Why Pokémon TCG On Game Boy Needs A Remake

The Pokémon Trading Card Game is currently booming in popularity, yet The Pokémon Company is ignoring the best way it can introduce new players to the game: through a remake of one of the Game Boy’s most underrated RPGs.

Back in the early 2000s, Game Freak had another way to bring the Pokémon TCG to the masses, and it was by combining it with the formula that turned it into one of the most profitable video game studios of all time. They did this through the confusingly named Pokémon Trading Card Game, which created a wholly unique way to forge a deck and battle opponents long before smartphone games like Pokémon TCG Pocket gave millions of players the chance to do so.

Anyone looking to play the Pokémon TCG without actually paying money for pieces of cardboard has several digital options open to them, the most popular being Pokémon TCG Pocket. This bite-sized interpretation of the game sits alongside Pokémon TCG Live, which is a more accurate recreation of the physical tabletop experience.

The first digital version of Pokémon Trading Card Game launched on the Game Boy Color in the year 2000. They offered the first computerized adaptation of the real card game, featuring the contents of the first few sets ever released, with players able to unleash digitized versions of the Kanto ‘Mons onto their enemy. What made the Pokémon Trading Card Game special was that it replicated the journey from Pokémon Red & Blue, with the player controlling an avatar character (in this case, Mark) as they traveled around TGC Island, defeating opponents and unlocking new cards to bolster their decks.

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In order to complete the Pokémon Trading Card Game, players needed to tackle eight Club Masters, four Grand Masters, and a Champion. This was no easy feat, which meant players spent most of the game refining their deck and earning the best cards possible for their strategies.

Part of what made the experience of the Pokémon Trading Card Game so great was how it contextualized everything. Essentially, players were replicating the story from Pokémon Red & Blue down to the Gym Leaders/Elite Four, which meant they had a great framework for pushing them forward, something that Pokémon TCG Pocket and Pokémon TCG Live lack, as they focus much more on the multiplayer experience.

While offering an extremely limited experience at the time, there really wasn’t anything like the Pokémon Trading Card Game around, and for people who didn’t have local friends who played the TCG, this was the only way they could experience it for themselves.

The Pokémon Trading Card Game isn’t going to win any awards for its strong narrative, as it has even less of a story than the mainline titles. The reason the game is so good isn’t because it’s compelling in a character sense, but because it gives a framework for learning the TCG.

What’s surprising about The Pokémon Company never going this route again (or at least, not outside of Japan) is that it was something the Yu-Gi-Oh! games did successfully for years. While the Pokémon games never touched the TCG on handhelds again, the Yu-Gi-Oh! titles dipped into the narrative framework on a number of occasions. Yu-Gi-Oh! titles like The Sacred Cards and Reshef of Destruction featured storylines that allowed the main character to have a role in the events of the anime, crafting their own deck along the way and getting the chance to play against the iconic heroes and villains of the series.

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Konami ensured there were lots of Yu-Gi-Oh! titles on handheld systems, especially Nintendo ones, and while not all of them offered storylines, they did give people a chance to experience the card game in a digital form, one that only required a single monetary investment.

There could easily have been more entries in the Pokémon Trading Card Game series, yet for whatever reason, it quickly fizzled away, meaning fans lost out on more chances to be introduced to it via video games. While Game Freak was ignoring the concept, Yu-Gi-Oh! was giving people an easy entry into its franchise through handheld titles.

If The Pokémon Company wants to start making new entries in the Pokémon Trading Card Game series, the best way to go about it would be to start with a remake of the original entry. After all, it’s the one that old-school fans remember fondly, and if there’s one thing that Pokémon fans dig, it's nostalgia.

It helps that the game only contained Gen 1 Pokémon, which is something that The Pokémon Company loves. The Kanto Pokémon are constantly featured prominently across the franchise, so a game where they’re already a major presence would be a huge point in its favor.

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This isn’t to say that a remake should only contain content from the original game. There are thousands upon thousands of cards in the Pokémon TCG, so there is a ton of scope for expanding the roster available to both the player and their opponents. The game also needs online multiplayer to offer more content when the credits have rolled.

Naturally, a remake would also need to introduce a lot of QoL improvements, as the original game had a lot of problems, especially when it came to the pace of the gameplay. The ability to speed up matches is a must, along with making the assembly of decks a lot easier than diving through countless menus.

In terms of console, a Pokémon Trading Card Game remake is a natural fit for the Nintendo Switch or its successor. While it would also work well on mobile devices, it feels like the experience is too close to the mainline games for it to appear on anything other than a Nintendo system. A direct adaptation of the card game is fine for Android and iOS devices, but a game replicating the Pokémon journey might ruffle some feathers within The Pokémon Company on the Nintendo side.

While Europe and North America only ever received a single Pokémon Trading Card Game, it actually had a sequel in Japan, one that never launched worldwide, likely due to it coming out in 2001, when the Game Boy Color was nearing the end of its lifespan.

The sequel was called Pokémon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR, with the GR in the name referring to Team Great Rocket, the antagonists of the story. Naturally, it featured more cards, including ones from the Team Rocket set in the real-life TCG.

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Despite expanding on the concept from the original game and featuring more opponents to fight, the game was never localized and can only be played in English via unofficial fan translations. Despite its predecessor being available on the service, it has yet to appear on Nintendo Switch Online in Japan.

If the original Pokémon Trading Card Game received a remake, then the content from the sequel could easily be bundled in to expand the content to make it more of a feature-length experience, with the addition of the Team Rocket cards to sweeten the deal. It could also act as post-launch DLC, similar to what the current mainline games receive.

There have been ever-growing gaps in between the releases of new mainline Pokémon games, and frankly, it’s not enough. The quality of titles like Pokémon Scarlet & Violet have been notably sub-par, with a litany of technical and performance issues that could have been solved by spending more time in the oven.

The Pokémon Presents events of the past few years have often leaned heavily on the mobile games to keep fans interested, but even these can only keep fans interested for so long, and there’s a finite amount of content that can be mined.

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A recurring Pokémon Trading Card Game series could help give the franchise more spin-offs for the fans to enjoy, ones that can help explore its history in a way that the mobile games likely never will, revisiting sets that haven’t been relevant for a long time.

This new spin-off franchise could find its legs with a remake of Pokémon Trading Card Game. And what better time to do it than now, when the physical game is so popular, and the Nintendo Switch has a massive install base of Pokémon fans who would be excited for another trip around TCG Island?

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