Why did they give Magnemite and Magneton selfdestruct, but not give Electrode, the pokemon most famous for exploding, Self Destruct or Explosion, that's the entire gimmick of Voltorb and Electrode, they're pokeball bombs.
Electrode was actually used to set up Zapdos, so you’d actually see them kill themselves in the card game. Magnemite and magneton needed 4 energy’s to kill themselves, so that probably happened as often as a magnemite would self destruct. 20:45 read Buzzap, he has the gimmick
18:45 This one always stuck out to me as a kid because I thought it was a weird thing for Nidorina to have. To make things even weirder in the original Pokemon anime, episode 100 Ash's pokedex says "Nidorina, the Poison Pin Pokémon. The evolved form of the female Nidoran. It emits supersonic waves from its mouth to confuse its enemies." it seems like from that episode and the card maybe Nidorina was originally going to have it be a notable supersonic user but that angel got dropped later. Interesting little tidbit there.
Some of the attack name confusion is due to literally translating the Japanese name and not applying the updated English version (like "Stiffen" instead of "Harden"). Should have been caught by localizers, but it was early on, I give it a pass.
That was my guess too, but it's not completely correct. Harden in the Japanese games is "かたくなる," which apparently more directly translates to "stiffen." In the TCG, that is also the name of Japanese Base Set Onix's attack. Japanese Base Set Metapod and Kakuna instead know the move "かたまる," which translates to "harden." So at least in that case, it was actually the designers, not the localizers, who decided the moves should have different names. I wouldn't be surprised if similar things are going on with the other cards, but I'm not going to check them all. (Disclaimer: I don't know Japanese. I'm just going off of the translations on Bulbapedia and Google.)
Lullaby is a better name for a song that specifically induces sleep than Sing is, since Sing could be any kind of musical vocal performance, not just a soothing lullaby.
The move name thing is because WotC didnt have official translations from gamefreak back then. Most of the time they had to wing it. Look at rockets scyther. It has shadow images, when the english translation would obviously be double team. Then again WOTC did get a lot of translations wrong.
To be fair, Pokemon's JP TCG move list didn't even have proper translations from Game Freak. MediaFactory/Creatures Inc. made up their own moves, many of them just being straight up borrowed English words, or perfectly translated English words, like Lullaby and Sing (in addition to differently printed move naming balance)
I remember also being pretty surprised to learn magnemite couldn't actually learn selfdestruct in the games. Pretty weird. As for charizard, having used one in Red version, I figured the idea for fire spin is that it effectively does loads of damage over several turns that might as well be one, as the opponent isn't doing jack during it, and the user just keeps doing fire spin, so the card game developers just compressed all those turns into one for the card game.
Your mention grass weakness on Gyarados being wrong and that reminds me about my biggest gripe from the modern is how they moved Poison to the Dark group, and now Crobat who should have a resistance to Fighting on both poison and flying types, now has a weakness because it's in the dark grouping? They also gave a lot of dark pokemon recently a random Grass weakness that makes absolutely no sense. Galarian Moltres and Darkrai are not weak to grass in the main games yet in the TCG they overlook the actual weaknesses of the cards to give it a random weakness it shouldn't have
- Golem didn’t get a Holo in Fossil, despite only having 15 holos and clearly deserving it being a big stage 2 Pokemon with high HP. Plus Golem is my favourite trade evo, so I can’t stand him being shafted - Arcanine not having a holographic card in base set, yet unevolved Clefairy getting one. I’m not saying Clefairy isn’t cute, but Arcanine not getting a Holo isn’t fair IMO
Wait, I had a holo Arcanine as a kid. It was my favorite card and my first holo. Don't have my cards anymore after the fire, but I remember that vividly.
This is something I really should’ve mentioned. Arcanine and Golem not being rares is really pretty ridiculous. Even the lore makes out Arcanine to be this mythical pseudo legendary. But nope, uncommon.
Amnesia making your opponent temporarily forget how to use one of their moves makes a lot more sense than the move purposefully giving its own user amnesia to somehow make them stronger
something that makes your comment about hyper beam even weirder. In current Tcg there's a lot of attack with a "recharge" effect (this card cannot attack next turn) and yet hyper beam in recent cards STILL discards an energy from the defending pokemon instead of the recharge.
