This video has finally come to my attention, and man was it a walk down memory lane. Thank you. I loved innovating at the time. New game, new possibilities, players not set on anything, it was fun to “break rules” with tri-color decks. I will answer your question, though, Re: Gambler. This was basically a 5th Oak, though more importantly, it would allow me to finish off opponents, particularly stall decks, before I decked myself. Because of Item Finder and it really only being needed late game, Gambler gave me a way to shuffle cards back into my library, buying turns. More often than not, when I played it, I had the game reasonably in hand and wanted to flip tails. It was a tech card. Was it great? Not really, but it did it’s just when needed. It also had a 50% chance of being a Super Oak if I had just stalled and needed a prayer answered. 😁
@drops043 well, it still took four energy to use his move and using his move made you discard two of them so at best, he was an every other turn use, unless I got lucky with my double colorless energies
All of the true pokémon fans remember the original 151 pokémon, but seeing all those old trainer cards again that i never understood as a kid for the first time in 20+ years was an extreme blast of nostalgia. It takes me right back to 1999 begging my parents to buy me booster packs whenever we stopped at the grocery store near our house since there was a shop called "Cards & Comics" in the same plaza. Just this year i started playing pokémon tcg live at 31 years old and I can't believe what i've been missing. Now that i play the game and know the magic behind it, this makes the early years and this video that much more special. Thank you for this, this video hit me right in my childhood and is very fulfilling to watch. Awesome video.
I could have written this comment myself, even down to the fact that we're the same age! TCG Live has been really good for getting me into playing the game. Super wallet friendly too. I'm looking forward to trying Pocket as well.
“How to say you’re old without saying you’re old” lmao I was 10 when the cards hit our shores, somewhere around year 2000 I think. Yep, nobody even had cameras back then, even mobile phones weren’t a thing yet lol. Edit: DSLR exists back then, it was a thing, but no kid had that, we just weren’t as tech savvy as kids today are.
Wow, this was actually super good! It's nice to see more coverage on old unoptimized decklists from back then (like the list with 4x Machop in it). (Holden)
I was amazed when I saw the quality of this and then noticed your subscriber account. You definitely deserve far more if you keep making videos like this!
Wow, I was just about to go see the next date to this series only to find out that this channel is fairly brand new. All I have to say is thank you and how amazing this video was. Straight to the point, not dragging the video on, amazing editing, and had an amazing flow to it. The only problem I have is that I’m way too early on to your channel. Thanks once again -new subscriber
I used to compete at Books-a-million all the time. Every weekend they had Pokemon TCG official events. I would battle the gym leaders and collect the badges. Id then go to the snack counter and get a hot chocolate and buy a few packs of cards and open them up from all of the money I made doing yard work at 10-13 years old. So much fun and nostalgia. The smell of the card packs and books. Any time I hit up a book store like that I immediately think of those times. I still have the original set all boxed up 1st editions. several blastoise and like 3 charizards that have been sitting in protective cases for over 20 years now lmao wow time has flown
Really well edited and researched. I've always heard about early decks like haymaker, but its cool to see the other fledging decks of the time get some spotlight. Looking forward to the next part 👍
WOW! What an in-depth and accurate video! Super excited for what's coming next. Love that you do the installments by year and not set so we can get a bigger picture of what was going on during the era.
This is a type of content I have wished was around on TH-cam for a long time. It is nostalgic for people like me for who were around during these glorious times. While being educative to what the game once was like for younger / newer players! ( Here’s hoping you stick to this series for a while to come! I would love to see content on the mid EX era such as Holon Phantoms! ) Sub well earned, stay awesome!
The lack of the rare trainers was due more the commons being a lot better. running max copies of bill oak gust of wind and energy removal made game’s extremely quick. I’m hoping I have some stuff from left from those days I can send to you. Great video.
@@Vilo24 I was driving through LA with my mom and my grandma, we stopped at a toy store and my mom said I could buy a booster pack. I dug through the packs and chose the one with a Charizard on the pack. I was in the backseat of the car when I opened it and I screamed out "I GOT A CHARIZARD!" I remember it so vividly.
The Pokémon TCG was an incredible experience as a kid, everyone had cards and a lot of places held game nights. Nothing comes close to this experience nowadays because the world isn’t physical anymore - everything is about sitting in a room sharing an experience with a content creator on YT, Twitch or playing online with friends.
I really appreciate the way you present the information here! Some videos on TCG history are too dense or assume too much and expect you to keep track of a lot of elements, but this visualizes and explains things well so it's clear why things are popular even if you only have a basic understanding of the game!
28:55 While clearly displayed in the video, it may be helpful to vocally distinguish between variants of Mewtwo or other pokémon. Base set Mewtwo and the movie promo Mewtwo clearly served different functions. Similarly, there were two different iterations of Magmar playable and in circulation at the time.
My God the memories. I was vgc back when we relied on link cables to battle but since the competitions were always held together with the card competitions I started getting into the cards. Met some of my best friends at those.
As many have already said - loved watching this video as a nostalgia trip. Very well put together. I only ever collected and traded the cards. Kid me didn’t have a clue how to “play” until I owned the TCG for gameboy color.
I know its going to take a long while at this rate but I cannot wait for the black and white era videos where he covers darkrai ex and fluffychomp. Man those were some wild times. Great video!!
Back in the day you could only buy pokemon cards by asking for them behind a glass display case. The individual cards, the booster packs, and the starter packs were all kept out of reach. The fact that they were treated like jewelry was brilliant from a marketing perspective.
Not true at all. All the card shops and toy stores I went to get cards from had them all out in bins for you to grab. They stopped doing that and put them behind the counter after people figured out you could feel out the packs for ones that had holos or use a scale to weight for heavy packs which pretty much guaranteed a holo. That’s why they started putting in those blank filler cards and code cards so people didn’t weed out all the best packs and leave all the junk ones.
For a little while Target had booster boxes on shelves. I actually weighed packs off the shelf when I was a kid XD it was kinda messed up but my mom only got me 1 pack at a time so I wanted it to be good
That wasn’t true everywhere… I recall grabbing my fighting/ fire starter decks off the shelf hooks myself…. You could also touch the venosaur booster packs in the display box …
@elcuy7518 I remember when pack weighers were the bane of everyone's existence back before they started including the differently weighted code cards.
