Game

Early on in this year, I played Pokemon TCG, and Pokemon TCG 2. These are both RPGs on the Gameboy where the battle gameplay is the Pokemon TCG, using cards from the early sets. I had the first as a kid, and the second never came out here, but I played it and loved it, it might be even better than the first. And then… that was it. Nintendo never made another one of these. No clue why, they were genuinely fantastic. But what if they HAD?

This is a romhack of the original Pokemon TCG, which adds in Gen 2 cards. Cards from Neo Genesis all the way to Skyridge have been swapped in. Nothing else is changed, mind you. It’s the same adventure through the 8 clubs to get the 8 medals. It’s just… re-experience the game you already love, but this time you can use a Totodile. Which, frankly, improves it for sure.

Game

I know how to make utterly busted decks in TCG 1 and 2, but for this one I had a bit more trouble. In TCG 1 you can always go Haymaker, prolly your best bet. And in TCG 2, I made this stupid fucking Zapdos deck with only 2 copies of Zapdos, to take advantage of the lack of a mulligan rule. For this game, I made my own deck concept, a Slowking + Typhlosion combo. Typhlosion deals a LOT of damage, but it’s lowered by the damage counters on it, and Slowking can move damage counters off other Pokemon and onto it, or another benched Pokemon. It was a good deck, though I eventually swapped to a deck similar to my Zapdos one, but using a Celebi. Not nearly as effective, that Zapdos is busted as hell, but still good.

The cards aren’t exactly correct, and not every card is here. It prolly has to do with ease of programming. We don’t have the stupid Slowking that dominated that format, for example, which makes opponents flip coins when they try to use a trainer. That card sucked, so it’s not here. And I think some other cards are changed, but I don’t know the format nearly as well as I do the earlier formats. I wasn’t playing during this era.

Game

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t talk about the art. The art in the original TCG game was fantastic, honestly kind of mind blowing. It’s really damn good here, too. This game takes the art from the cards and translates it VERY faithfully onto a system that can usually only show four colors in a square of space. That’s EXTREMELY impressive, I cannot understate it. Also, because it’s the TCG, a lot of the art is utterly fantastic. Here’s this.

Pokemon TCG Neo is a pretty sick romhack, honestly. It’s just a fun way to re-experience the TCG if you haven’t played it in a while, and I recommend it! Here’s a link to it: