I’m going to make this clear, this is not me reviewing the card game. This is me reviewing the 1998/2000 GBC game based on the trading card game.

I think we all know now how HUGE the Pokémon trading card game became, to the point we see videos of people that are a disgrace to humanity pushing others over and tearing them apart all to try and get some promotional pieces of cardboard that were meant for small children. So many times, something nice like the Van Gogh Pikachu are ruined by greedy people gobbling them up all so they can sell them on eBay.

But that is now and the video game was set all the way back when. When? Why when there was only 3 sets, one core set and 2 expansions. That means it’s got a considerably smaller pool of cards, but also when the meta ended up being very different from what the people making the game thought it would be.

The story of the game is somewhat reminiscent of those of the main games since it has you beat a bunch of essentially gym leaders, before facing a sort of elite 4 and then a champion. In this case it’s that these elite 4 stand-ins have some sort of legendary cards and will give them to whoever bests them. But to do so first you have to beat the gyms. To beat the gyms you just need to beat a bunch of the trainers there and then face the gym leaders… that or just skip the leader sometimes. But beating people gives you two booster packs to get new cards to upgrade or make new decks. Anyone who has played a Yu-Gi-Oh video game will recognize that element.

After beating a certain number of gyms (it doesn’t matter which) you then encounter your rival who will challenge you to a game and win or lose the story continues, BUT annoyingly winning will give you a special card that you can only get here and so losing means that’s lost forever and completionists will pull their hair out.

The main niche of this game now, is that it’s set when only the first 3 sets of cards were released making it a sort of time capsule of what the game was like back then. This means you can look up videos on the early meta and build a deck based on what was actually good at the time and not what the game makers thought was going to be good.

Rating: 👍👍👍