy a bunch anyway. I was 13 with a meek allowance haha
Fun fact: While the game data exists for both phantom cards. Only one of them can actually be obtained via legitimate means. Due to a programming oversight, the calculation performed when card popping can never generate the right values for phantom venusaur.
id love to see a "random target attack" only run. or maybe a "coin-flip or no damage attack" run. The aggravating part about these ideas would be that the best cards for the respective challenges are the three legendary birds lol.
Don't you love it when card game media has cards that just don't exist? As a yugioh kid, I know I loved it when cards either just didn't exist or were radically different from real life. Totally didn't feel cheated at all.
It's somewhat Interesting looking into Yugioh from the sidelines every once in a while Looking into an old anime exclusive archetype ("fossil" fusions for example) and thinking about fun gimmicks you could do with it. Then years later finding out that they eventually got a print
Games that had OCG only cards that weren't imported yet always felt a bit mystical, like when you could get Five-Headed Dragon in a lot of the older games. At the time the summoning requirement was pretty unique and 5000 ATK/DEF was pretty rare so it felt like some secret super card.
My friends and i printed a few proxies of the GB exclusive cards. Legendary Moltres, we altered its firegiver ability to be playable. "Flip a coin 3 times, draw 1 fire energy plus an additional fire energy for each heads. Shuffle your deck."
i wonder if the reason ditto and electrode were cut was maybe their pokemon powers would have been too much text that they couldn't fit it all on one screen?
I remember playing with proxies of the gbc cards with friends when this came out. Moltres is potentially 4 energy search for fire. I rolled a 4 sided dice, We actually used a lot of dnd dice to replicate some of the random effects of these cards
It’s the move that reminded me of Magic the Gathering for some reason. A move that sounds like it helps both players that you can tweak in your favor if you have the right cards
I knew the legendary 4 were exclusive, but it's great to learn about the rest of them, as well as having a quick reference/ explanation for all of them Thank you!
I love game exclusive Cards for TCG Games, like I really like how there's all these Anime Only cards that were in the Yugioh Tag Force Game, the entire Turbo Duels from the 5ds World Championship games, especially Duel Links which gives you exclusive cards in an actual Competitive Format (although I think only really Kiteroid did anything)
@@thalezito-4990 You can search it up on Google and find it. I recommend it highly as it's a pretty good hack and recently the thing got updated to use pack arts from the Neo sets too. The guy also had to nerf some cards as some of them are really busted like Lugia for example. I used that guy to beat the game with a well made deck.
15:48 In both GBC TCG games, I took a page from decks that only run like 4 Pokemon cards to get their plays going and built a deck whose only Pokemon cards were 4 Legendary Zapdos. Keep only the one in play at a time and you don't even have to worry about Big Thunder hitting one of your own. Just sit back, enjoy the mayhem and use Potion and Super Potion Trainer Cards as required. (We don't talk about how Mr.Mime shuts this strat completely, though)
Those eevee evolutions would probably make a better Potpourri deck option than the jungle cards considering no rainbow energy and one of best base set card printed being electrodein the game. That electrode seriously puts in work and sets you up so fast in a lot of decks. Sad to see it missing. Its practically a base to fossil staple card for me.
Most of the GB exclusives have mechanics that are basically impossible in the real card game. It’s fun that they included these cards and took advantage of being able to randomize things in the code.
The Vaporeon error is interesting, I'm thinking the magazine render could've been early in production. Like the grandmasters' legendary birds it was never printed
I used to have this game, and went so far as to recreate the theme decks from the sets that were available when it came out in the US. Every theme deck.
9:33 I don’t know if I would evaluate an attack that costs 2 energy and the effect is “time walk yourself and mix your energies up” as a risk… it’s more like literally throwing at that point. When choosing to pass turn is a better option than doing an attack I think we can safely say that attack isn’t worth it. At least Tackle does damage!
The ditto that wasn't added was probably because it would of been difficult to code, any energy becomes the energy for the attack. Colourless was probably coded to be it's own energy rather than all at once.
Tangela is pretty good but I prefer the TCG version, it had good power and effect for a basic. All three Eveelution are pretty terrible: While Vaporeon is just like scyther it an evolution and not a basic so is much more inconsistent, has different weakness and resistant though. Legendary birds: Powerful for being basics with 100 hp, Zapdos>Moltres>Articuno>. They slot so easily in the pokeball, computer search, bills, professor oaks, scoop, super energy retrieve, energy search, scyther shell. Zapdos: Its not hard to build the deck just Zapdos, draw, and energies. The mulligan rules is why its OP, you get a free 7 if you draw no basics. If you have no bench pokemon with only Zapdos its all upside and if you need to do it you would want your first Zapdos to knock out your previous Zapdos with peal in a real match with normal player otherwise put in zapdos pass and let npc knock it out. 70 nonresistable damage on a basic with 100 hp is stupid broken. Moltres: The power is nuts for card advantage, deck thinning, and is actually great to combo with scoop up, the random nature of the ability is a bit annoying but its more upside then downside due to the numbers allowing you for a quick win by turn 3, 70 damage will one tap most basic, will one-tap anything with weakness because only 2 pokemon had 100+hp, deal decent damage to resistance, and 35d on average is a good rate. It makes it very worth it to put in pokeballs for more shenanigans. Articuno: the stun is nice and at least Articuno will only hurt the opponent but what makes it powerful is that its a basic, has 100hp,have a decent ability, and all three birds have good synergy with jungle scyther. Everything just more true with Moltres then Arcticuno especially the fact that Moltres digs up frikken energy to setup either Scyther or itself. You can however raindance a new articuno with super energy retrieval to replace any that gets knocked out. As OP as the birds are, I like the fact that they are fun to build around and most likely wouldn't cause hairpulling because the victims are mostly NPCs.
Yeah, them all having abilities that activate when played is pretty scary. And often annoying to deal with in the game, but they don’t always utilize their full potential
12:01 My theory regarding Base Electrode is the fact that Buzzap turns Electrode into what is essentially a typed DCE, as opposed to two typed energy cards. Like a DCE, an Electrode can be removed as a unit by Energy Removal, for example, and cannot be subdivided if you only need to discard 1 energy card to satisfy an attack like Ember. They could program DCE into the game to provide 2 colorless energy because it is the only Energy card that provides colorless energy in the game, and because all other Energy cards are single units there is no reason to program the ability to remember if typed energy attached to a Pokémon is a single unit or double, in the case of Electrode. Basically they would have to change how the whole game calculates the values of attached Energy for the sake of 1 card, which was not worth it in their eyes.
This is such a cool idea for a video. I have a big soft spot for a lot of these cards. I use the GB Tangela in almost all my Grass decks, and the GB Vaporeon in particular was a tech card in a Flareon-centered Fire deck of mine
I alwas found it super weird, that Super Energy Retrieval was in the game which is clearly Gen1 only and matches with Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal from the Base Set but only got its physical print in Gen2. This is the reason, why my copy of that card is actually in my Gen1 Binder 😅
I have never been a part of the GBC tcg online community so I don't know the popular challenge runs but I've played it so many times I've made my own challenge runs. Here are some I've tried for fun: 1: 50 hp clause deck. No pokemon with hp over 50. Some interesting pokemon become your main attackers, utility and pivoting etc. Guaranteed status moves become very clutch. 2: explode deck. Only pokemon lines where one evolution has a move that explodes (self destruct, explosion, big eggsplosion) 3: move lock deck - all pokemon must have one similar attack in its evolution line (agility/quick attack, etc) *bonus*4: Dark mind deck. Only hypno and gengar lines. You will need to get creative with gengars pokemon power curse and plus powers to get around psychic resist normal heavy decks Have fun with your challenges!
