Pokémon Card GB

I have generated more booster packs in ten hours than most players will in their entire game.

Pokémon Card GB is a game that I have always wanted to do a Let's Play of. There has only been once playthrough of it that I thought approached the game as it deserved to be, and that LP died years ago. It would suffice to say that I've read more strategy guides for it than is healthy, and through continual years of replays have become intimately familiar with the Base Set/Jungle/Fossil metagame that it's built around. So I was naturally ecstatic to pick it up off the 3DS eShop, and a little disappointed to see that the screenshot function was not enabled for the game. I think that Card GB has the essential structure that every TCG game should aspire to; it gives you just enough access to the different booster sets without arbitrary restrictions like the Yu-Gi-Oh! games, but doesn't give you so much leeway that you can simply snap the game balance in half in a day. Early on your deck is constantly changing as you acquire more and more staple cards, and even at the midpoint of the game you're still modifying the occasional card as you pick them up.

The 3DS version has followed the unfortunate practice of removing multiplayer features rather than accommodating them--the Cable Club ladies will be forever rendered mute in this port--but the introduction of built-in save states has proved to be a vital amenity for simplifying the grinding from the original game. In the process of opening the virtual equivalent of a 36-pack box via save states, I established that either the packs are not truly random or if they are, the RNG is so poor that it manages to simulate fixed distribution.

Part of the appeal of the game is that the plot is intrinsically what you're already trying to do coming into it. Mark's story is every kid's story; you collected the cards, but now there's something out of your reach, a chase card you can only get by playing the game, and suddenly your objective to collect has been littered with sub-objectives of overcoming your rival, becoming a grandmaster and defeating opponents that will qualify you to inherit a set of exclusive promotional cards. Nintendo seemed keenly aware of the playground phenomena surrounding the TCG--every kid's story is of having a binder full of Pokémon cards and no knowledge of how to play the game. The player is thus just as unfamiliar going in as Mark or Mint is. Ronald is the archetypal rival every child butts heads with, the club masters are benchmarks for the player's progress and knowledge of the game, and the legendary cards are the end goal of one's collection, a unique set of cards printed in limited quantity and available only to a select few. In the postgame, the Phantom Cards take over as that unattainable point of perfection. Hence the plot necessitates very little elaboration; the player wants to complete their collection and rise to the challenge of the game's best opponents, who act as both evaluators of their skill and mentors. It's like talking about breathing.

In the transition to 3DS, several aspects were removed; most all references to the Phantom Cards are gone, and as a result Ishihara never explains where he's going after you finish your trades with him. (In fact, it's possible for him to never leave; if you don't talk to one of the three Ishihara NPCs after defeating the grandmasters, he'll stay in his house forever.) Several books were removed from Ishihara's house, as were NPCs that referred to the Phantom Cards, and yet this has an unintentional aspect of increasing the mystique surrounding them. You reach the final room in the game, the resting chamber of the four legendary cards, peek at the autodeck machine behind them--and lo, a decklist for the Mysterious Pokémon deck appears, with a 227th and 228th card that you've never seen. Ultimately the game would have been better off giving you the Phantom Cards through SpotPass or StreetPass, but what's done is done.

I finished the game in about a week, with a final playtime of around thirteen hours to get the standard 226 collection complete, shifting between Haymaker and Rain Dance decks throughout. (Real playtime was probably 20 hours with all the save state manipulation I did.) It's always fun to play through Pokémon Card GB again because across the years the music stays fresh, the gameplay is always worth a second look, and every time you come back to it you seem to understand its structure a little better. The spritework is some of the best of the era. It's also a good look back into the culture of '98~'00, and gets you the whole experience of being a collector and competitive player, but for $6 instead of $6000. (If anybody has the original US commercial for this game with the kid training to beat his older brother, I'll be eternally grateful to watch it again. The last time I saw it was on my parents' Magnavox.)

I suppose the game's never really done until you've caught 'em all.