This brought me back to my childhood. It taught me how to read, how to do math, how to critically think. I still remember very vivid memories of the highlights of playing this game. I still remember me and my friends coming up with decks, going to toys r us and playing in the Pokemon league . Hell I still have all the badges I got from it. My childhood was blessed. Thanks for reminding me.
That opening commercial just screams my childhood. I remember seeing it a lot on TV and on the Pokemon VHS tapes I had of the series. Really well done video as well, saw a lot of what I used in decks then featured as well which was awesome. Cool bit of Nostalgia for me I will say. Never played past locals, but it was fun coming up with different strategies using essentially the same cards. Thanks for the memory jog mate, was an awesome throwback for me and a nice understanding of how the game was actually played then.
Absolutely floored that I didn't find your channel earlier. This is the first video I've watched from you and I'm hooked! Like, I can't explain it, but this video was so informative, and I loved your narration. You could almost feel like you were there during those days. The history of the TCG meta was not something I've ever thought about, but I'm glad you're talking about it
I never got into actually playing the TCG, but I always loved the aesthetic of the cards. As a kid, I always wondered why they didn't use those elemental icons in the mainline videogames.
I think because they won't confuse game players since some icons represents more than 1 type (i.e. Fighting represents Ground, Rock and Fighting itself) in TCG.
This is a great video. Ever since Roobindale's history of yugioh I've been waiting for someone to make a video like this for pokemon! Can't wait to see more of this series
Subbed just for this series because I’ve always been interested in the card game but never had time to research the history. Look forward to the rest of the series!!
The effort you put into this video is truly insane. All the inserts and snippets from commercials and anime really made me feel like back in the 90s. Great great video!
I am shockingly surprised that this is the only meta explanation type video on your channel, it's so good I'd love to see more videos about pokemon tcg meta changes through the years
A fantastic video. You give a really clear picture of the meta at the time, while explaining why. Also, as someone who has no knowledge of the Pokemon TCG you're very noob friendly with explaining how the interactions and mechanics work and why they're strong. What a fantastic series!
I had/have so many of these cards. I don't play anymore but keep the cards purely for their beauty. Cool video and a part of history I've not yet seen on youtube. Good job
30:35 Gambler is a techpiece against stall decks, being able to shuffle your 25 card hand back into your deck and buy plenty more turns. In fact, if the stall deck was not playing Gambler themselves, you would completely turn the tide with your own Gambler and now the stall deck is the one forced with decking out. You could even Item Finder the Gambler and do it a second time if you were somehow threatened again with decking out after your first Gambler. Nice video, this took me down memory lane. Pokemon was my first CCG and I remember going to the Pokemon League at the local comic book shop and getting the battle booklet with the stamps, and acquiring the Mew promo. 2 stamps for a win, 1 stamp for a loss. The good ol' days.
Kinda sad i wasn’t older during this era in my life, I was like 11 barely getting a grip of yugioh and a trip to Toysrus Still glad I was old enough to remember going for base and fossil sets as a kid with my dad cause HE wanted me to experience the beginning
I miss 1999 TCG so much. It was the only time I played competitively - my best deck was 2 - Aero, 3 - promo mewtwo, 2 - promo mew, 3 - scyther, 2 fossil, 4 - Bill, 2 - prof oak, 4 - energy removal, 4 - super energy removal, 2 - switch, 2 gust of wind, 4 computer search, 2 Lass, 1 pokemon center, 19 - psychic and 4 double colorless. I really only played locally, but I was pretty unstoppable.
Great video! I was only ever a super casual TCG player as a kid but since then I've played a lot more CCG's and it was really fun to go back and learn how strong each card in my binder really was. Liked and subscribed, glad the algorithm brought me here
This video basically confirmed my suspicions that Pokémon tcg loves water types by giving them that Rain dance ability since the beginning Awesome video Can’t wait for part two
It was truly a magical time… opening a pack of base set and your family and friends all sharing what we pulled and trading immediately was just magic I don’t think we will ever live through again.
From my username, I'm sure you can tell I was glad to see significant coverage of a certain part of 1999's meta. From the standpoint of the guy who was screaming about anything less than 30 Trainers being stupid from almost the beginning, I was glad to see the inclusion of Insanity in this! I think some of the builds I remember reading about back in the day ran 46 Trainers and really, REALLY relied on that "set up literally everything by using every Trainer under the sun and then ending on Lass" play. Can't wait to see your take on the rest of the old days! As an aside, my personal experience with the game had me as a complete idiot in deckbuilding up until the point where Promo Mewtwo was released. That decklist somehow unlocked me understanding proper play - going from "oh god I hope I draw something that can deal with this in the next 4 turns" to "turn 1 Mewtwo has 3 energy on him and Wigglytuff is getting ready, good luck dealing with this" almost overnight.
Very well done video. As a 90's kid, this brought back so many memories. I remember playing a dragon deck similar to Rod's in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I only played the Magikarp-Gyarados, Dratini-Dragonair and Charmander-Charmeleon lines and one Kangaskhan for stall and draw power. 11 Water Eneregy, 4 DCE's and a bunch of trainers. I feel like Dragonair's Hyper Beam was an underrated attack.
@@xilencered7788 I loved Gambler as a kid and I think people really slept on that card. It's a -1 to your deck count with a +8 chance that's especially good when you're running energy absorption. The only reason it wasn't abused to death is because of the "Unga Bunga" meta.
I was totally floored with the editing skills on this, let alone the actual content of the video! Absolutely amazing information! It's fascinating to learn more about the TCG itself, as I was one of those people who mostly just had fun collecting the packs and keeping the cards in my binder!!
i lived through this here in LA. i actually ran a Venusaur/Beedrill deck early on, but it didn't become great until Scyther came out and gave me the chance to hit hard fast. I adopted Lickitung and Dodrio early on as well since I could never really get too many Clefairy/Chansey (broke hood kid and not too many things to trade). When Fossil and the promos came out, a lot of cool variations of strange decks came out, but all of these things are lost since the majority of people didn't publish tournament reports. Great video! Fun trip down memory lane.
As a 90’s kid, I would give anything to go back and relive that decade to truly savor it. I used my enlistment bonus from the air force to buy a box of booster packs for gen 1 pokemon tcg. I miss how excited i would get when you finally see the sparkly holofoil card. Its a feeling you can only achieve as an adult if you take pain meds with a hot h00k3r.