I LOVE all of these ideas. I actually do have the exploding one already written down as video options. Never thought of the move lock one but I like it a lot.
@@Paraspectre By modern standards, definitely yes. For the time period (Gold/Silver, pre-Crystal), it's harder to tell, since body color barely changed between coloration back then, but I believe that the eyes are more green than blue, making it shiny.
Having just finished the game with a mono-Fire deck as my main, Dancing Embers Ninetales is actually surprisingly good. Since it doesn’t expend energy to attack, it’s ironically *more* reliable early on in a match, or if you’re getting bad luck with energy draws. The coin-flips *are* a gamble, but the chances of missing all eight are low, so it’s not as bad as it sounds (the worst flips I ever got in my whole playthrough was 2-6).
Pidgeot GB is bad for how rare it is.... I mean... there are cards that can hit the bench that do not apply weaknesses/resistances so it is not good... it cannot bypass defenders... growls... even agility which is a huge strat and Agility Rapidash is a very strong card and early too. Especially Invisible Wall PokePower Mr.Mime.
I loved Zapdos. I played a 4 Zapdos only deck in GBA where I basically won by only having one Zapdos in play and knocking out a Pokémon each turn with Big Thunder.
Legendary Zapdos can be used to build one of the most busted decks in the game by using it as your only Basic pokemon and loading your deck with Scoop Up to repeat its effects. You can pretty easily tear through the postgame with it.
One thing I'd like to remind you about the 3 legendary birds in the game is that there are versions based on them in the physical card game YEARS later in the Majestic Dawn set. Articuno has the same power, Montres takes it from the discard pile (and the maximum is 3) and Zapdos flips a coin to deal 10 damage to all opponents. . About them in the game, Zapdos + Hitmonchan is indeed a very strong combination using PlusPowers and Scope Up that can win the game in turn 1. Loves to use this combination in the emulator (after all you need to have 4 Zapdos for maximum consistency)
The ditto one has got to be because of a specific ruling which would probably mess with the entire core engine of the game. In the TCG...Ditto doesn't immediately become the new pokemon on a switch or knock-out...instead, there is a liminal period where it is just "Ditto". This means that if you say...copied a Jungle Pinsir (60 HP), and it used Guillotine on you (50 damage) but you knocked it out, Ditto would immediately get knocked out itself as it would suddenly have 50 HP. This means that if they didn't have it in the engine to enable for a knock-out at the same time as a switch, they would either have to introduce a new ruling which ran contrary to the card's actual function...or get rid of the card entirely. As for Base Set Electrode...said Electrode does not become "2 lightning energies"...it becomes a single card which *provides* two lightning energies...making it more like Double Colorless Energy. They probably didn't have anything in the engine to account for if someone used a standard "Energy Removal" to remove what is essentially a "Double Lightning Energy", and then turn back into a pokemon when it's discarded. I'm reasonably sure they could have accomplished both of these effects within the engine with special conditions, however, I also have no doubt that said exceptions would slow the game down as it would be an introduction of new persistent variables that could well bog down a processor which was not known for being particularly speedy or powerful.
15:55 This card looks like "pure random in card", but it´s extremly good, maybe the BEST card in game. Use it in an Deck with only 2 of these Zapdos and fill the rest with 19 Electro-Energy-Cards, Searching-Cards and Healing-Cards. It´s a guaranteed auto-win and enemies will have a hell of a good time getting 70 Dmg each turn after Turn 3
I also like the Legendary Zapdos. I remember on an English patch of the 2nd game, I used cheats to give myself like 4 Zapdos and 4 Dittos and I made a deck with 4 Zapdos, 4 Dittos and one or two Kangaskhan for card draw. I would then try to have only one Zapdos out at a time (as much as possible) So Peal of Thunder and Big Thunder would hit the enemy most of the time.
One thing about Card pop is : it can be redone with one cartridge if you have done enough card Pop (4 I think) so you can loop it to have everything ! As I am working on a mod for PKMN TCG GB : the real effect of Phantom Mew is : your attack does 0 or 10 damage and one of the following effects : +10 damage, nothing, or one of the different status. Also, programming speaking, Electrode and Metamorph had to be redone because restrictions couldn't permit to make them in the game. (And I'm working to make the Phantom cards easier to get without card pop because even emulator can't recreate Card Pop, maybe the Switch Online version will ???)
@@Paraspectre Yes it is confusing a bit and when I was younger I didn't know what the range of the strength it had. But watching the disassembly is fun work to understand a bit deeper how the game really works !
I love when digital versions of card games do things that you can't easily do in physical games. That was one thing that Hearthstone was really good at.
@@Paraspectre Reassigning energies is actually probably one of the most practical of these weird effects. You could pretty easily do it by rolling a die, but you'd have to roll it for each energy, with possible rerolls depending on how many Pokemon you have, so it would quickly get annoyingly time consuming.
Will you ever cover the light and dark cards from early on? I bought a couple packs back in the day but dont know much about them and when they came out
14:13 If you *only* play Zapdos and base your whole deck around only having Zapdos out, it's busted and only concedes to Mr. Mime. Mr. Mime alone keeps the deck in check from a PvP perspective.
great video - any chance on getting a sequel going over the digital only cards exclusive to the Pokemon Card GB2? (like Dark Starmie / Dark Ninetales) ?
Ditto is rough. Its power means if you gust your opponent, it changes immediately. It's the only pokemon in base set (maybe even the whole game) that can be knocked out by retreating or being gusted, as its hp goes back to 50 while it's not your active pokemon. The difference with gb ditto is that it never changes back. Not impossible to program, but you have to account for way more use cases for the inclusion of one card. Electrode was probably the same, in that it probably would take multiple ui assets and special considerations just to implement it. Probably not impossible, but they clearly more resources than most would have to be spent than they deemed worth it for two cards.
Yeah I didn’t really put much thought into how Fossil Ditto works, but you’re right. That’s a mess. If I ever played with that card, it was when I was a stupid 13 year old so I don’t remember facing those problems.
@@Paraspectre I've been programming the tcg as a side project. Both of these cards are so much worse than I thought. If you just look at the tcg errata you can find some really bizarre use cases. A problem I didn't realize a month ago was that energies on ditto count as any energy not type not just for attacks, but at all times. There's a lot of implications of this but here's the most insane one I saw: So you can use Venusaur's energy trans to transfer Electrode but only if you declare electrode provides grass energies. This alone might be why electrode isn't in the game but that's not all. That is the case, UNLESS you attach electrode to ditto, because it counts as grass energies only while attached to ditto. That means you can transfer Electrode off of Ditto, but not back on in that case. A case that could very well happen, probably never will, but one you have to account for as the programmer. These cards aren't worth it.
That Zapdos I think leads to the most overpowered deck, not just for speedrunning, but for consistent wins. A deck of a single Zapdos + all the good trainer cards basically can't lose. The only thing that can stop it is a Mr. Mime, as your 70 damage attack can never hurt it since anything that does more than 20 is reduced to 0. The only way around it is to include a single fossil and a single Kabuto evolution, since this will still guarantee the Zapdos in your opening hand and can be found reliably with all the bills, oaks, item finders, and computer searches, and both does under 20 damage and can still use electric energy for its scratch. I remember using it as a kid forever when I was trying to get a full playset of everything in the game. It's just so unbelievably consistent compared to anything else, since you're guaranteed to live for several turns with zapdos's high life no matter what, and the chance of not drawing defenders, potions, energy removal, bills, oaks, or computer searches is basically 0.
