i love these videos so much

29:20 The benefit of playing Blastoise alongside Wigglytuff, Ditto, and Chansey is that Blastoise powering up Articuno, Lapras, and itself frees up all of your once-per-turn attachments to setting up your more powerful colorless attackers. Even if you fall behind on attachments or your opponent is repeatedly 1HKO-ing your attackers, you'll always be able to respond with a decent attack instead of none at all. The single copy of Rocket's Sneak Attack also seems random until you realize he's also playing two Item Finder, giving him access to potentially multiple in a turn without taking up spaces for consistency cards, as Item Finder can double as those as well. This list seems really ahead of its time.

Wow that kid absolutely wrecked that card at 0:20, he practically folded it in half

The first one minute is the best example of why supporter cards have the can't use on turn one going first and one per turn rule XD This was def a time when most of us just collected and never played so I really appreciate all these vids!

This is genuinely one of the most interesting and well produced content I've seen on yt in a minute. Can't wait for the next part!

Coming from a predominantly Yu-Gi-Oh! focused background, this kind of historical deep dive into what was the meta through each era is really interesting. Keep up the great work!

I remember most of this clearly. You reminded me of one thing I had entirely forgotten was a thing - 15-3C. WOW. That's a blast from the past. I wish the official TCG would run old formats as current tournaments as part of Nationals/Worlds.

Another great one! Thanks endlessly for letting me be a small part of this! I love seeing how much joy and nostalgia this brings people besides us.

As a kid with ADD, I collected a ton of Pokémon cards in the first few years of the TCG, but never got into the competitive scene and always glossed over the wordy TCG-related articles in my issues of Pojo and Beckett Pokémon Collector. As a competitive Magic player now, it's been really fascinating and nostalgic to follow this series and learn the early history of the Pokémon TCG's tournament scene. It's been a delight to see how strategies evolved and metagames developed, especially during a time when people couldn't just find a bottomless wellspring of info on the internet and the player base didn't collectively solve formats within weeks or even days of a new set's release.

Thumbnail game on point as always

never actually played the pokemon tcg beyond playground shenanigans as a kid, but i absolutely adore these videos

That Groudon vtuber model is something I did not expect to see. Prop 15/3 is really cool. I feel like it would be a fun side event even in the current standard format of the game.

I just wanted to say, I love these videos for a ton of reasons. Your Groudon and the setting give it a very personable feel, the information is laid out well in both script and visual, and I'm just glad to see both the history of this game and the violently nostalgic times of late 90s-early 2000s. Thanks for all your effort!

I'm so looking forward to Neo Genesis Era History, their "fixes" to this god awful format are hilarious.

Was watching tricky gym's twitch live when he said he had to go early so he could work with y'all and i got so hype. Love this series!

I remember building a deck for each Gym Leader then running an elimination tournament to see who would come out on top. To my surprise, the Koga Deck proved to be the best. I also remember that Narrow Gym card & a deck I built around it including Dark Machamp & Pidgeot. Dark Machamp had a move called Fling that would take your opponent's active pokemon & send it & every card attached to it back into your opponent's deck. The restriction was that you could only keep doing this until your opponent only had 1 pokemon left. But Pidgeot has Hurricane which does the same thing only it goes to their hand, but there's no restriction on if it was your opponent's last pokemon. So just keep Flinging all your opponent's pokemon back into the deck until their last one & if they don't another basic onto the bench, retreat/switch out Dark Machamp for Pidgeot & Hurricane the last one FTW. God I miss the early sets of Pokemon TCG, before it degenerated to spamming OP Basics of evolved pokemon with fancy letters or acronyms in their names.

Its amazing how fast the TCG mania came and went. 1999-2003 didnt seem like a long time but SO MUCH HAPPENED! Pokemon and yugioh both

Another great video, keep up the good work! I like how you were a bit critical of these old lists, but still gave them the credit they deserve.

Throughout the mid to late 2010's I was a prominent player, on the "Showdown" inspired TCG ONE Website, which let players create your own decks and play VS games with other players online. while a majority of players would use the quick-play battle feature which let people just play the standard and expanded formats, as well as any other "worlds" format, there was no work required to build these decks. Career Mode, forced you to play against opponents using only your starter pre-constructed deck, and earn coins from battles, and then use those coins to spend on virtual booster packs to expand an online collection to make better decks etc. there was even an online market place on the site, much like PTCGO had. what made Career mode special, was it was heavily focused on the old gen 1 formats, and Rocket-on formats to begin with, with each site update, adding a new expansion. WhenI joined the site, people where excited for "NEO DESTINY" being added to Career mode, and "SHINING CHARIZARD", was flooding the online market place at ridiculous prices! As time went on however, and we got through the e-card sets and eventually Ruby and Sapphire, the sites admin, decided to scrap the market place entirely, in favour of Heartstones "Inking" system. where unwanted cards (more than 4 copies), could be turned into ink. Then you can spend that ink on the cards you want. Like a Base Set Blastoise etc. it was a fun time, but i eventually stopped playing, shortly after Team Magma and Team Aqua, got added to career mode (worlds 2004 format).

it's crazy how the name of pokemon kept this card game going

I was waiting this video so much,thank you !