Bro you knocked it out of the park! I've always been fascinated with Gen 1 Pokemon TCG after I made one video about it lol This is a good way to get me into it. I'd love to see more from you! Keep it up!!
Great video. I've watched ptcgradio's set breakdowns so I knew about the Jason klaczynski blog, but actually going through pojo forums and dredging up long forgotten decklists is really cool. Excited to see what you'll find for rocket and the gym sets!
Can’t wait for the next one! My only experience with the card game was the gameboy color game, but I remember discovering how broken hitmonchan was even as a kid.
This is exactly the video series I have been dying to see since I got back into the game a while ago. I hadn't touched the game since Team Rocket prior to Battle Styles release. Amazing work, can't wait to see more videos!
I loved playing Pokemon TCG in this era as a kid in my after school club. I definitely feel out of it because cards nowadays are power crept to the heavens so it's cool to see how much of a difference there was between cards back then versus now.
As someone who’s played the Pokémon TCG a majority of their life this was a joy to watch. Absolutely can’t wait for the next part! I’m most excited to see coverage on Delta Species in the future. Went to your channel and saw legacy deck battle videos. That’s pretty awesome! With a better mic setup and more clever editing those would blow up in numbers too. Tricky Gym has some legacy PTCG content, but it’d be great to have a channel like this that looks back and shows the meta and cards from back in the day.
Mahone is actually a friend of ours, so who knows? Maybe we'll Collab with him in the future since he only lives right down the street. We didn't have mics 5 years ago, but we do now. We plan to eventually start posting a game or two a week if the availability of time permits. Mostly, it is a balancing act we are working on to make sure we can post enough content to keep growing so that we can maybe go full time with it eventually. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned!
Whoaa ! This bring back a lot of memories ! I remember when I was 10 years old playing meta haymaker with hitmonchan/schyter deck. Always struggling in competition against Chansey/Alakazam combo deck perhaps I did a lot of misplay backthere
Wow, the Al G. Rithm blessed me today! These are basically documentaries on a topic I'm currently obsessed with! This looks and FEELS professional, but with personality. Great job!
When I was a Kid i judged the coolness of a Pokémon based off it was a Star rating and how much damage. I used to think Pokémon like Mewtwo and Mew weren't special apart from rarity...Thanks for showing me an in depth look on competitive Pokémon. I never realized how amazing Pokémon were until I understood how each turn works. Now I have a different look on these wonderful creatures
1. Why is the editing in the intro and the video itself so FREAKING GOOD!? 2. WHY NOT MORE SUBS!? 3. Very informative :) More notes: I really love that animated Groudon card in the intro. I love Groudon and man does that animation tickle the nostalgia ribs. Great work with keeping the art style in this video consistent via using the original cards and promo material. This is great content and I hope to see more. Seriously this is some top notch editing, it's been awhile since a youtuber wowed me with transitions. I nearly busted out Pokemon TCG on my Gameboy again just to try out some of these strategies you mentioned for fun. I also found the video to be very informative, since I never actually got to play the card game as a kid. Nice to see what it was like back then. Great stuff, this video should be framed on your wall! lol
Good informative video. Been playing since 99. Videos like this got me back into playing the Base and Neo formats. My buddy and I have built 8 vintage meta decks so far with plans for a few more. We also enjoy playing the 2011/2012 era as well.
Most people never realized but to accelerate your way into the meta, all you needed was to buy 4 blackout theme decks. You would end up with 4 prof oaks 4 hitmonchan 4 super energy removals 4 gust of winds and 4 plus powers and a bunch of energy removals.too. Blackout was built upon the core concept of energy removal as a strategy to disrupt and being offensive with strong basic pokemon. Which ended up being haymaker.
I hope you make more of these. I'd like to see the introduction of dark pokemon, gym leader pokemon, and gen 2. This video was very well put together and if you do continue it, I cannot wait to watch the next one.
Instantly subscribed. Fantastic videos, all of them. As someone who got introduced to tcg’s through Base-Fossil pokemon cards, and still plays the tcg today, this is pure gold. Back then, me and my friends were too young to actually play and understand the tcg, we just collected them. When I got older, I ended playing magic the gathering competitively. It grew more like a burden after a while, constantly keeping up with the metagame, travelling from GP to GP only to sometimes not make day 2 or fall just short on top 8’ing. although the game’s mecanics are incredibly well designed. It became more like an obligation. When Wotc started printing new sets that were to be implemented directly into non-rotating mtg formats, it was the final nail in the coffin for me. I sold my collection. After a while I picked up some pokemon cards, and the nostalgia got me. Learned the tcg and I started building semi-competitive decks to play in my household. It was fun for a while, but the novelty wore off rather quickly. Coming from mtg, I was used to a more compact and tight form of playing a tcg. I knew the RNG was bigger in pokemon ofcourse, but the newer cards were just too powerful. And with powerfull I mean most decks boil down to the same thing : the decks are all designed to set up your V, Vstar, Vmax, GX, or EX as fast as possible. And more often than not, you would ride that single card to victory. Like a puzzle you have to complete before your opponents do. There is not enough interaction, less need of resource management. You could pretty much “Do wathever you wanted to do” and it boiled down to who got to play first, who sets up faster, and who has the bigger stick to win the game. With mtg in the back of my mind, I was burned out on the ptcg very fast. That was until I started looking up the Retro formats. Specifically Base-Fossil, Base-Rocket or Base-Neo. When I found out just how different (and imo better) the card game was back then. I almost immediately sold out of my entire collection of modern pokemon cards. I went on to buy the Raindance deck, the Venucenter deck, and a homebrew Gengar deck with the promo Metwo’s. It was love at first sight. Not only did these cards hold much more emotional value to me because I grew up with them as a kid, the game was much more refined. No longer was it a game about who holds the biggest stick, I suddenly found myself playing a game of managing resources, disrupting and interacting with my opponents and having a bigger need for ingame synergies, rather than just having a single dominant card. It felt like playing Magic the gathering, but with Pokemon that I grew up with. And I’m not looking back. It baffles me to see how much (in my opinion) the game has digressed since then. But I am happy to continue playing these great old formats. If I could change 1 thing, it is that the community for it was bigger. Sadly nostalgia made these cards more of a collectable thing, rather than a game. The old cards being treated as jewelry has it’s positive side, yes. But I wish more people kept these old formats alive. And this is why I must thank you for these amazing videos. You put an amazing amount of work in them, and therefor I thank you. Great content. Please keep it coming.