I have only played the Game Boy game a few times as an adult and I never thought about just how many exclusive cards there are! I think because I grew up with the physical cards, the fact that a lot of the artworks are the same between the exclusive game cards and the gym leader set maybe I didn't think much about it. I guess the artwork would have been taken from the gym leader set to the gbc rather than the other way around, right? Since the gym leader set was already out in Japan.
A disruptive MTG player? A man after my own heart! I don't care about winning big multiplayer matches, I only care about causing chaos! One of my mates had a card wherein, upon ANY permanent entering the battlefield, you HAD to trade it with someone else's permanent of the same type. It was pandemonium, and it was beautiful!
I wonder what the datamine would tell us about that game-only Mew's attack programming. What's the maximum possible damage roll? What's the min? Do all values have an equal probability or was some bell curve applied so stuff like "270 damage", "0 damage", "20 damage", "10, 830 damage" wasn't ridiculously all over the place every turn?
I think I see why the cards are more difficult to program in; with Electrode, it could "become" two energy, but the easiest way to do that is to spawn new energy- which would mean they'd end up in your discard when they shouldn't be there. Similarly, Ditto transforms constantly- this means the game has to keep track the ditto itself AND whatever it transforms into- whereas the GB Ditto literally becomes a copy of the card it transforms into for all intents and purposes- even when it's discarded; it never changes back, which makes it easier to keep track of. They probably already had the engine locked to 60 cards per deck with no way to remove a "fake" card mid-battle before they got to programming those two; it may have required reworking the underlying game engine which would have been a lot of work for two cards.
Amusingly enough, there is another way to get the two phantom promo cards. On my copy of the game I caused some sort of overflow glitch that rewarded me with a random number of cards for each individual card type. So I have about 60 phantom Venosaurs and a few phantom mews, as well as over 100 copies of some cards, which displays as a dot so their numbers look like .7, .2, ect. Granted whatever caused this was a bit unstable, as some stacks of cards have disappeared at random times so for awhile I didn't have any jigglypuffs.
Good video, Paraspectre! I like the GB exclusive cards for their randomness, although they make for pretty unreliable strategies. I think the TCG video games allowed for the automation of what would otherwise be very tedious tasks. Taking out every basic pokemon from your deck, showing them and the rest of your deck to your opponent to ensure you're not stacking the odds, then shuffling and drawing a few, and shuffling your deck again, would be incredibly time consuming! I imagine randomly attaching several energy cards would be like rolling a die over and over again until you land on a pokemon slot in which there is a pokemon (1 for active, 2-6 for each benched), and repeat for each energy. I assume the difficulty for the Electrode was either to do with the classes of card - attaching a Pokemon to another Pokemon is not allowed, or if you materialised two energies out of nowhere, what happens to them if the energies are removed (either due to a move cost or the effect of a card) or redistributed. Surely, they would have to move together like a double colourless, but I guess they couldn't set up a token with two energy options that you choose when you active Buzzap and remove from play when it is removed from a Pokemon. The ditto is a weird one. It might be due to some subtlety of the difference between it and the morph ditto. Like morph ditto becomes an exact clone of a card once, but transform ditto is still a ditto with changing hp and moves every time the opponent's pokemon changes. Interesting though!
I just had an idea: pokemon tcg, but you are a hitman hired to exact vengeance for past losses. Every time you play against a club, pick a deck from one of the clubs weak to the one you are playing against, and win with that deck. You can use any member's deck from that club. Bonus points if you win with the club leader's deck. Extra bonus points if you win with the objectively worst deck in the avenging club. Variant challenge if you don't want to use the prebuilt decks: build a custom deck using only the cards used by avenging members (this includes limiting yourself to the numbers of cards those club members have; so if they only have two gusts of wind in total, you can only use two). At least half your pokemon have to be weak to the club you are challenging. I think this challenge would be an interesting one because you'll always be at a mechanical disadvantage, between the type matchups and the less than competitive deck recipes, but it also means you'll have lots of variety in each fight, and can deploy numerous strategies to show off a lot more of the card game than we've seen with single deck challenges.
i used to play the trading card game online all the time. not the official site. an unofficial one called TCG ONE, that let players play with all the retro gen 1 and 2 cards. and for the longest time, the admin never implemented the Fossil Ditto, talked about in this video, for much the same reasons. However, it eventually got added to the site, after all the bugs and kinks were worked out. Other cards that took for ever to implement were, Chaos gym and Eco gym.
Morph would be a neat if not possibly super broken move to see translated to the video games. Ditto transforming into one of your other party pokemon at random.
I’m a huge fan of friendship song jigglypuff. Spam friendship song, load your bench up, evolve to Wigglytuff and 1 or 2 shot everything with 60 power do the wave. If you can also manage a damage swap Alakazam while you set this up, I don’t know really see how you could lose.
My childhood save file of TCG actually had all the cards except Venusaur and Mew, since the only other person I ever met with the game was my brother. I wonder if the Switch Online will support Card Pop since it should support multiplayer, unlike the 3DS VC release. As for most powerful GB exclusive, my immediate thought is that Articuno would actually see play today. Paralysis on a coin flip without attacking is nuts. Electrode accelerating energy is cool too considering how rare the effect was in that era. Finally, props on the Clue meme. Awesome movie and it was free on YT with ads last I saw.
Articuno is the only GB exclusive card that could be used in the real game. It's random condition would be replaced with a coin flip i.e.heads do 40 to a bench Pokémon tails do 40 to the active. Also, it power is not something to be scoffed at. Most Pokémon who've had that power throughout the games lifetime have been evolutions.
What I would do is have deck with only one Chansey and 2 Legendary Zapdos. After that I'll include 4 computer search, 4 Potions, 4 Super Potions, 4 Switch, 4 Scoop ups. I'll max out all the lightning energy as well. I'll use computer search to look for the legendary Zapdos while having the Chansey as the active pokemon while soaking up damage. I'll use Scoop up to have Chansey on my hand after Zapdos is already charged up ready to attack using Peal of Thunder. This method is powerful but reckless.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the problem they were having with physical Ditto wasn't copying another pokemon card, but rather treating all energy cards as whatever energy is needed for it. That's probably why it went from copying the opponents pokemon to copying one of your own, since otherwise you would rarely have the correct energy to use its attacks. It's interesting to see what kind of effects don't translate well between the game and real life. Like, I can't even imagine how someone would perform Ninetails's random energy distribution effect easily in real life.
Yeah that’s something I didn’t really mention. There are a lot of exclusive moves that would need some custom rules in a physical game. Anything that randomly gets reattached across the board would need some creativity to make it work
@@Paraspectre I just came up with an interesting idea for the random energy distribution - what about 6-sided dice rolls? 1 is the Active Pokemon, while 2-6 corresponds to bench positions from left to right. Keep rolling until you have distributed all energy cards. This would be the same for the random targeting too. The only problem would be needing to keep D6s around for specific cards... As for randomly filling up the bench with a basic pokemon, you could probably keep drawing cards until you draw a basic, shuffling all of the drawn cards back into the deck, and resume play, kinda like Computer Search, but pseudorandom, since card counting exists.
I say this while A: I haven't checked through all cards so I don't know of discrepancies, and B: I know nothing about programming, but I have a guess about the Electrode and Ditto that were cut. It's possible that the game can't(or couldn't during development) produce permanent extra Energy cards to reasonably translate Electrode's Power due to altering the Deck/Card Count and maybe messing up that data. As for Ditto, it might be much easier to have it copy your own Pokémon from the data of your Deck as opposed to an opponent's Pokémon, which could likely not be in your Deck at all(linking to Electrode potentially getting Energy that isn't in your Deck either). More likely though it had to have been the Energy workaround effect requiring rewriting a card's data to have it use Colorless Energy on that specific copy, or something similar.