Love Andrew Mahone, his retro PTCG videos are what got me playing these formats again. This is quality stuff RR, looking forward to the next one!

IVE BEEN WAAAAAITING FOR THIS THANK YOU SO MUCH

I absolutely adore this series!! As someone who only recently got into playing, but has been collecting for almost 20 years, I love seeing how these cards that are a bit before my time worked :)

Awesome mention about John Chimento. He's a guy that became a pokemon TCG Judge and TO for his local stores when I started playing in 2009. To this day I still remember a lot of the old school players telling me stories about guys like Johnny blaze aka John Chimento. He also had sons that went on to play and have success in the tcg as well. Awesome pokemon family as a whole that I had a great time playing against, and still keep in touch with John. I sent him this video so he can appreciate the work you put into it. 🙏🙏🙏

Heck yeah! I'm so happy Tricky Gym recognize how great this series is! Legend!

Absolutely banger of a video, thank you for making these! Always wonderful to hear someone this knowledgeable talk about the history

Absolutely love these videos so much! They're a treat to watch, thank you!

Been loving this series, especially as we get to the part of the "early" years that no one really talks about nearly as much as the Base to Rocket era does. I'm really excited to hear about the Neo era of the game in particular

Great video as always! Can't wait for the next installment

Excellent job as usual! Thanks a lot for the effort!

love this series, thank you for all the hard work you did for this!

YESS!! Great one man, excellent video. Thank you!

Another excellent piece AND one with Mahomes!? Thank you so much for putting all of this together!

This was a great video! Can’t wait for the next round. Amazing!

Yet another incredibly well-produced and interesting video! Thanks for all of your hard work! I've never read much about the Super Trainer Showdown, so it was really cool to learn a lot more about it! Also it was amazing to see young Heidi Craig featured here!! She was the TO for a ton of great tournaments I participated in when I lived in Florida.

Man the CRT hum/VHS garbledness in the intro is oddly comforting

Just fantastic work being done here, I was giddy seeing a new episode available.

I really like how you present the information. Ive never been a pokemon tcg player but have watched all 3 episodes so far. These are great and id love to see the mentioned "side videos" too. Also if youre ever at my locals and shuffle like you did in that skit im personally reshuffling your deck.

I really enjoy watching these and then playing the Pokémon TCG Rockets Revenge game for Gameboy color. Seeing how the decks perform and then changing and tweeking the decks for fun. What works, what doesn't and all. Unfortunately they didn't make the gym battle cards, so we only have up to rocket cards to play with.

Great upload, thanks for the hard work! I hope the upcoming Pokémon TCG Classic will bring back more vintage paper play, hopefully not just on cards from the base set (which was announced in feb)

One of the goats of Pokemon TCG history keeping. Great intro for ppl looking to start playing retro formats too, keep up the great content man!

Oh man! How did I miss this dropping?! Thank you for another awesome vid!

There is something intriguing about a talking groudon educating me about Pokémon TCG.

I love this channel. What good timing since I got back into vintage pokemon tcg collecting

Your TCG History videos are really high quality content ! Looking forward to the next ones !! 😊

Absolutely loving this channel! Competitive content and pack openings are a plenty, and ultimately repetitive. However, the history of the game is seemingly untouched within video media, at least to the level of detail you provide. Keep up the good work!

Really loving this series as I am teaching my son to play the TCG. For anyone who doesn’t know how to play, it is really easy to learn and makes buying cards to collect that much better. :)

God watching these makes me want to play the tcg even more regardless of the year it came out etc.

This is my favorite thing on KZfaq right now!! Keep ‘em comin, I love the videos 😁

I'm so excited every time the new one of these drops!

That slowking forshading is perfect!

Excellent work mate! Keep it going, love thinking back to those early days of the game when it was still magical to me.

New favorite KZfaq channel. Appreciate the research you put into this

Wow! What a trip down memory lane. So nostalgic!! I stumbled on the 1st vid and watched them all back to back. This vid was my fave because it had you playing the old school cards and explaining to your opponent. I'd love to see a full vid of game play with older cards and the explanations.

Adore this series -- I haven't played the Pokemon TCG since I was 8 and this is still incredibly engaging, I'd watch another 10 hours comfortably. Really great to see you getting some traction off it mate.

Yeah, that gameplay at the beginning was pretty spot on.