Yeah, formats fluctuate pretty heavily in quality and diversity. Luckily, it looks like standard is trending towards slowing down again. I am happy you were able to find joy in our content. Thanks so much for watching!
@@rubyretro I’ve noticed. The 151 set looks very promising. I like that they going back to EX. So I was pretty excited! Then I saw charizard’s card being able to do 160 for 1 energy. And I’m like : nope, still busted. JK, in all fairness, there is definitely fun to be had with standard. And everyone can have their preferences. That’s the cool thing about the ptcg. I’m just very happy you’re covering the history of it in such a good way. Again, my thanks.
@@tanzolo4487 I am completely with you on Pokemon TCG from Base Set through Ruby/Sapphire or even Diamond/Pearl being the best. By Black & White, everything was off the rails with power creep and damned EX whoring. I want the old game back again.
(8:18) Retro - "Even trying to make cards like Beedrill and Ninetales work." The former was me all the way. Tried to make a Bedrill/Butterfree deck back in the day. Actually, got second in a small local tourney, with it. Was good times. XD
Ruby retro I thank you for these amazing videos! I enjoy learning about the memories stored in these cards. I actually found an old collection my uncle had from back in the day. It was passed down to me but I lost it and recently (yesterday) found the collection. I love learning about vintage kids items. They hold so much of the past within them.
Makes me nostalgic seeing a lot of these cards. I was only young when they was out and didint even understand how to actually play the game. All I wanted to do was collect my favourite Pokémon
Ty for the video! Was awesome seeing a lot of the early builds players were using at the time. Now I can use a bunch of these builds for the tcg video game! Can’t wait for the next video that way I can use some of those deck builds for the 2nd tcg game
I'm old enough to remember the early Haymaker, Rain Dance and Stall decks. Thank goodness for the GBC game, so I could try all of those out without dropping thousands of dollars on packs. Also, the trainers were completely BUSTED
This video was really cool. Fun hearing about not just what the strongest decks were, but also the other things players attempted. I think you've got a really strong format here. I hope you'll continue this series in the future!
I remember buying the cards back in early 1999, in 4th grade. Really good times. Then I got into Magic the gathering the same year and started going to tournements. Really a good childhood and I wish I could go back to the innocence of it all.
So crazy…I remember when I read about the Haymaker deck back in ‘99. I was ten. And the majority of my most valuable vintage cards were winnings from using that deck so long ago. Love it
This video has finally come to my attention, and man was it a walk down memory lane. Thank you. I loved innovating at the time. New game, new possibilities, players not set on anything, it was fun to “break rules” with tri-color decks.
I will answer your question, though, Re: Gambler. This was basically a 5th Oak, though more importantly, it would allow me to finish off opponents, particularly stall decks, before I decked myself. Because of Item Finder and it really only being needed late game, Gambler gave me a way to shuffle cards back into my library, buying turns. More often than not, when I played it, I had the game reasonably in hand and wanted to flip tails. It was a tech card. Was it great? Not really, but it did it’s just when needed. It also had a 50% chance of being a Super Oak if I had just stalled and needed a prayer answered. 😁
The source has spoken!
This video and this comment thread made my weekend. Thanks for the reply ❤
❤
I had a mono water deck with Gyarados, Blastoise, and Charizards. I was unstoppable.
Sorry if this is a year late, but Charizard in a water deck???
@drops043 he used to have an ability that turned all energy attached to him into fire energy 😈
@CertifiedClapaholic old cards were that broken, huh
@drops043 well, it still took four energy to use his move and using his move made you discard two of them so at best, he was an every other turn use, unless I got lucky with my double colorless energies
@@CertifiedClapaholic he'd probably be broken today, with baxcalibur and the trainer lady card
All of the true pokémon fans remember the original 151 pokémon, but seeing all those old trainer cards again that i never understood as a kid for the first time in 20+ years was an extreme blast of nostalgia. It takes me right back to 1999 begging my parents to buy me booster packs whenever we stopped at the grocery store near our house since there was a shop called "Cards & Comics" in the same plaza. Just this year i started playing pokémon tcg live at 31 years old and I can't believe what i've been missing. Now that i play the game and know the magic behind it, this makes the early years and this video that much more special. Thank you for this, this video hit me right in my childhood and is very fulfilling to watch. Awesome video.
Thank you!
I could have written this comment myself, even down to the fact that we're the same age! TCG Live has been really good for getting me into playing the game. Super wallet friendly too. I'm looking forward to trying Pocket as well.
I went through all of this while playing every weekend in shopping malls. It was an amazing time
I believe it! Do you happen to have any photographs from the times? We're looking for photos and videos from the time, Rare as they are.
@@rubyretro I dont have any sorry. I dont think i even had a phone at the time haha but i still have all my cards
@@ChefIcaroConceicao Thanks anyways!
“How to say you’re old without saying you’re old” lmao
I was 10 when the cards hit our shores, somewhere around year 2000 I think. Yep, nobody even had cameras back then, even mobile phones weren’t a thing yet lol.
Edit: DSLR exists back then, it was a thing, but no kid had that, we just weren’t as tech savvy as kids today are.
@@ChefIcaroConceicao oooo what cards do you have from the original ones ?!
Wow, this was actually super good! It's nice to see more coverage on old unoptimized decklists from back then (like the list with 4x Machop in it). (Holden)
Thanks buddy!
Crazy to see you here WinterShorts, it’s Strife!
@@auraguardianred4771
He's a good friend of ours!
I was amazed when I saw the quality of this and then noticed your subscriber account. You definitely deserve far more if you keep making videos like this!
That means a lot! We'll hopefully be able to make more soon!
He has just 6 videos on the channel and comes from a 5-year break. Give him time, if he keeps going with stuff like this he'll be huge in no time
I had the same thought. Really surprised this was your first video given how refined it was
Wow, I was just about to go see the next date to this series only to find out that this channel is fairly brand new. All I have to say is thank you and how amazing this video was. Straight to the point, not dragging the video on, amazing editing, and had an amazing flow to it. The only problem I have is that I’m way too early on to your channel. Thanks once again -new subscriber
Thanks for the support and kind words! We're hoping to get the next one out before too long, so stay tuned!