Didn't that there was another Parasect fan in the world. And the GBC TCG game might actually be the best official simulator for the card game to this day lol
I really like how the Eeveelution cards can basically be slotted into any deck due to the colorless attacks. They can help a lot with giving you some extra type coverage without worrying about having more types of energy in your deck. That Zapdos card is also a monster. I used that one in the sequel, and would purposely leave my bench with very few, or no Pokemon, so it was basically always doing damage to the opponent. Combine it with Scoop Up, and you could wreck shop on your opponent.
In the sequel, I built a deck where legendary zapdos is the only basic pokemon. There are so few counters to it, it basically destroys everything. The only counters are Mr Mime and a fully powered up charizard since it can one shot Zapdos
@@runemonkey58 mime really pissed me off in that game lmao
I think an Eeveelutions only deck would be a fun challenge
@@Paraspectre dooooo it
@@Paraspectre I didn't do it as a challenge, but I did build that deck
It has 2 of each Eeveelution card (12 total) as well as 4 Eevee and 4 Ditto (to Morph into Eevee)
It works surprisingly well for what it is, especially with Pokémon Trader allowing me to get whichever Eeveelution best fits the situation
It sounds like the common factor in the cards that were left out is needing to handle energy as wildcards. For electrode, it's not just "add two energy to a Pokemon," because you need to be able to handle the case of things like energy removal sending it to the discard pile, but also it, as a single card, counts as two energy of any type. Between needing to handle a pokemon card being treated as an energy card and that energy needing to count as any type, I can imagine it would have required a lot of special handling for one Pokemon. In the case of Ditto, there's the matter of needing to be able to use the opposing Pokemon's moves using any type of energy. This would have required some kind of special case handler for "if this card is ditto, allow any energy for it's attacks," or it would have required essentially creating a ditto version of every other Pokemon card with it's attacks replaced with colorless energy, which would have been quite a tall order. The version in this game notably doesn't bypass energy requirements, and from a design perspective that's fine since you're copying one of your own cards, so one can assume you deckbuilt with the proper energies for everything in your deck.
As far as the two energy thing, it’s really not too different from a Double Colorless Energy. That can also be discarded with a Removal. But yeah, it’s gotta be the any energy thing combined with the complications of it being an actual Pokémon beforehand.
My guess is they already made Pokémon and energies handled separately in the code, and didn't run into any issues until later in development. Or limitations of the cartridge made it infeasible.
Also don’t forget programming back then was a much different beast than today.
Fun fact you can't actually get a Phantom Venusaur legit from card pop. It was due to a coding error. The way it worked was that a person's name gave an ID number given that when paired with another hidden ID number from the game file it would either be Even or Odd. The number could only ever be even due to this coding error. So, you could get Mew, but never Venusaur. XD
I was hoping this would be mentioned. It's actually wild that the developers would come up with such a crazed method but not even test all possibilities to make sure it was viable.
You have to try an Imakuni deck challenge!
Wild guess, but I assume that they were having problems with the NPC opponents just knocking out their own Electrodes for no reason. Most Pokémon Powers back then were, at worst, neutral, so they could code the NPCs to use 1 Power per turn if available. Code in Electrode and then the NPC will play a lightning energy on Electrode, then knock it out to put two energies on a Magnemite. 11:54
Interesting, never thought of that. I don’t remember ever specifically playing with these two cards back when we would play in ‘99.
Also the fact that those two energy cards would be spontaneously created, not taken from the deck or hand, an otherwise unused mechanic that would overflow the 60 card deck limit. Would require a lot of extra code they must have decided wasnt worth the effort
Except it wouldn't be two energy cards either. It would be one card that is a "double colored energy", and important distinction for cards like "energy removal", which can remove "one energy card" at once, which could either be 1 or 2 energy depending. So they'd have to introduce like 5 additional fake cards that would never appear again under any other circumstance to count as double colored energy. It's really awkward to imagine coding this, because you'd want to write something like "double green energy (electrode)" as the card name so a player is kept aware of the situation. And it's not even clear from the card what happens to electrode/energy when it ends up in the discard. According to the internet the official ruling is it reverts to being electrode, hence the need to alert the player they aren't going to end up with this energy in the discard by noting it is electrode. So you have this obnoxiously long card name to deal with too. It's a mess.
And then on the other side Ditto would have required them to double the number of cards coded in the game (because the copies all have Ditto's PKMN power). That's why the GB exclusive ditto removes it from the game and replaces it, rather than letting ditto keep changing. It's easy to just code that the Ditto card becomes an exact copy of a different card and remains that way forever.
You’re probably right, especially considering how bad the trainer AI was for the main series games at this time. I just started playing this game on switch online and was very disappointed I couldn’t use Buzzap Electrode.
Fossil Ditto likely was too hard to program because it's a card that has to change mid-battle, every time the defending Pokémon changes or when its power gets deactivated. And again, when it dies, it would have to go back to being Ditto. Probably a hassle to program.
Makes sense. There’s obviously A reason for it not to be in the game, I just didn’t know the exact one
May I add in that the majority of GB/GBC games are written in raw assembly for the given CPU you think modern programming looks difficult it has nothing on assembly I can see how both cards would have been an absolute nightmare to even try and write let alone actually debug
@@roblock3758 I mean, they coded Ditto into Red/Blue/Yellow just fine.
@loganWolfOfDarkness Transform is broken though. Any wild Pokémon that uses it becomes Ditto when caught.
There are two Pokémon that can learn Transform. Yeah, a lot could go wrong.
@@KopperNeoman That bug was only in Gen 1, they fixed that with G/S.
18:11
That's Mt Fuji and a Shinkansen bullet train
Not sure if it was a joke or not, but on the off chance it wasn't (or for anyone who missed it), the random line in the surfing Pikachu card isn't actually random, but a stylized Shinkansen, a high speed Japanese bullet train. How it's shooting out of a volcano is beyond me though haha.
Great video as always! :)
Haha yeah it’s just kinda suspended in the air
The volcano is a stylized Mt. Fuji
GB Jigglypuff is interesting as I feel like it's synergistic enough with Do the Wave to have been run in that archetype irl.
It does
I used to run that Jigglypuff in my Do The Wave deck, alongside the Marowak he mentioned directly afterwards.
I assure you, it works just as well as you think it would
6:56 'Yeah Mystery Jolteon certainly isn't turning any heads' - was surprised to hear that! I love this card! At least, for a purely colorless lightning type, I don't find 30 damage and paralysis to be a bad deal. I like it a lot more than its Vaporeon and Flarion counterparts. Also a fan of its cheap retreat cost.
I feel like it can’t hold a candle to Snorlax - same 4 colorless attack for 30 with paralysis check, except Snorlax is a basic, has more HP, a resistance, and immunity to status effects. And the most relevant water target to want to hit with electric is Rain Dance Blastoise, against whom having 60 HP is a pretty big liability because you’re always in range to be one-shot.
I think the GBC Flareon is the standout - although Rapidash does about the same thing for cheaper, trading with Rage is a pretty big threat to anything that can’t one-shot it.
That "Green and white line" in the promo pikachu is a train
Yeah I can see it. Just a hovering train
Been playing the ROM hack of TCG called TCG Neo which replaces the cards with Johto series cards
gb zapdos only deck is brutal, not only because the 70 dmg always hits your opponent but because you can run so many trainers in your deck alongside it to keep it healthy and retain draw power
Sorry to say but Phantom venasaur isn't "extremely rare" it's actually "Completely unobtainable" due to how they decided to program Card Pop!
