it's sad that they opted out of cards needing non damage counters to work, as Hungry Hungry Snorlax and its food counters were included in GB2, but none of the others

That vending mew. When I was a kid I saw that card in one of the magazines my mom would buy me (Beckett’s maybe?), and I knew I had to have it. My mom and I searched high and low to track that card down in Kentucky in the late 90s/early 2000s. It took FOREVER but my mom finally found one on eBay and got it for $20-something. It’s also a glossy card which is kind of cool. I have it double sleeved in my Pokémon card binder to this day. :)

I love how the Koffing has an attack that disables abilities when the regional variant would go on to have an ability that disables abilities.

I have to tell you, I absolutely loved this series. I can feel the love you’ve put into every one of these. Thank you for the effort and content.

For electrode, they could have made 7 unobtainable cards that look like Base Electrode, but functioned as double energies of each type in game. Just swap them around when the situation calls for it.

This whole series made me so nostalgic for that era of the TCG. I'll have to boot up the TCG2 game and do another playthrough; there's some kind of magic in those pixels. And I'm grateful to you for helping me to remember some of the best times of my childhood. Keep on making great content!

I would LOVE a combined 2 hour long frankenvideo of all of these parts mashed together. I hope you do make it!

I'd LOVE a video about those bootleg holographic Japanese cards a bunch of those sticker vending machines in the front of grocery stores and restaurants had here in the US in the 90s and early 2000s. I actually have a photo of some,s till!

It's weird that they don't include the Electabuzz and Marowak Cards considering that there is a card in the game that puts a special Counter: Snorlax, if I remember correctly it puts a Cookie counter or something like that and puts a cherry symbol. And the truth is that I have been thinking that maybe the reason that many of these cards are not there is because they ran out of time, after all this was the last game that came out on the Gameboy Color

9:33 The slow blade penetrates the shield.

Something to keep in mind is that the programming cost of a card isn't just getting the card to literally function but also getting the AI to understand how to play against it. For example, Fossil Ditto: you need to get the switch AI to understand that the card currently in your active spot isn't really the one that will be there after the switch. The AI might bench their fire type to bring in a water type against your fire type Ditto, and then suddenly realize that Ditto has an electric weakness now and bring in their electric type, and so on. Something like that would instantly lay bare the artifice of the game. Likewise, Guard Spec requires the AI to have specific decision-making processes for if you've played the card - otherwise you get stuff like Base Gyarados using bubblebeam instead of dragon rage into an active Guard Spec. (I suspect they had to do similarly specific programming to let the enemy AI use pluspower, but that card was powerful and iconic, and Guard Spec looks pretty weak and was a vending machine card.)

You have made my day oh Great Paraspectre!

They probably didn’t include Koffing with Division because I believe it would be the only instance of requiring input during your opponents turn. You’d have to interrupt the opponents turn after they deal damage to pick a Koffing. This is backed up by the fact that when you play “Challenge!” The AI will ALWAYS choose to let you draw rather than both fill your benches. They probably hard coded the draw into the card and just added text to make it seem like the AI made a choice

Yes! Been waiting for this episode!

Awesome work on this series. Completed my vending collection and it’s probably my favorite set. So cool

Absolutely loved this mini series, keep up the good work. ❤

Small correction about Pokemon Tower: Stadium cards were introduced to the TCG in the Leaders' Stadium set (called Gym Heroes in English), which was the next set after Team Rocket. So it wasn't that ahead of its time. In fact, while the blue vending machine cards were released in March 1998, before stadium cards were introduced, by the time the green series with Pokemon Tower was released in November 1998, Leaders' Stadium and its stadium cards were already available. But I am sure that you are correct that Pokemon Tower wasn't included in GB2 at least partially because it would have been the only stadium card. And I guess stadium cards are kind of like MTG's enchantments, if there could only be one enchantment in play at a time, and it affected both players. Really, they're most like Yugioh's field spells, but I know you've said that you don't know Yugioh, so that doesn't mean much to you. And they predate Yugioh anyway.

To be fair without Gym series cards there was only one stadium card in the entirity of the sets they did include so i cant be too surprised they disnt botherimplimenting stadiums

Thanks again for all the work and another great video

Thanks for the video. I appreciate all your hard work.