I used to compete at Books-a-million all the time. Every weekend they had Pokemon TCG official events. I would battle the gym leaders and collect the badges. Id then go to the snack counter and get a hot chocolate and buy a few packs of cards and open them up from all of the money I made doing yard work at 10-13 years old. So much fun and nostalgia. The smell of the card packs and books. Any time I hit up a book store like that I immediately think of those times. I still have the original set all boxed up 1st editions. several blastoise and like 3 charizards that have been sitting in protective cases for over 20 years now lmao wow time has flown
Its 4am, i have work tomorrow, and here i am watching a video essay on a 20+ year old meta. Your channel is amazing
Thank you for the support! Now get some rest!
It do be like that tho
Really well edited and researched. I've always heard about early decks like haymaker, but its cool to see the other fledging decks of the time get some spotlight. Looking forward to the next part 👍
Happy you liked it! Stay tuned!
Phenomenal video. Already stoked for episode 2.
Thank you so much. Stay tuned!
@@rubyretro m......................
I'm..............
@@yoshifanatic?
WOW! What an in-depth and accurate video! Super excited for what's coming next. Love that you do the installments by year and not set so we can get a bigger picture of what was going on during the era.
Much appreciated!
Ope, meant to post under this account.
This is a type of content I have wished was around on TH-cam for a long time.
It is nostalgic for people like me for who were around during these glorious times. While being educative to what the game once was like for younger / newer players!
( Here’s hoping you stick to this series for a while to come! I would love to see content on the mid EX era such as Holon Phantoms! )
Sub well earned, stay awesome!
Thank you so much!💜 Stay tuned!
The lack of the rare trainers was due more the commons being a lot better. running max copies of bill oak gust of wind and energy removal made game’s extremely quick. I’m hoping I have some stuff from left from those days I can send to you. Great video.
This brings back memories. I can't believe this was over 20 years ago, I still remember pulling my holographic Charizard as a kid.
how long did you hold on to it?
@@vanesslifeygo I still have it :)
I still have my holo charizard too I pulled from a pack I bought from the ice cream man
@@Vilo24 I was driving through LA with my mom and my grandma, we stopped at a toy store and my mom said I could buy a booster pack. I dug through the packs and chose the one with a Charizard on the pack. I was in the backseat of the car when I opened it and I screamed out "I GOT A CHARIZARD!" I remember it so vividly.
I found mine in my very First booster pack… After 3 years i lost interest in the cards and gave them away… damn me ill guess
The Pokémon TCG was an incredible experience as a kid, everyone had cards and a lot of places held game nights. Nothing comes close to this experience nowadays because the world isn’t physical anymore - everything is about sitting in a room sharing an experience with a content creator on YT, Twitch or playing online with friends.
Locals still exist
I really appreciate the way you present the information here! Some videos on TCG history are too dense or assume too much and expect you to keep track of a lot of elements, but this visualizes and explains things well so it's clear why things are popular even if you only have a basic understanding of the game!
Glad you enjoyed it!
28:55 While clearly displayed in the video, it may be helpful to vocally distinguish between variants of Mewtwo or other pokémon. Base set Mewtwo and the movie promo Mewtwo clearly served different functions. Similarly, there were two different iterations of Magmar playable and in circulation at the time.
My God the memories. I was vgc back when we relied on link cables to battle but since the competitions were always held together with the card competitions I started getting into the cards. Met some of my best friends at those.
As many have already said - loved watching this video as a nostalgia trip. Very well put together.
I only ever collected and traded the cards. Kid me didn’t have a clue how to “play” until I owned the TCG for gameboy color.
Same. That’s how I learned. I play it at least once a week.
I was very exited to see if their was a different video but this channel is new ! Definitely sticking around
Thank you, stay tuned!
I know its going to take a long while at this rate but I cannot wait for the black and white era videos where he covers darkrai ex and fluffychomp. Man those were some wild times.
Great video!!
We'll see. The churn rate for videos may eventually pick up. Thanks for watching!
Back in the day you could only buy pokemon cards by asking for them behind a glass display case. The individual cards, the booster packs, and the starter packs were all kept out of reach. The fact that they were treated like jewelry was brilliant from a marketing perspective.
Not true at all. All the card shops and toy stores I went to get cards from had them all out in bins for you to grab. They stopped doing that and put them behind the counter after people figured out you could feel out the packs for ones that had holos or use a scale to weight for heavy packs which pretty much guaranteed a holo. That’s why they started putting in those blank filler cards and code cards so people didn’t weed out all the best packs and leave all the junk ones.
@@Eckoman18probably depends on where you went.
For a little while Target had booster boxes on shelves. I actually weighed packs off the shelf when I was a kid XD it was kinda messed up but my mom only got me 1 pack at a time so I wanted it to be good
That wasn’t true everywhere… I recall grabbing my fighting/ fire starter decks off the shelf hooks myself…. You could also touch the venosaur booster packs in the display box …
@elcuy7518 I remember when pack weighers were the bane of everyone's existence back before they started including the differently weighted code cards.
This brought me back to my childhood. It taught me how to read, how to do math, how to critically think. I still remember very vivid memories of the highlights of playing this game. I still remember me and my friends coming up with decks, going to toys r us and playing in the Pokemon league . Hell I still have all the badges I got from it. My childhood was blessed. Thanks for reminding me.
Happy to do so!
Great video! I really hope this channel grows. Rocket is definitely an intersting expansion, can't wait for the next video.
Thank you so much! Stay tuned!
That opening commercial just screams my childhood. I remember seeing it a lot on TV and on the Pokemon VHS tapes I had of the series. Really well done video as well, saw a lot of what I used in decks then featured as well which was awesome. Cool bit of Nostalgia for me I will say. Never played past locals, but it was fun coming up with different strategies using essentially the same cards. Thanks for the memory jog mate, was an awesome throwback for me and a nice understanding of how the game was actually played then.
Glad you liked it! Thanks for watching!
Absolutely floored that I didn't find your channel earlier. This is the first video I've watched from you and I'm hooked! Like, I can't explain it, but this video was so informative, and I loved your narration. You could almost feel like you were there during those days. The history of the TCG meta was not something I've ever thought about, but I'm glad you're talking about it
Glad you like them!
I never got into actually playing the TCG, but I always loved the aesthetic of the cards. As a kid, I always wondered why they didn't use those elemental icons in the mainline videogames.