Edit: unobtainable in tcg 1 specifically, it is obtainable in tcg 2 because they changed how card pop! Works in tcg 2.
Electrode isn't quite as simple as "attack two energies". Electrode itself is attached as one card that provides 2 energy, meaning that it could be removed with regular Energy Removal or anything else that discards only one energy card. And once it goes to the discard pile it "becomes" Electrode again, a non-energy card. So it probably would have been a little tricky to get that all uniquely programmed.
Which I’m sure is why it’s not here. It still doesn’t seem impossible to make it work but again, I know nothing about programming
Well, the Legendary Zapdos card is far from unreliable 😅 Just ask to the speedrunners what's the preferred way to beat the final duels of the game: 1 Zapdos, a fair load of Lightning Energy and some trainers and there you go! A guaranteed turn 1 draw and enough HP to beat any opponent in less than 10 turns 🙃Best regards!
You know it is funny you mentioned about how hard it was to get Pokemon TCG cards back in the height of its popularity. I remember going to the mall with some of my friends and one of the stores were selling the cards but limited how many packs you could buy. So there was this guy hanging out outside of the store and would ask any kids walking by if they would go in and buy the maximum number of packs allowable and bring them back to him. Once the kids agreed he would give them the money to buy the cards and when you returned to him he would open the packs, take what he wanted, and let the kids have what was left. I know today this would be a stranger danger story but things were a little different back then.
That’s awesome. Sketchy Pokémon card sellers. I can’t remember if the stores near me had limits or not but it’s not like I had money to buy a bunch anyway. I was 13 with a meek allowance haha
Fun fact: While the game data exists for both phantom cards. Only one of them can actually be obtained via legitimate means. Due to a programming oversight, the calculation performed when card popping can never generate the right values for phantom venusaur.
I used the Jolteon in a deck centered on Jolteon and Venusaur. It did well against all but a couple of decks.
id love to see a "random target attack" only run. or maybe a "coin-flip or no damage attack" run. The aggravating part about these ideas would be that the best cards for the respective challenges are the three legendary birds lol.
Right, it’s tough to do the challenge legitimately. There are always mods or even just beating the club masters again with a completed game file.
Don't you love it when card game media has cards that just don't exist? As a yugioh kid, I know I loved it when cards either just didn't exist or were radically different from real life. Totally didn't feel cheated at all.
Big Jaws and Submersible Carrier Aero Shark were SLAUGHTERED
It's somewhat Interesting looking into Yugioh from the sidelines every once in a while
Looking into an old anime exclusive archetype ("fossil" fusions for example) and thinking about fun gimmicks you could do with it. Then years later finding out that they eventually got a print
Games that had OCG only cards that weren't imported yet always felt a bit mystical, like when you could get Five-Headed Dragon in a lot of the older games. At the time the summoning requirement was pretty unique and 5000 ATK/DEF was pretty rare so it felt like some secret super card.
My friends and i printed a few proxies of the GB exclusive cards. Legendary Moltres, we altered its firegiver ability to be playable. "Flip a coin 3 times, draw 1 fire energy plus an additional fire energy for each heads. Shuffle your deck."
i wonder if the reason ditto and electrode were cut was maybe their pokemon powers would have been too much text that they couldn't fit it all on one screen?
I remember playing with proxies of the gbc cards with friends when this came out. Moltres is potentially 4 energy search for fire. I rolled a 4 sided dice, We actually used a lot of dnd dice to replicate some of the random effects of these cards
how did you guys do the zapdos one
Building a deck around Marowak's Wail sounds like a fun time.
It’s the move that reminded me of Magic the Gathering for some reason. A move that sounds like it helps both players that you can tweak in your favor if you have the right cards
I knew the legendary 4 were exclusive, but it's great to learn about the rest of them, as well as having a quick reference/ explanation for all of them
Thank you!
They’re pretty awesome cards! It’s a shame that they live only in this game but like I said, kinda makes them more special.
TCG2 has a very good fan translation available. I've been playing through it for the past few days and enjoying it.
I love game exclusive Cards for TCG Games, like I really like how there's all these Anime Only cards that were in the Yugioh Tag Force Game, the entire Turbo Duels from the 5ds World Championship games, especially Duel Links which gives you exclusive cards in an actual Competitive Format (although I think only really Kiteroid did anything)
Yugioh is something I know next to nothing about. That could be a fun game for me to try out, as I stumble through and have everyone make fun of me ☺️
There's a rom hack called Pokemon TCG: Neo that came out recently. It has all new cards, I would love to see you play through it. :)
Link to It??
@@thalezito-4990 You can't link to rom hacks.
@@thalezito-4990
google this : 'pokemon tcg neo poke harbor'
@@thalezito-4990 You can search it up on Google and find it. I recommend it highly as it's a pretty good hack and recently the thing got updated to use pack arts from the Neo sets too. The guy also had to nerf some cards as some of them are really busted like Lugia for example. I used that guy to beat the game with a well made deck.
Sounds awesome
I LOVE THIS GAME. the old sets actually plays so well.. classic
15:48 In both GBC TCG games, I took a page from decks that only run like 4 Pokemon cards to get their plays going and built a deck whose only Pokemon cards were 4 Legendary Zapdos. Keep only the one in play at a time and you don't even have to worry about Big Thunder hitting one of your own. Just sit back, enjoy the mayhem and use Potion and Super Potion Trainer Cards as required.
(We don't talk about how Mr.Mime shuts this strat completely, though)
Those eevee evolutions would probably make a better Potpourri deck option than the jungle cards considering no rainbow energy and one of best base set card printed being electrodein the game. That electrode seriously puts in work and sets you up so fast in a lot of decks. Sad to see it missing. Its practically a base to fossil staple card for me.
Tbh I kinda wish the GB cards had physical print form and that the 2nd game was released in NA...
There's actually 2 phantom cards via card pop
Most of the GB exclusives have mechanics that are basically impossible in the real card game. It’s fun that they included these cards and took advantage of being able to randomize things in the code.
No se inglés, solo español, pero gracias al traductor de TH-cam pude comprender tu vídeo. Gracias.
18:10, I think that's supposed to be Mount Fuji there, probably a reference to Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa print. Just a guess though.
They cut Buzzap Electrode from both games. Super frustrating, one of my favorites, would've liked fighting it too
The Vaporeon error is interesting, I'm thinking the magazine render could've been early in production. Like the grandmasters' legendary birds it was never printed
I used to have this game, and went so far as to recreate the theme decks from the sets that were available when it came out in the US. Every theme deck.
That’s awesome. Big fan of the theme decks
9:33 I don’t know if I would evaluate an attack that costs 2 energy and the effect is “time walk yourself and mix your energies up” as a risk… it’s more like literally throwing at that point. When choosing to pass turn is a better option than doing an attack I think we can safely say that attack isn’t worth it. At least Tackle does damage!
The ditto that wasn't added was probably because it would of been difficult to code, any energy becomes the energy for the attack. Colourless was probably coded to be it's own energy rather than all at once.
11:07 Why is there a black square on Tentacool’s health bar?
It’s just a still image of Ditto using transform. That’s the box that moves in the animation
Tangela is pretty good but I prefer the TCG version, it had good power and effect for a basic.
All three Eveelution are pretty terrible: While Vaporeon is just like scyther it an evolution and not a basic so is much more inconsistent, has different weakness and resistant though.
Legendary birds: Powerful for being basics with 100 hp, Zapdos>Moltres>Articuno>. They slot so easily in the pokeball, computer search, bills, professor oaks, scoop, super energy retrieve, energy search, scyther shell.
Zapdos: Its not hard to build the deck just Zapdos, draw, and energies. The mulligan rules is why its OP, you get a free 7 if you draw no basics. If you have no bench pokemon with only Zapdos its all upside and if you need to do it you would want your first Zapdos to knock out your previous Zapdos with peal in a real match with normal player otherwise put in zapdos pass and let npc knock it out. 70 nonresistable damage on a basic with 100 hp is stupid broken.
Moltres: The power is nuts for card advantage, deck thinning, and is actually great to combo with scoop up, the random nature of the ability is a bit annoying but its more upside then downside due to the numbers allowing you for a quick win by turn 3, 70 damage will one tap most basic, will one-tap anything with weakness because only 2 pokemon had 100+hp, deal decent damage to resistance, and 35d on average is a good rate. It makes it very worth it to put in pokeballs for more shenanigans.
Articuno: the stun is nice and at least Articuno will only hurt the opponent but what makes it powerful is that its a basic, has 100hp,have a decent ability, and all three birds have good synergy with jungle scyther. Everything just more true with Moltres then Arcticuno especially the fact that Moltres digs up frikken energy to setup either Scyther or itself. You can however raindance a new articuno with super energy retrieval to replace any that gets knocked out.
As OP as the birds are, I like the fact that they are fun to build around and most likely wouldn't cause hairpulling because the victims are mostly NPCs.
Yeah, them all having abilities that activate when played is pretty scary. And often annoying to deal with in the game, but they don’t always utilize their full potential
12:01 My theory regarding Base Electrode is the fact that Buzzap turns Electrode into what is essentially a typed DCE, as opposed to two typed energy cards. Like a DCE, an Electrode can be removed as a unit by Energy Removal, for example, and cannot be subdivided if you only need to discard 1 energy card to satisfy an attack like Ember. They could program DCE into the game to provide 2 colorless energy because it is the only Energy card that provides colorless energy in the game, and because all other Energy cards are single units there is no reason to program the ability to remember if typed energy attached to a Pokémon is a single unit or double, in the case of Electrode. Basically they would have to change how the whole game calculates the values of attached Energy for the sake of 1 card, which was not worth it in their eyes.
This is such a cool idea for a video. I have a big soft spot for a lot of these cards. I use the GB Tangela in almost all my Grass decks, and the GB Vaporeon in particular was a tech card in a Flareon-centered Fire deck of mine
Yeah those Eeveelutions are perfect for slapping onto decks of different types.
I alwas found it super weird, that Super Energy Retrieval was in the game which is clearly Gen1 only and matches with Energy Removal and Super Energy Removal from the Base Set but only got its physical print in Gen2. This is the reason, why my copy of that card is actually in my Gen1 Binder 😅
I only did Card Pop a handful of times as a kid and got the Mew. Had no idea it was so rare. Really wish I still had the cartridge.
I have never been a part of the GBC tcg online community so I don't know the popular challenge runs but I've played it so many times I've made my own challenge runs. Here are some I've tried for fun:
1: 50 hp clause deck. No pokemon with hp over 50. Some interesting pokemon become your main attackers, utility and pivoting etc. Guaranteed status moves become very clutch.
2: explode deck. Only pokemon lines where one evolution has a move that explodes (self destruct, explosion, big eggsplosion)
3: move lock deck - all pokemon must have one similar attack in its evolution line (agility/quick attack, etc)
*bonus*4: Dark mind deck. Only hypno and gengar lines. You will need to get creative with gengars pokemon power curse and plus powers to get around psychic resist normal heavy decks
Have fun with your challenges!
I LOVE all of these ideas. I actually do have the exploding one already written down as video options. Never thought of the move lock one but I like it a lot.
2:29 I only just noticed this, but that's a shiny Wigglytuff on the Jungle booster pack.
Is it really? Hmm
@@Paraspectre By modern standards, definitely yes. For the time period (Gold/Silver, pre-Crystal), it's harder to tell, since body color barely changed between coloration back then, but I believe that the eyes are more green than blue, making it shiny.
Having just finished the game with a mono-Fire deck as my main, Dancing Embers Ninetales is actually surprisingly good. Since it doesn’t expend energy to attack, it’s ironically *more* reliable early on in a match, or if you’re getting bad luck with energy draws. The coin-flips *are* a gamble, but the chances of missing all eight are low, so it’s not as bad as it sounds (the worst flips I ever got in my whole playthrough was 2-6).
I’m still a firm believer that a promo card only run would be really interesting. Awesome!
Definitely a possibility!
Pidgeot GB is bad for how rare it is....
I mean... there are cards that can hit the bench that do not apply weaknesses/resistances so it is not good... it cannot bypass defenders... growls... even agility which is a huge strat and Agility Rapidash is a very strong card and early too. Especially Invisible Wall PokePower Mr.Mime.
I loved Zapdos. I played a 4 Zapdos only deck in GBA where I basically won by only having one Zapdos in play and knocking out a Pokémon each turn with Big Thunder.
Can Big Thunder hit a different Zapdos? I never thought of this.
Legendary Zapdos can be used to build one of the most busted decks in the game by using it as your only Basic pokemon and loading your deck with Scoop Up to repeat its effects. You can pretty easily tear through the postgame with it.
Yeah that… seems pretty foolproof. Especially since in this game, you can redraw your first hand on repeat with no penalty if you don’t get a Pokémon
Come to think of it, Zapdos can be pretty good if you have no Pokemon on your bench. Then you can spam Big Thunder with it only damaging the opponent.
You should do a challenge run, where you use these exclusive cards. 😀🤔
It’s a possibility! I would probably have to omit the legendaries though.
One thing I'd like to remind you about the 3 legendary birds in the game is that there are versions based on them in the physical card game YEARS later in the Majestic Dawn set. Articuno has the same power, Montres takes it from the discard pile (and the maximum is 3) and Zapdos flips a coin to deal 10 damage to all opponents.
.
About them in the game, Zapdos + Hitmonchan is indeed a very strong combination using PlusPowers and Scope Up that can win the game in turn 1. Loves to use this combination in the emulator (after all you need to have 4 Zapdos for maximum consistency)
The ditto one has got to be because of a specific ruling which would probably mess with the entire core engine of the game. In the TCG...Ditto doesn't immediately become the new pokemon on a switch or knock-out...instead, there is a liminal period where it is just "Ditto". This means that if you say...copied a Jungle Pinsir (60 HP), and it used Guillotine on you (50 damage) but you knocked it out, Ditto would immediately get knocked out itself as it would suddenly have 50 HP. This means that if they didn't have it in the engine to enable for a knock-out at the same time as a switch, they would either have to introduce a new ruling which ran contrary to the card's actual function...or get rid of the card entirely. As for Base Set Electrode...said Electrode does not become "2 lightning energies"...it becomes a single card which *provides* two lightning energies...making it more like Double Colorless Energy. They probably didn't have anything in the engine to account for if someone used a standard "Energy Removal" to remove what is essentially a "Double Lightning Energy", and then turn back into a pokemon when it's discarded. I'm reasonably sure they could have accomplished both of these effects within the engine with special conditions, however, I also have no doubt that said exceptions would slow the game down as it would be an introduction of new persistent variables that could well bog down a processor which was not known for being particularly speedy or powerful.
All of this makes sense for sure. I still say they could’ve been done, but yeah, at that point, it probably wasn’t worth it
15:55 This card looks like "pure random in card", but it´s extremly good, maybe the BEST card in game.