These are so, SO good! ^^ I can't stop watching these, love your work.

I never thought I’d hear a Pokémon/Wii tanks music mashup but here we are (and I love it)

wow thank you so much for this video. its just astonishing, how kids and juveniles were so dedicated to a certain meta and also trusted in these events to be safe for their precious cards.

As someone who’s just getting into playing the game for the first time since I was a kid, it’s great to see what the tournament scene was like while I was just trying to collect my favorites!

I really love the skit you guys did in the beginning with the cards! XD these videos are so well put together and super informative! Great hearing Aaron in this one! Also i totally cheated as a kid doing things like using Blaine’s charmeleon with normal base set Charmander not knowing that wasn’t allowed… oops 🙈 Haha! I love your videos! Keep it up!!

Amazing content! This kind of content makes me want to play this meta so badly! Thank you :)

You really make the BEST content on KZfaq.

Love it! Almost missed the new release. Great learning about the history of the game. Small feedback though, not sure what happened in editing with sound, but that constant *Thud* repeating at random times during the Gym Heroes part of the video drove me nuts. (It's also there during later parts like STS 11-14) It sounds like a special effect sound for something being revealed, but it just felt like my hungover brain was randomly hit by confusion every 2-3 turns lol.

Loving these videos! Thanks for the awesome content.

I never really played the card game much but I love these videos so much :) I did collect some cards and watching these videos is really a nostalgia trip :)

I love to rewatch this episode just for the sheer amount of shenanigans Gym's cards brought to the table... And we're still far from "perfectly balanced" games. Please keep up the fine work! (And collabs) 👍🏼

I appreciate all your work in logging this history!

These are really fun to watch thanks.

Your videos are so interesting and engaging! Thank you for putting your time and effort into doing such comprehensive investigating! Love your videos!

I was at this event. A kid who went to my local pokemon league won the gold medal. I cannot remember his name, but he was one of the better players there. I didn't understand what I was doing, so I missed getting into the tournament both days, but the non-tournament activities were still fun. It is a fond memory. Not that I would have stood a chance even if I did got in, as I was always playing off meta stuff just for fun.

great videos, looking forward to the next one!

Finally finished it, that was really good! The opening old school match was good footage, and I was very surprised at the quantity of original tournament reporting / assets and the Mahone interview! I might have to do that collab after all!

My favorite parts where they say their catchphrase "aaaaand thats how we mon man" every video it cracks me up.

I don't even play Pokemon TCG and I find these videos interesting. Its neat to see how the cards have changed in various ways over the years and its cool to see 15+ years of the TCG unfold over episodes!

Yesss, I was waiting for this! doin' great!

Brings me back! Man I wish they came out with gym leader owned decks again and boosters to make it a bit more challenging to piece your perfect deck together. I remember owning lt.surge, brock and erickas decks.

Love this series! Can’t wait for the next video and the Neo era!

I hope the vintage pokemon community can organize oldschool tournaments at some point. Vintage mtg is alive and strong. I have no doubt these tournaments would also be successful in present day.

For some reason this video wasnt recommended for me for a month, im glad i found it again

Superb job editing and narrating!

After the second Gym set with the final four Gym Leaders my collecting era came to a close for a very long time. I managed to complete Base, Jungle, Fossil, Rocket, and both Gym sets, but my dad had gotten tired of supporting this financially, especially since he saw it as them just reprinting the same Pokemon he'd already helped me collect over and over again. It was a fun era though, good memories.

Production quality of your content is amazing 😮

I wish there was a single player pokemon tcg game with cards up to the Gym challenge. Pokemon tcg 2 for gbc was is so great with strategic decks.

Amazing video thank you! :)

Another banger my guy. Can't wait for the next video.

Great video like always. I love seeing the Decklists. Also, I’m leaving a comment before Chaotic Meatball! That never happens!

Nice work!

24:20 My guess for why there was a dispute between Wizards and TPC is that TPC had a "points system" in Japan and Wizards didn't want to do something that complex, preferring to use outright bans, which I guess TPC didn't support.

These videos of yours are pure gold for an "old" tcg player like me! I lived those ancient eras of the tcg and I love to watch them being explored again today! Thanks!! P.s. where can I buy that beautiful green 2 players playmat?

i waited so much for this episode, and not a single mention of my loved Giovanni's Nikoking hahaha.

sick video as always :D

The concept of best of 1 games just baffles me today when looking at such big tournaments....

I knew John chimento when I first played him, he played Tropical beach, and I learned how to use it. He still beat me, but He was so cool at the time. :)!

I'm in love with this videos! ❤

I love this series keep it up!!❤

Great content!

15/3 seems much more healthier than the meta before

I can't get enough of TCG retrospectives, especially this series