I think because they won't confuse game players since some icons represents more than 1 type (i.e. Fighting represents Ground, Rock and Fighting itself) in TCG.
Dang, this channel needs to blow up. The quality of this video is insane!
Thank you!
This is a great video. Ever since Roobindale's history of yugioh I've been waiting for someone to make a video like this for pokemon! Can't wait to see more of this series
Thank you so much! We're excited to make more, so stay tuned!
This randomly showed up on my feed, well worth the watch, excited to see more!
Thanks, stay tuned!
Talk about a blast from the past. You’ve earned yourself a subscriber. Looking forward to watching more of this series.
Subbed just for this series because I’ve always been interested in the card game but never had time to research the history. Look forward to the rest of the series!!
Stay tuned!
Alakazam + Tentacool + Mr. Mime was so much fun. It was difficult to fight against Muk and Aerodactyl, but there were ways to counter it.
The algorithm recommended this video to me, and I've shared it in my Pokemon discord servers. Hope to see you blow up. :D Quality content.
Awesome, thank you! 😊
The effort you put into this video is truly insane. All the inserts and snippets from commercials and anime really made me feel like back in the 90s. Great great video!
Thank you so much!
this was amazing!! thnk u ❤ this is the type of content i binge watch ❤ i look fwd to this
I absolutely loved this retrospective. thank you.
No, thank you!
I am shockingly surprised that this is the only meta explanation type video on your channel, it's so good I'd love to see more videos about pokemon tcg meta changes through the years
We're working on more. Stay tuned!
A fantastic video. You give a really clear picture of the meta at the time, while explaining why.
Also, as someone who has no knowledge of the Pokemon TCG you're very noob friendly with explaining how the interactions and mechanics work and why they're strong.
What a fantastic series!
Thank you so much!
I had/have so many of these cards. I don't play anymore but keep the cards purely for their beauty. Cool video and a part of history I've not yet seen on youtube. Good job
Thanks!
Really incredible content, I was glued to the screen till the end! Looking forward to more episodes!
Thank you so much! Stay tuned!
Wow, nice video! Thank you so much! Please do more videos of the following metas after 1999 :-)
Stay tuned!
30:35 Gambler is a techpiece against stall decks, being able to shuffle your 25 card hand back into your deck and buy plenty more turns. In fact, if the stall deck was not playing Gambler themselves, you would completely turn the tide with your own Gambler and now the stall deck is the one forced with decking out. You could even Item Finder the Gambler and do it a second time if you were somehow threatened again with decking out after your first Gambler. Nice video, this took me down memory lane. Pokemon was my first CCG and I remember going to the Pokemon League at the local comic book shop and getting the battle booklet with the stamps, and acquiring the Mew promo. 2 stamps for a win, 1 stamp for a loss. The good ol' days.
Kinda sad i wasn’t older during this era in my life, I was like 11 barely getting a grip of yugioh and a trip to Toysrus
Still glad I was old enough to remember going for base and fossil sets as a kid with my dad cause HE wanted me to experience the beginning
I miss 1999 TCG so much. It was the only time I played competitively - my best deck was 2 - Aero, 3 - promo mewtwo, 2 - promo mew, 3 - scyther, 2 fossil, 4 - Bill, 2 - prof oak, 4 - energy removal, 4 - super energy removal, 2 - switch, 2 gust of wind, 4 computer search, 2 Lass, 1 pokemon center, 19 - psychic and 4 double colorless. I really only played locally, but I was pretty unstoppable.
Great video! I was only ever a super casual TCG player as a kid but since then I've played a lot more CCG's and it was really fun to go back and learn how strong each card in my binder really was. Liked and subscribed, glad the algorithm brought me here
This video basically confirmed my suspicions that Pokémon tcg loves water types by giving them that Rain dance ability since the beginning
Awesome video
Can’t wait for part two
Water has gotten some insane support throughout the years for sure. Thanks for watching, stay tuned!
It was truly a magical time… opening a pack of base set and your family and friends all sharing what we pulled and trading immediately was just magic I don’t think we will ever live through again.
For a brand new channel, you killed it with the editing and presentation, super excited for the next meta!
Thank you so much! Stay tuned!
From my username, I'm sure you can tell I was glad to see significant coverage of a certain part of 1999's meta. From the standpoint of the guy who was screaming about anything less than 30 Trainers being stupid from almost the beginning, I was glad to see the inclusion of Insanity in this! I think some of the builds I remember reading about back in the day ran 46 Trainers and really, REALLY relied on that "set up literally everything by using every Trainer under the sun and then ending on Lass" play. Can't wait to see your take on the rest of the old days!
As an aside, my personal experience with the game had me as a complete idiot in deckbuilding up until the point where Promo Mewtwo was released. That decklist somehow unlocked me understanding proper play - going from "oh god I hope I draw something that can deal with this in the next 4 turns" to "turn 1 Mewtwo has 3 energy on him and Wigglytuff is getting ready, good luck dealing with this" almost overnight.
Sounds like you knew evaluations what was up. Thanks for watching!
This is such an amazing nostalgia trip and very well made! Can't wait to see more of this series!
Thank you! Stay tuned for more!
Thank you for making a video on this subject. Really bringing me back to my League days.
Very well done video. As a 90's kid, this brought back so many memories. I remember playing a dragon deck similar to Rod's in the Pokemon Trading Card Game. I only played the Magikarp-Gyarados, Dratini-Dragonair and Charmander-Charmeleon lines and one Kangaskhan for stall and draw power. 11 Water Eneregy, 4 DCE's and a bunch of trainers. I feel like Dragonair's Hyper Beam was an underrated attack.
What an interesting deck composition for the time.
Incredible video. Very well done, I’m shocked you don’t have more subscribers. You earned one with me. Can’t wait for the next installment!
Thank you so much. Stay tuned!
really well done videos! the animation was amazing
Thank you so much!
I was literally talking to my friend the other day about how so don’t see content like this for card games. So I’m in.
what an incredibly well made video.
i always played gambler as a kid because i wanted one more "oak" in my deck
Yep or a last minute gamble without having to discard cards you will need later
@@xilencered7788 I loved Gambler as a kid and I think people really slept on that card. It's a -1 to your deck count with a +8 chance that's especially good when you're running energy absorption. The only reason it wasn't abused to death is because of the "Unga Bunga" meta.
I was totally floored with the editing skills on this, let alone the actual content of the video! Absolutely amazing information!