Use it in an Deck with only 2 of these Zapdos and fill the rest with 19 Electro-Energy-Cards, Searching-Cards and Healing-Cards. It´s a guaranteed auto-win and enemies will have a hell of a good time getting 70 Dmg each turn after Turn 3
I'm happy you've done a video on this topic! :D
I also like the Legendary Zapdos. I remember on an English patch of the 2nd game, I used cheats to give myself like 4 Zapdos and 4 Dittos and I made a deck with 4 Zapdos, 4 Dittos and one or two Kangaskhan for card draw. I would then try to have only one Zapdos out at a time (as much as possible) So Peal of Thunder and Big Thunder would hit the enemy most of the time.
One thing about Card pop is : it can be redone with one cartridge if you have done enough card Pop (4 I think) so you can loop it to have everything !
As I am working on a mod for PKMN TCG GB : the real effect of Phantom Mew is : your attack does 0 or 10 damage and one of the following effects : +10 damage, nothing, or one of the different status.
Also, programming speaking, Electrode and Metamorph had to be redone because restrictions couldn't permit to make them in the game.
(And I'm working to make the Phantom cards easier to get without card pop because even emulator can't recreate Card Pop, maybe the Switch Online version will ???)
Wow, very interesting. Yeah, that Mew card is very vague and deceptive. I really thought that meant it was crazy good.
@@Paraspectre Yes it is confusing a bit and when I was younger I didn't know what the range of the strength it had. But watching the disassembly is fun work to understand a bit deeper how the game really works !
Fun fact:
I believe that Slicing Wind is a exclusive move that can be learned in the Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team games
I subbed from the title of this video alone. Pokemons videos this niche are to be treasured.
Can't wait to revisit this game when it gets re-released on the Switch this year
It’s awesome that many more people can experience this again or for the first time. Maybe more people will search for videos on TH-cam! ☺️
I love when digital versions of card games do things that you can't easily do in physical games. That was one thing that Hearthstone was really good at.
Right, randomly reassigning energies and stuff would take some creativity with physical cards.
@@Paraspectre Reassigning energies is actually probably one of the most practical of these weird effects. You could pretty easily do it by rolling a die, but you'd have to roll it for each energy, with possible rerolls depending on how many Pokemon you have, so it would quickly get annoyingly time consuming.
Will you ever cover the light and dark cards from early on? I bought a couple packs back in the day but dont know much about them and when they came out
I may absolutely do this in the future
14:13 If you *only* play Zapdos and base your whole deck around only having Zapdos out, it's busted and only concedes to Mr. Mime. Mr. Mime alone keeps the deck in check from a PvP perspective.
The only thing that can stop the legendary bird of thunder and lightning? A creepy mime.
great video - any chance on getting a sequel going over the digital only cards exclusive to the Pokemon Card GB2? (like Dark Starmie / Dark Ninetales) ?
I did look into it but I was surprised at how few there were. But by looking these up, it gave me the idea for the next few videos… stay tuned.
Ditto is rough. Its power means if you gust your opponent, it changes immediately. It's the only pokemon in base set (maybe even the whole game) that can be knocked out by retreating or being gusted, as its hp goes back to 50 while it's not your active pokemon. The difference with gb ditto is that it never changes back. Not impossible to program, but you have to account for way more use cases for the inclusion of one card. Electrode was probably the same, in that it probably would take multiple ui assets and special considerations just to implement it. Probably not impossible, but they clearly more resources than most would have to be spent than they deemed worth it for two cards.
Yeah I didn’t really put much thought into how Fossil Ditto works, but you’re right. That’s a mess. If I ever played with that card, it was when I was a stupid 13 year old so I don’t remember facing those problems.
@@Paraspectre I've been programming the tcg as a side project. Both of these cards are so much worse than I thought. If you just look at the tcg errata you can find some really bizarre use cases. A problem I didn't realize a month ago was that energies on ditto count as any energy not type not just for attacks, but at all times. There's a lot of implications of this but here's the most insane one I saw:
So you can use Venusaur's energy trans to transfer Electrode but only if you declare electrode provides grass energies. This alone might be why electrode isn't in the game but that's not all. That is the case, UNLESS you attach electrode to ditto, because it counts as grass energies only while attached to ditto. That means you can transfer Electrode off of Ditto, but not back on in that case. A case that could very well happen, probably never will, but one you have to account for as the programmer. These cards aren't worth it.
That Zapdos I think leads to the most overpowered deck, not just for speedrunning, but for consistent wins. A deck of a single Zapdos + all the good trainer cards basically can't lose. The only thing that can stop it is a Mr. Mime, as your 70 damage attack can never hurt it since anything that does more than 20 is reduced to 0. The only way around it is to include a single fossil and a single Kabuto evolution, since this will still guarantee the Zapdos in your opening hand and can be found reliably with all the bills, oaks, item finders, and computer searches, and both does under 20 damage and can still use electric energy for its scratch. I remember using it as a kid forever when I was trying to get a full playset of everything in the game. It's just so unbelievably consistent compared to anything else, since you're guaranteed to live for several turns with zapdos's high life no matter what, and the chance of not drawing defenders, potions, energy removal, bills, oaks, or computer searches is basically 0.
Maybe that’s why you are intended to get the card only at the very end of the game 😅
How does Card Pop work with the switch online version? Does it work with an internet connection? Someone please let me know.
is this just for the first TCG game? if so will you make a similar video for TCG2? I'm always curious about that game since it never came to the West
I’m currently making some TCG2 content, but not the exclusives. Surprisingly, there aren’t many
Not sure if you've seen it but Deltaseeker did this exact video haha. Great channel for TCG content!
Arcanine was the most common yet OP card in this game and gen1 in general.
I have only played the Game Boy game a few times as an adult and I never thought about just how many exclusive cards there are! I think because I grew up with the physical cards, the fact that a lot of the artworks are the same between the exclusive game cards and the gym leader set maybe I didn't think much about it. I guess the artwork would have been taken from the gym leader set to the gbc rather than the other way around, right? Since the gym leader set was already out in Japan.
My man with entertaining vids as always! Loved to see those cards that I had back in the day in the game.
The forgotten cards that only existed 20+ years ago.
A disruptive MTG player? A man after my own heart! I don't care about winning big multiplayer matches, I only care about causing chaos!
One of my mates had a card wherein, upon ANY permanent entering the battlefield, you HAD to trade it with someone else's permanent of the same type. It was pandemonium, and it was beautiful!
I wonder what the datamine would tell us about that game-only Mew's attack programming. What's the maximum possible damage roll? What's the min? Do all values have an equal probability or was some bell curve applied so stuff like "270 damage", "0 damage", "20 damage", "10, 830 damage" wasn't ridiculously all over the place every turn?
I think I see why the cards are more difficult to program in; with Electrode, it could "become" two energy, but the easiest way to do that is to spawn new energy- which would mean they'd end up in your discard when they shouldn't be there. Similarly, Ditto transforms constantly- this means the game has to keep track the ditto itself AND whatever it transforms into- whereas the GB Ditto literally becomes a copy of the card it transforms into for all intents and purposes- even when it's discarded; it never changes back, which makes it easier to keep track of. They probably already had the engine locked to 60 cards per deck with no way to remove a "fake" card mid-battle before they got to programming those two; it may have required reworking the underlying game engine which would have been a lot of work for two cards.
Amusingly enough, there is another way to get the two phantom promo cards. On my copy of the game I caused some sort of overflow glitch that rewarded me with a random number of cards for each individual card type. So I have about 60 phantom Venosaurs and a few phantom mews, as well as over 100 copies of some cards, which displays as a dot so their numbers look like .7, .2, ect. Granted whatever caused this was a bit unstable, as some stacks of cards have disappeared at random times so for awhile I didn't have any jigglypuffs.
Haha a hefty price to pay to get those phantom cards. I never knew about this though.
Good video, Paraspectre! I like the GB exclusive cards for their randomness, although they make for pretty unreliable strategies. I think the TCG video games allowed for the automation of what would otherwise be very tedious tasks. Taking out every basic pokemon from your deck, showing them and the rest of your deck to your opponent to ensure you're not stacking the odds, then shuffling and drawing a few, and shuffling your deck again, would be incredibly time consuming! I imagine randomly attaching several energy cards would be like rolling a die over and over again until you land on a pokemon slot in which there is a pokemon (1 for active, 2-6 for each benched), and repeat for each energy.
I assume the difficulty for the Electrode was either to do with the classes of card - attaching a Pokemon to another Pokemon is not allowed, or if you materialised two energies out of nowhere, what happens to them if the energies are removed (either due to a move cost or the effect of a card) or redistributed. Surely, they would have to move together like a double colourless, but I guess they couldn't set up a token with two energy options that you choose when you active Buzzap and remove from play when it is removed from a Pokemon. The ditto is a weird one. It might be due to some subtlety of the difference between it and the morph ditto. Like morph ditto becomes an exact clone of a card once, but transform ditto is still a ditto with changing hp and moves every time the opponent's pokemon changes. Interesting though!
In the sequel the venusaur and mew cards that were pop exclusive were available in game through the Game Center
Hmm I see. I’ll be doing a half video on the TCG2 exclusives as well
New video in the middle of the day! ❤
The levels they slap on the cards always blow my mind 😂
Most of them don’t even work in a main game context either
@@Paraspectre find me a level 37 Articuno on gen 1
I just had an idea: pokemon tcg, but you are a hitman hired to exact vengeance for past losses. Every time you play against a club, pick a deck from one of the clubs weak to the one you are playing against, and win with that deck. You can use any member's deck from that club.
Bonus points if you win with the club leader's deck. Extra bonus points if you win with the objectively worst deck in the avenging club.
Variant challenge if you don't want to use the prebuilt decks: build a custom deck using only the cards used by avenging members (this includes limiting yourself to the numbers of cards those club members have; so if they only have two gusts of wind in total, you can only use two). At least half your pokemon have to be weak to the club you are challenging.
I think this challenge would be an interesting one because you'll always be at a mechanical disadvantage, between the type matchups and the less than competitive deck recipes, but it also means you'll have lots of variety in each fight, and can deploy numerous strategies to show off a lot more of the card game than we've seen with single deck challenges.
Very interesting. I sort did this only one time when I conquered that hapless Grass club with just Matthew’s deck. That could be fun
Great video. Would like more like this!
i used to play the trading card game online all the time. not the official site. an unofficial one called TCG ONE, that let players play with all the retro gen 1 and 2 cards. and for the longest time, the admin never implemented the Fossil Ditto, talked about in this video, for much the same reasons. However, it eventually got added to the site, after all the bugs and kinks were worked out. Other cards that took for ever to implement were, Chaos gym and Eco gym.
Wow, I haven’t heard of this. Fossil Ditto seems more complicated than it needs to be 😅
This soundtrack was straight heat.
currently playing through the 2nd game. I love your vids
Thanks! It’s both a great and not so great sequel. I have mixed thoughts on it
@@Paraspectre well, I loved it but I can understand that the simplicity of the first game is cool too. The first one feels more, alive ?
Morph would be a neat if not possibly super broken move to see translated to the video games. Ditto transforming into one of your other party pokemon at random.
I’m a huge fan of friendship song jigglypuff. Spam friendship song, load your bench up, evolve to Wigglytuff and 1 or 2 shot everything with 60 power do the wave. If you can also manage a damage swap Alakazam while you set this up, I don’t know really see how you could lose.
Oh! I actually cross stitched that Jolteon! I didn't realize it was FROM the TCG Gameboy game, I thought it was translated artwork.
Oh yeah? That’s awesome. I’m not sure if it originated here because I think a lot of the art is from the Japanese main games. I could be wrong
9:02
How is Ninetales spelled wrong?
Its spelled Ninetails in the game. When its supposed to be Ninetales.
@@RinaShinomiyaVal ok. Thanks. Didn't even see that till you pointed it out.
My childhood save file of TCG actually had all the cards except Venusaur and Mew, since the only other person I ever met with the game was my brother. I wonder if the Switch Online will support Card Pop since it should support multiplayer, unlike the 3DS VC release.
As for most powerful GB exclusive, my immediate thought is that Articuno would actually see play today. Paralysis on a coin flip without attacking is nuts. Electrode accelerating energy is cool too considering how rare the effect was in that era.
Finally, props on the Clue meme. Awesome movie and it was free on YT with ads last I saw.
I wondered about card pop in NSO too… it will probably not be there. And I should reference Clue more often. It IS my favorite movie of all time.
Articuno is the only GB exclusive card that could be used in the real game. It's random condition would be replaced with a coin flip i.e.heads do 40 to a bench Pokémon tails do 40 to the active. Also, it power is not something to be scoffed at. Most Pokémon who've had that power throughout the games lifetime have been evolutions.
What I would do is have deck with only one Chansey and 2 Legendary Zapdos. After that I'll include 4 computer search, 4 Potions, 4 Super Potions, 4 Switch, 4 Scoop ups. I'll max out all the lightning energy as well. I'll use computer search to look for the legendary Zapdos while having the Chansey as the active pokemon while soaking up damage. I'll use Scoop up to have Chansey on my hand after Zapdos is already charged up ready to attack using Peal of Thunder. This method is powerful but reckless.
If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the problem they were having with physical Ditto wasn't copying another pokemon card, but rather treating all energy cards as whatever energy is needed for it. That's probably why it went from copying the opponents pokemon to copying one of your own, since otherwise you would rarely have the correct energy to use its attacks.
It's interesting to see what kind of effects don't translate well between the game and real life. Like, I can't even imagine how someone would perform Ninetails's random energy distribution effect easily in real life.
Yeah that’s something I didn’t really mention. There are a lot of exclusive moves that would need some custom rules in a physical game. Anything that randomly gets reattached across the board would need some creativity to make it work
@@Paraspectre I just came up with an interesting idea for the random energy distribution - what about 6-sided dice rolls? 1 is the Active Pokemon, while 2-6 corresponds to bench positions from left to right. Keep rolling until you have distributed all energy cards. This would be the same for the random targeting too. The only problem would be needing to keep D6s around for specific cards...
As for randomly filling up the bench with a basic pokemon, you could probably keep drawing cards until you draw a basic, shuffling all of the drawn cards back into the deck, and resume play, kinda like Computer Search, but pseudorandom, since card counting exists.
I say this while A: I haven't checked through all cards so I don't know of discrepancies, and B: I know nothing about programming, but I have a guess about the Electrode and Ditto that were cut.
It's possible that the game can't(or couldn't during development) produce permanent extra Energy cards to reasonably translate Electrode's Power due to altering the Deck/Card Count and maybe messing up that data.
As for Ditto, it might be much easier to have it copy your own Pokémon from the data of your Deck as opposed to an opponent's Pokémon, which could likely not be in your Deck at all(linking to Electrode potentially getting Energy that isn't in your Deck either). More likely though it had to have been the Energy workaround effect requiring rewriting a card's data to have it use Colorless Energy on that specific copy, or something similar.
I’m sure it’s some combination of both of these, yeah
Didn't that there was another Parasect fan in the world. And the GBC TCG game might actually be the best official simulator for the card game to this day lol
It still holds up very well
The second game was so much fun!