I think the Machamp is juggling the rocks, not throwing them. Y'know, performing a show for the other 'mons. This was a really fun series. Good stuff!

Awe man I've been super excited for this one

29:35 The early promo/Fossil Mew's Devolution Beam attack can be used on your own Pokemon and returns the evolution card to hand. Campaign Gengar is the PERFECT Pokemon card to abuse with it.

Great work! Probably one of your best video yet! Apart from those Matthew love videos

I'd recommend stitching these vending card videos together for one huge video and saving it for a time when you have a long gap between videos. The KZfaq algorithm seems to favor really long videos.

It's funny how they opted out of doing many of these very special effects. Reminds me of Yugioh The Sacred Cards, where something rather similar happened (though the Pokemon games did come first). I like that they added GB exclusive cards with fun random effects though. I remember in the first game, I loved GB Pidgeot in my whirlwind centric deck (basically gusting and whirlwinding everything with the Pidgey line, then use Fossil Gengar's pokepower and Dark Mind to pick off multiple mons at once) and GB Marowak was a really fun pokemon in a Wigglytuff Do The Wave deck. This series was great! As someone who used the first Pokemon TCG game to learn about pixel art (dithering and how certain artstyles are translated into pixels mostly) GB2's sometimes very flat and even shoddy-looking pixel art was a letdown and a surprise. But, seeing the cards (mostly vending and promos apparently) in their real form, I understand. Some of these artstyles are hard to translate into pixelart without looking goofy. Just learning about that made this series a blast. I also really appreciate just how diverse the art for these cards is.

Pokemon Tower is actually pretty similar to Yu-gi-oh's Necrovalley, which was released fairy early on for that game but still many years after the Pokemon vending machine cards. Necrovalley is notorious for receiving an insane number of errata to its effect, including different changes in different regions, and just generally being a pain in the ass whenever it's used. Perhaps not unsurprising, even back then there were more different ways to interact with the GY in Yu-gi-oh than discarded cards in Pokemon.

Thanks for the series! Pretty cool to see all the Pokémon that didn't make the cut, and the exclusives. I think the counters would have needed to be programmed in so you can see a list of all counters on a Pokémon, which would probably have been tedious. Especially if you retain counters when you retreat. I think the moves that completely prevent retreat didn't make it because they would have to allow some parts of card effects but not others. That probably made executing the sequence of steps for a card more complicated and needed changes to how cards execute in general. I'm guessing the Koffing that didn't make it was because it disturbed the flow of the turns. Pokémon doesn't allow for the non-turn player to make any actions out of turn, so even just allowing the player to search their deck for a Koffing was probably too much. A lot of this comes down to effort and space/performance. These old games were often very limited on physical space for data on the cartridge, so a large part of the programming process was about using the limited resources as efficiently as possible. Also, the processing speed and RAM constraints meant that storing extra data like counters may have been seen as unnecessarily expensive. I'm just glad that these kinds of constraints aren't as bad now! It still helps to consider the balance between how much RAM you need and how much processing is required, but it's not as big a deal as it used to be.

I dont blame them for not putting jungle ditto in the games. That card had a like 20 page compendium ruling section dedicated to it lmao

That promo vending Mew really gives off Pokémon Snap vibes. Like it looks straight out of Rainbow Cloud.

I was stunned by how many of these cards i had gotten (only like 5 + a couple of the ones that got released in NA really) despite not knowing they existed or trying to get them but just by my siblings and i hoovering up every Pokémon card we could find and afford at garage sales around our town over the course of a couple summers. We have a pretty decent number of Japanese students in our town every year through one of those exchange programs plus it's a college town so maybe that helped.

I like how most of them are just hard to impliment on a gbc

Babe wake up, new Paraspectre video just dropped

I think Machamp wasn't attacking the other pokemon with those rocks. It looks like he was juggling the rocks while the other pokemon spectated.

I'm a simple person. I see a Paraspectre video, I click the Paraspectre video.

Nice

Gotta make a TCG2 Exclusive Cards run now, just for fun since the cards seem like they would be fun to play with.

For the Electabuzz and others, there are rare occasions in later sets where “markers” of various types were used as with these cards; probably the most prominent was Delta Species Tyranitar ex from Dragon Frontiers and its Shock-wave markers.

"Stadium cards" like Lavender Tower became a normal thing in the TCG in the Gym Heroes expansion, which is what came right after the Rocket Expansion, so just a little too late to be a thing in TCG2

I think the move Pain Split was inspired by that Alakazam's Trance Damage as it's functionally the same thing except the division of damage.

I feel like the “markers” would work like counters in many other card games. I think they could’ve programmed similarly to how status conditions work… Aye the grimer party illustration is so cool! I want to be in their grimy gang! Poor Koffin looks like they left its pokeball upside down or something…

A fantastic journey from start to finish. It's so strange to see that only 3 Gen 2 cards made it in. However I found that the card style and ideas they went with were quite unique. I really do wish they had continued the TCG series. They had something golden here that they simply let rot.

I can imagine the programmers begging the card game designers to please stop making cards with their own special markers and counters

I remember using that Dark Fearow on a run in GB2! It kinda hard carried me because I just couldn’t get my hands on good colorless options. Can get massive damage really quickly

I just wanna hear you talk about Pokémon Card facts and opinions for… ever.

Gengar line only run? I'd like to see that. Love your videos!

did you cover Dark Ivysaur / Dark Venusaur in an earlier vid?

I don't think that Machamp is throwing rocks, I think it's juggling them.

I feel as though many of these cards could have been partly implemented by excluding or possibly modifying the problematic move.

Instead of Omanyte and Omastar, maybe they could've done just any mysterious fossil to get an Aerodactyl card. That way it's a lone fossil that can be added without its missing pair, even if it's a one/ two stage mon instead of two/ three stage.

Any plans for Diamond/Pearl paraspective any time soon? Such a banger of a series.

Haha wasn't Blastoise a bad example for explaining why the bounce effect from the Gengar is powerful? Blastoise has that rain dance ability so you can just play all of the 6 energies down again straight away when it comes into play

I'm still tickled by the fact that Omastar was one of Bill's PC trade evolution. I'd love to know the reasoning behind that decision.

10:24, you’re wrong pal. The artwork is minimalistic, has interesting use of space and negative space, and I find it’s colors bold and sharp. Some cards being less busy, and more serene and introspective, I think this variety is what makes Pokémon cards great. Unlike other games they aren’t always meant to look cool, sometimes they are simply more laid back aesthetics

Lavender Tower is just straight up Yugioh's Gravekeeper's Valley XD

Why was the Lugia weakness psychic

ditto would have been easy to program, they could have just made the pokemon power only activate once whenever ditto becomes the active pokemon

I would have been so disappointed trading in for that golem. The artwork is certainly not my taste.

21:55 im sorry did you just dis the GOAT, Tomokazu Komiya?

Blue, red, green This should be colorless

Yes the Gengar can win you the game by bouncing your opponent's only Pokemon. Pidgeot's Whriliwind has a similar effect, and I did pull it off once as a kid. If you're really after another GBC TCG RPG, there is an SNK vs. Capcom Card game on the Neo Geo Pocket. It's actually even on Switch now too. It's decent, but not quite as good as Pokemon TCG.

No surprise that alakazam and gengar were the most popular. The art on the least favorite 3 are absolute garbage, you valiantly stayed non offensive but they are just bad.

Good night when I see this in my subs

About "special counters" in TCG 2, there actually is already one of those that I know of in the game. Hungry Snorlax can use "food counters" to do more damage iirc. I guess they wanted to stop there and didn't want too many cards to have these counters?

Dark Pokémon only challenges when?

I have that physical mew

Oh hey they actually spelled Ninetales correctly

Kadabara was definitely stopped because of Uri Gellar and his bananas lawsuit. It may have been printed before Uri and then they couldnt include it in the gameboy game because of him. Not 100% sure though Kadabara cards were not allowed to be printed and distrubuted for years because Gellar threw a fit saying Pokemon/nintendo copied his likeness or some crap. He is a fraud psychic.

Whaaaaat were those vocals at the end Hahahaha