It's fascinating to learn more about the TCG itself, as I was one of those people who mostly just had fun collecting the packs and keeping the cards in my binder!!
Thanks for supporting!
i lived through this here in LA. i actually ran a Venusaur/Beedrill deck early on, but it didn't become great until Scyther came out and gave me the chance to hit hard fast. I adopted Lickitung and Dodrio early on as well since I could never really get too many Clefairy/Chansey (broke hood kid and not too many things to trade). When Fossil and the promos came out, a lot of cool variations of strange decks came out, but all of these things are lost since the majority of people didn't publish tournament reports.
Great video! Fun trip down memory lane.
did you make it out of the hood
Such an awesome video
Thank you for taking the time to make it!
Glad you enjoyed it!
As a 90’s kid, I would give anything to go back and relive that decade to truly savor it. I used my enlistment bonus from the air force to buy a box of booster packs for gen 1 pokemon tcg. I miss how excited i would get when you finally see the sparkly holofoil card. Its a feeling you can only achieve as an adult if you take pain meds with a hot h00k3r.
Bro you knocked it out of the park! I've always been fascinated with Gen 1 Pokemon TCG after I made one video about it lol This is a good way to get me into it. I'd love to see more from you! Keep it up!!
Thank you! We're big fans, as I'm sure Nick already told you. Thanks for taking the time to check us out!
Amazing quality. Easily a 1m+ view video. You deserve subs!
That would be a pipe dream, but I appreciate your optimism! Thanks for watching!
Great video, looking forward to 2000
Thank you! Stay tuned!
Awesome video
Recently got back into the TCG with live launching and it’s awesome to take a look back at the old metas as the game evolved
Welcome back and thanks for watching!
Great video. I've watched ptcgradio's set breakdowns so I knew about the Jason klaczynski blog, but actually going through pojo forums and dredging up long forgotten decklists is really cool.
Excited to see what you'll find for rocket and the gym sets!
Thanks for the kind words. Stay tuned!
Can’t wait for the next one! My only experience with the card game was the gameboy color game, but I remember discovering how broken hitmonchan was even as a kid.
Stay tuned!
This is exactly the video series I have been dying to see since I got back into the game a while ago. I hadn't touched the game since Team Rocket prior to Battle Styles release.
Amazing work, can't wait to see more videos!
Thank you, stay tuned!
I loved playing Pokemon TCG in this era as a kid in my after school club. I definitely feel out of it because cards nowadays are power crept to the heavens so it's cool to see how much of a difference there was between cards back then versus now.
Thanks for watching!
Awesome video, brought back memories. I hope there is a second or third video.
Thank you for covering the early meta so well. Can't wait to see more!
Stay tuned!
As someone who’s played the Pokémon TCG a majority of their life this was a joy to watch. Absolutely can’t wait for the next part! I’m most excited to see coverage on Delta Species in the future. Went to your channel and saw legacy deck battle videos. That’s pretty awesome! With a better mic setup and more clever editing those would blow up in numbers too. Tricky Gym has some legacy PTCG content, but it’d be great to have a channel like this that looks back and shows the meta and cards from back in the day.
Mahone is actually a friend of ours, so who knows? Maybe we'll Collab with him in the future since he only lives right down the street. We didn't have mics 5 years ago, but we do now. We plan to eventually start posting a game or two a week if the availability of time permits. Mostly, it is a balancing act we are working on to make sure we can post enough content to keep growing so that we can maybe go full time with it eventually. Thanks for watching, and stay tuned!
Whoaa ! This bring back a lot of memories ! I remember when I was 10 years old playing meta haymaker with hitmonchan/schyter deck. Always struggling in competition against Chansey/Alakazam combo deck perhaps I did a lot of misplay backthere
Wow, the Al G. Rithm blessed me today! These are basically documentaries on a topic I'm currently obsessed with!
This looks and FEELS professional, but with personality.
Great job!
When I was a Kid i judged the coolness of a Pokémon based off it was a Star rating and how much damage. I used to think Pokémon like Mewtwo and Mew weren't special apart from rarity...Thanks for showing me an in depth look on competitive Pokémon. I never realized how amazing Pokémon were until I understood how each turn works. Now I have a different look on these wonderful creatures
Honestly mate. Super fascinating video! I am hooked and I am intrigued. Am looking forward to watching the series play out! ^-^
Thanks! Stay tuned for the next one!
Wonderful video Nick!
Nick and I worked hard on it, so the complement is much appreciated!
Incredible work, really. Keep up the phenominal work and I cant wait to see the rest of the series.
Thanks a ton!
1. Why is the editing in the intro and the video itself so FREAKING GOOD!?
2. WHY NOT MORE SUBS!?
3. Very informative :)
More notes: I really love that animated Groudon card in the intro. I love Groudon and man does that animation tickle the nostalgia ribs. Great work with keeping the art style in this video consistent via using the original cards and promo material. This is great content and I hope to see more. Seriously this is some top notch editing, it's been awhile since a youtuber wowed me with transitions. I nearly busted out Pokemon TCG on my Gameboy again just to try out some of these strategies you mentioned for fun. I also found the video to be very informative, since I never actually got to play the card game as a kid. Nice to see what it was like back then. Great stuff, this video should be framed on your wall! lol
I am overly flattered. I'm glad all the editing work I put in paid off for some. Stay turned, the next episode is coming soon!
Good informative video. Been playing since 99. Videos like this got me back into playing the Base and Neo formats. My buddy and I have built 8 vintage meta decks so far with plans for a few more. We also enjoy playing the 2011/2012 era as well.
Glad to hear it. Retro Pokémon is so fun! Thanks for watching!
Most people never realized but to accelerate your way into the meta, all you needed was to buy 4 blackout theme decks. You would end up with 4 prof oaks 4 hitmonchan 4 super energy removals 4 gust of winds and 4 plus powers and a bunch of energy removals.too. Blackout was built upon the core concept of energy removal as a strategy to disrupt and being offensive with strong basic pokemon. Which ended up being haymaker.
I hope you make more of these. I'd like to see the introduction of dark pokemon, gym leader pokemon, and gen 2.
This video was very well put together and if you do continue it, I cannot wait to watch the next one.
Thanks! Stay tuned for the next one, dropping January 20.
Now that I am a Magic person I can only imagine if I were allowed to have a deck with FOUR FREE ANCESTRAL RECALL IN IT how busted that would be.
Instantly subscribed. Fantastic videos, all of them. As someone who got introduced to tcg’s through Base-Fossil pokemon cards, and still plays the tcg today, this is pure gold. Back then, me and my friends were too young to actually play and understand the tcg, we just collected them. When I got older, I ended playing magic the gathering competitively. It grew more like a burden after a while, constantly keeping up with the metagame, travelling from GP to GP only to sometimes not make day 2 or fall just short on top 8’ing. although the game’s mecanics are incredibly well designed. It became more like an obligation. When Wotc started printing new sets that were to be implemented directly into non-rotating mtg formats, it was the final nail in the coffin for me. I sold my collection. After a while I picked up some pokemon cards, and the nostalgia got me. Learned the tcg and I started building semi-competitive decks to play in my household. It was fun for a while, but the novelty wore off rather quickly. Coming from mtg, I was used to a more compact and tight form of playing a tcg. I knew the RNG was bigger in pokemon ofcourse, but the newer cards were just too powerful. And with powerfull I mean most decks boil down to the same thing : the decks are all designed to set up your V, Vstar, Vmax, GX, or EX as fast as possible. And more often than not, you would ride that single card to victory. Like a puzzle you have to complete before your opponents do. There is not enough interaction, less need of resource management. You could pretty much “Do wathever you wanted to do” and it boiled down to who got to play first, who sets up faster, and who has the bigger stick to win the game. With mtg in the back of my mind, I was burned out on the ptcg very fast.
That was until I started looking up the Retro formats. Specifically Base-Fossil, Base-Rocket or Base-Neo. When I found out just how different (and imo better) the card game was back then. I almost immediately sold out of my entire collection of modern pokemon cards. I went on to buy the Raindance deck, the Venucenter deck, and a homebrew Gengar deck with the promo Metwo’s. It was love at first sight. Not only did these cards hold much more emotional value to me because I grew up with them as a kid, the game was much more refined. No longer was it a game about who holds the biggest stick, I suddenly found myself playing a game of managing resources, disrupting and interacting with my opponents and having a bigger need for ingame synergies, rather than just having a single dominant card. It felt like playing Magic the gathering, but with Pokemon that I grew up with. And I’m not looking back. It baffles me to see how much (in my opinion) the game has digressed since then. But I am happy to continue playing these great old formats. If I could change 1 thing, it is that the community for it was bigger. Sadly nostalgia made these cards more of a collectable thing, rather than a game. The old cards being treated as jewelry has it’s positive side, yes. But I wish more people kept these old formats alive.
And this is why I must thank you for these amazing videos. You put an amazing amount of work in them, and therefor I thank you. Great content. Please keep it coming.
Yeah, formats fluctuate pretty heavily in quality and diversity. Luckily, it looks like standard is trending towards slowing down again. I am happy you were able to find joy in our content. Thanks so much for watching!
@@rubyretro I’ve noticed. The 151 set looks very promising. I like that they going back to EX. So I was pretty excited! Then I saw charizard’s card being able to do 160 for 1 energy. And I’m like : nope, still busted. JK, in all fairness, there is definitely fun to be had with standard. And everyone can have their preferences. That’s the cool thing about the ptcg. I’m just very happy you’re covering the history of it in such a good way. Again, my thanks.
@@tanzolo4487 I am completely with you on Pokemon TCG from Base Set through Ruby/Sapphire or even Diamond/Pearl being the best. By Black & White, everything was off the rails with power creep and damned EX whoring. I want the old game back again.
(8:18) Retro - "Even trying to make cards like Beedrill and Ninetales work."
The former was me all the way. Tried to make a Bedrill/Butterfree deck back in the day. Actually, got second in a small local tourney, with it. Was good times. XD
Nice work!
Thanks. X3@@rubyretro
Ruby retro I thank you for these amazing videos! I enjoy learning about the memories stored in these cards. I actually found an old collection my uncle had from back in the day. It was passed down to me but I lost it and recently (yesterday) found the collection. I love learning about vintage kids items. They hold so much of the past within them.
Thanks for taking the time to watch! Glad you found your uncle's collection.
During My First Year Of Middle School (1999-2000) I Got Pokémon Trading Card Game Base Set Cards And Pokémon Yellow Video Game For Christmas 1999.
a number of retro tcg videos had been coming out recently, but the editing of this one stands out
good work mate :)
Thank you so much!
Makes me nostalgic seeing a lot of these cards. I was only young when they was out and didint even understand how to actually play the game. All I wanted to do was collect my favourite Pokémon
Most kids didn't, but it's hard to deny that the cards made for great collectibles. Thanks for watching!
Ty for the video! Was awesome seeing a lot of the early builds players were using at the time. Now I can use a bunch of these builds for the tcg video game! Can’t wait for the next video that way I can use some of those deck builds for the 2nd tcg game
Thanks for watching! Stay tuned!
I'm old enough to remember the early Haymaker, Rain Dance and Stall decks. Thank goodness for the GBC game, so I could try all of those out without dropping thousands of dollars on packs.
Also, the trainers were completely BUSTED
Same with me!
This video was really cool. Fun hearing about not just what the strongest decks were, but also the other things players attempted. I think you've got a really strong format here. I hope you'll continue this series in the future!
Thank you so much! Working on the next one now.
If I played another 9 year old in '99 and he had 3 promo Mewtwos to play with I probably would've fought them
I never knew how to play as a kid but I spent hours studying the art work from the hand me down cards from these first few sets
I remember buying the cards back in early 1999, in 4th grade. Really good times. Then I got into Magic the gathering the same year and started going to tournements. Really a good childhood and I wish I could go back to the innocence of it all.
The amount of detail is so good and well researched. Im honestly waiting the next episode. Take your time :)
this is one of the best TH-cam videos I've ever seen I love the pokemon TCG and retro / alt formats this is what I NEEDED
You're too kind!
Superb content, gentlemen. I still remember visiting local card shops with my Dad when I was younger. This game was such a big part of my childhood!
Thanks for the support, buddy! You're a big part of this too!
OMG at 8:55 when the electabuzz sound effect played I lost it and laughed so hard. Bless this video
So crazy…I remember when I read about the Haymaker deck back in ‘99. I was ten. And the majority of my most valuable vintage cards were winnings from using that deck so long ago. Love it