Caterpie's String shot paralyzing the opponent is slowing them down, it prevents a retreat or attack for a turn. Also vs Seel, it has less health. It would be a green Magikarp if it just had a tackle.
I’m glad to see someone else loving Mitsuhiro Arita artwork on Gyrados. I still love the Rattata and even grabbed a Base Set 2 reverse holo of it a while back. Outside the cards that just used the stock Sugimori artwork, Arita’s stand out to me. He’s still doing TCG art and I’m still chasing the Lugia V from the newest set that he did the art for and am hoping for a jumbo of it at some point.
I actually like the cards not being an "exact" (or as exact as possible) copy of the games, because they are a different game and you need to come up with different strategies. However, I agree with most of what you said. I never really understood level, but some types are just so off, it's weird. Btw, the Gyarados reminds me of the newest Seismitoad in the Obsidian Flames expansion: it is weak to Lightning because it's a Water type, but in the games it's also a ground type... In the end I just say to myself "they are different games that go by different rules".
I would love to see a splash move for Magikarp - “Flip a coin”, if heads this attack does 0 damage. If tails, this attack does nothing”. Just for a truly silly card
I remember how surprised I was to learn that Magnemite and Magneton can't learn Self Destruct, given how they had it on the cards I saw so often as a kid. At least Magnezone can learn it as of Sword and Shield.
Personally, I like the TCG having its own spin into the game, with these crazy moves that have nothing to do with the video games or anime/manga. If you think about it, all the Pokemon adaptations are unique, their own separate universes.
I pretty much agree with this too. As I said, these don’t ACTUALLY bother me, it was just fun to point out the big differences (although I still say Gyarados was fumbled). When one Metapod hardens, the other stiffens.
In the TCG game for Gameboy Color, I really like using Golduck and hyper beam. You can only attach 1 energy per turn so hitting an op mon forces them to attach instead of preparing another mon on the bench. I know you get it, and the focus of the video is how the move isn't at all like the video game, but it is a good attack imo. It's brutal, but repeatedly hitting a mon and getting to a point where the mon is 2 energy down from attacking so the trainer attaching 1 energy does nothing but waste their turn is so satisfying haha
19:54 even though Magnemite/Magneton couldn't learn it, Explosion was TM47 in Gen 1 before disappearing for Gens 2/3, then returning as TM64 Gen 4 onward.
Hyper beam might not do a lot of damage like the games but it is still a really good move. If you can keep it powered up it is a energy removal every turn. Which is crazy if you’ve ever played base fossil
Just about to watch the video, but your thumbnail brings me such validation - not only does Gyarados' Flying type cancel out its weakness to Grass, but it makes it resistant to Bug. . . and makes it 4x weak to Electric (Lightning in the case of the TCG)! The Fighting resistance at least makes sense, since immunity to Ground further offsets its weakness to Rock.
I never got why they put levels on the cards. It doesn't visually show anything in the card art, like you said if they don't follow the games model for when a Pokemon can learn a move why put it? The levels don't correlate to HP or the number of moves on the cards. It's so simple to put a level that correlates to what the games say the Pokemon can learn. I've thought it would be neat to have Pokemon cards that follow a level path like the games. Your level 5 Squirtle has tackle and tail whip. When you compete in enough official battles at your local store, you get a code maybe or something and then you get your level 15 Squirtle that now has tackle, tail whip, bubble and water gun. Each card would have moves relating to the games. You can't pick the moves like the games, but when you level up your card it comes with at least 2 new moves when possible. Each card has 3-4 level up stages before the next one would make it evolve; in the case of Pokemon with stones or other special conditions I haven't thought that part out. Yeah, it's basically the games in TCG form, but I think that would be neat; and a logistical nightmare however they plan to get the cards to you etc. but seems cool. Maybe they can bring back the GB printer and let proxy cards be legal; annoys the heck out of me I don't want to spend $1k or more on cards just to play the game.
Tbh, why didnt they have some of the psychic types be weak to grass, since theyre weak to bug and bug types are grass types? They could have absolutely afforded to give some of the grass-weak mons to water instead of grass, if what your thing showed is true
This was a cool video, glad the algorithm lead me to your channel, you deserve way more subscribers! Btw here are a couple of ideas for Pokemon challenges: - No Evolutions, but only Pikemon that can evolve (Card game). - Only moves with fixed damage like Dragon Rage and Seismic Toss (Any main game).
As far as printing cards with the same name but different effect would likely set off confusion of misprints or updates. An faq might remedy now days but back than probably not as easily.
It's also the main move for Stadium's Rental version of Charizard which was probably done for similar reasons. Even as a kid I knew it was better to pick Charmeleon.
I remember being pissed paying gold because dragonnite was not actually weak to to fighting moves like it said on the card, so my level 88 tyflosion lost its first match to lance when dynamic punch did not kill it in one hit. Edit nevermind I just misread the card, I had a japanese dragonnite card growing up and resistance icon shows up where the weakness icon is on american cards.
Regarding Charizard's Fire Spin -- 1) Charizard didn't actually learn Fire Blast by level up 2) in the indigo anime Fire Spin was like the strongest Fire attack, stronger than Fire Blast. It wasn't powerful in practice in the games but you can see Fire Spin being considered a very strong move by the devs by it being the last move a lot of pokemon learn.
I like your Gyrados analysis(14:34). I agree that lowering the damage to 40 would be a good idea. I would like to add an effect that it ignores all damage reduction from cards(Graveler Harden) and trainer cards(Defender). This would reflect Dragon Rage's ability to do 40 damage to the opponent regardless of the opponents defense in the base game.
Yeah, I was surprised about Rattata and Raticate and only learned this when I made my attempt at the TCG Style Nuzlocke. A real, "Da F*dge?" moment. XD
The Hyper Beam thing is bc energy removal is probably the most powerful effect in the game, so for a move to be the ultimate power move, like hyper beam is billed as, making it reusable energy removal feels right.
But it still does the opposite here. The intent is for the move to do a lot of damage and then you lose a turn. It shouldn’t affect your opponent’s energies at all.
Can't wait to see this video hit RUclips's trending page. XD I will forever find it hilarious that Nidoqueen has an attack called "Boyfriends". Is that also in the TCG game. Could it be gimmicky enough to possibly be a Valentine's day video?
I haven’t watched it yet, but NOTHING bothers me more than all other water types (that aren’t really ice) being weak to electric, when they could be weak to grass, and in fact certainly should be cause of the grass, water, fire starter trio, and the ONE that is weak to grass is Gyarados…. A flying water type that is grass neutral and DOUBLE weak to electric types in the game.
Poliwag, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath, Omanyte, Omastar, and technically Kabuto and Kabutops (although they are Fighting instead) are weak to Grass. But yeah, Gyarados REALLY shouldn't be weak to Grass.
@@hv433 I should have made it clear I meant single type, the rocks being weak to grass of course makes sense, but I legit didn’t know that Poliwrath, whirl and Wag were. So thank you for that.
I miss the good old days when the strongest Pokémon were stage two. You couldn’t just throw down a charizard or some 200+ HP card. It took time to build up and more planning
The Evolutions in the early game were garbage, nobody played them, it was the basics that had strong moves that cost 2 or 3, and Hand Control once they got to the Rocket sets
basics have been the best pokemon since day 1, what are you talking about? The game you played on the playground was not how the game was actually played if minmaxed, sadly
@@ich3730 yeah, but I feel like I’m the early days more people wanted to get to their charizard, blastoise, Alakazam, etc. and it forced them to have to evolve to get there. Now you can just throw down all the “cool” Pokémon. No need to plan, etc. All the cool Pokémon now ARE just powerful vmax.
Kid me actually really liked the TCG String Shot. I know it is inaccurate with the game as a source material, but it actually felt more like the anime string shot, like when caterpie would encase team rocket in its debut episode. But yeah, I agree it is one of the worst cases there and it is actually broken in terms of gameplay. The TCG itself would avoid making 1 energy 10 damage paralysis moves later on, and cards printed later with String Shot would only paralyze and not deal damage.
I think the issue that dragon rage is how different it is in every Pokémon media. The games have it at 40 set damage and the anime made it out to be a powerful move. So it seems dragon rage was always inconsistent depending on which Pokémon media it was portrayed in.
To be honest, having a lot of electric Pokemon weaknesses by Electric makes sense... The Pokemon TCG was struggling to make electric Pokemon more viable.
Yeah that’s true. But if they don’t want to add more Grass weaknesses for water types, I think they should’ve switched the Squirtle line with the Poliwag line then
@@ultimapower6950 , yeah, and I have even heard that WoTC was actively trying to improve its viability, which is why it did stuff like make the first ever Western card (Dark Raichu) be electric-type.
I got into Pokemon as a kid via the cards first, and afterwards got Red and later Yellow. I remember raising my Charmander to a Charizard, finally leveling him up to getting access to Fire Spin and was immediately disappointed in how trash that move is. lol
Tbh i learned about Pokémon from TCG first when my brothers and I were gifted some old cards from my older cousins who had lost interest. It was several years before we’d ever played the games. For pretty much my whole life I thought that the video games were the spin-offs, not the other way around.
The way they set up Charizard's fire spin would work much better for hyper beam. Having to discard 2 energies makes you have to have a "recharge" turn.
Love this ❤️! You should do a tcg Playthrough where you are not allowed to use the Pokémon and Item list of any of the starters booster packs! (Obvs you can use the energy cards)
The different move names are probably faithful translations to their Japanese names, unlike the main games which have their own naming sense for moves, for example there is a Sandile card that has the move "Surprise Attack" which is the original translation to the Japanese name of Sucker Punch.
How about the concept of deevolution? Mew’s de-evolution beam and the de-evolution gas trainer card come to mind. I’d love an Eevee that could evolve and devolve at will…
Hey, Paraspectre! I already left a comment (thanks for the "❤", btw!), but that was before watching the video. I forgot to mention afterwards that at 22:10 you showcased the Dratini line, but didn't mention the thing that always bothered me about it---the Psychic resistance (barring Dragonite)! It's already semi-problematic that even Normal types have that resistance (as you do mention), let alone Dragon. I understand it from a tcg designer's perspective, but it's still totally inaccurate, lol. I also forget whether you mention Sneasel not being weak to Fighting, despite having a 4x weakness to it, and a 2x weakness to Rock (as if that card wasn't broken enough, lol). But yeah, not even a Fire or Steel weakness!
Ok, I'm actually glad they didn't make Horn Drill and Guillotine auto-KOs in the TCG. Here's why: Gardevoir Lv. X's Bring Down from the DPPt era. This move _automatically KOs_ the Pokemon with the lowest remaining HP, regardless of which side it's on. Once you've even just _damaged_ your opponent's lead with something else (in the deck it was run in, usually a Gallade) you can pretty much just outright sweep your opponent out of existence. Because of this and Gallade's just outright unfair attacks in general, Gardevoir-Gallade was one of maybe two or three decks in the entire Pokemon TCG that managed to achieve tier-0 status, with the only other two I can think of being Slowking and Sneasel Beat-Up (not sure if those were run as the same deck or separately, hence the two or three).
My knowledge of cards beyond the Rocket set are very limited, so I didn’t even know about this. I think they could’ve still pulled off these being one hit KO moves by just making them more difficult to happen. Flip 2 or 3 coins or whatever
@@SurriSama A theoretical card that says "Flip 100 coins, if all heads, you win" would not be balanced. Balancing is done to ensure a healthy competitive enviroment. A card that lets you literally play the slot to win is not healthy for a competetive enviroment. "Just make the broken effect RNG" is not a solution, it makes the problem worse.
I never understood while Dratini and Dragonair had a Psychic resistance. I mean neither of them have any Psychic or Ghost resistance or immunity ever. They could've chosen Grass, Fire, Lightning, or even Water, but Psychic? Is it because they are Colorless and they did not pay attention to them being actually different types from Normal?
Also fun fact, poison type has had the most type changes that being 2 starting as grass type, they moving to psychic type (how does that make sense?) and now they are dark types. At this point they month as well just give poison it’s own type
Think the idea behind making them psychic is that they're both weak to "psychic" (poison being weak to psychic an psychic being weak to ghost which fall under psychic). Now maybe the rationale is that both poison and dark are weak to "fighting".
You went all the way to celadon and then right to the battle music? What happen to the rest of the video? I’m not actually mad about it though. LOL ! Good video my friend.
@@Paraspectre It was one of the reasons I watched the vid through the end these different layers you add in is what captured my attention and ultimately imo what makes your videos better. I enjoyed it and definitely interested to see what other content you got in store going forward!
So, the reason that speed lowering moves cause paralysis is because speed doesn't exist in the TCG and paralysis lowers speed in the games. It also works out because lowering speed can result in the opponent not getting a chance to attack. I'm not really sure why that one bothers you so much.
Well like I said, it doesn’t *actually* bother me. My only thought behind it is that it stops attack for only one turn, essentially equating it to the Pokémon missing an attack. Then it goes back to normal, unlike the real paralysis that is permanent until healed. In regards to the card game, it probably IS the best representation for it though.
I love how (I was massively into the original Pokémon r/b/y and tcg as a kid) half of these are thing that also really bothered me forever, and the other half I didn't even realize, never thought that some of those Pokémon didn't know those moves in the games! Drowzee with Confuse Ray and Magnemite/ton with Selfdestruct shocked me the most. Really sweet collection too, super jealous of the starter/theme decks! I also really need to get back to my tcg game and finish that challenge I set up awhile ago, It was going well, I just got caught up doing other stuff for the longest time. I want to now cause I have another challenge I'm reminded of that I wanted to try. I don't remember if it's been done by someone else, but I wanna try beating the game with the original tcg Starter deck list. Probably not THAT hard, but always sounded fun to me.
@@Paraspectre Oooh, that sounds cool! Would probably be Red cause I think Growlithe wasn't in Blue. Shame you wouldn't get Machamp without trading or hacking, but if you wanted to mod it in I wouldn't blame you.
You made some great points. But I can tell you don’t play the tcg. Bubblebeam lowers speed in game but now causes paralysis. Pretty sure paralysis is the closest way in game to slowing down your opponent. Detaching energy I guess, but that is pretty busted.
I mean… I’ve done multiple challenges on the TCG. But if you mean I don’t play modern TCG, that’s absolutely correct. And I’m only taking it literal here just to mention it. Bubblebeam paralyzing in the TCG is not a bad way to go about it. But it does not do that in the main games so I had to at least mention it.
The issue with the early TCG (even now) every POKEMON is a single type. No dual types exist. And that leads to strange things like rock/ground types not resisting electric as they lose their ground type and gyrados being weak to grass since he loses his flying type
I was like you, because of the card game, I always thought Magnemite and Magneton learned Selfdestruct in the games, and fairly recently I was flabbergasted when I found out that they don't
Horn Drill and Guillotine would be a cheaper energy cost(GCC), but would flip 2 coins and do 100 damage if both were heads if it were up to me. It may seem weird to grant this on Turn 2, but it still does an average of 25 damage for 3 energy, which is really bad, and it would be enough to OHKO almost every pokemon in the first few sets not named Chansey or Charizard.
all of these complaints come from a pokemon fan, not a card game fan. pokemon's tcg wasn't designed to be a straight adaptation, which come with a cost of all of gen 1's flaws, it was designed to be a fun card game that competed with WOTC's MTG, so most of these things are the result of conscious changes. all move related quirks are due to uniquely printed named moves, which become the basis for a moveset pool in all future cards with the same shared effects. Sing and Lullaby do different things because they don't want someone to sleep stall the entirety of a match. Sing is gated by a coin flip, Lullaby isn't, and Pokemon TCG has a limit of 4 shared named cards, so if someone had up a deck with up 12 mons that all had a guaranteed sleep, sleep stalling would have been overpowered since in the TCG you cannot switch slept pokemon out. and for anyone who played the TCG GB game, they know how terrible the coin flip RNG to wake up can be. Stiffen is a different mechanic from Harden because Kakuna and Metapod are in-between evolutions with middling health pools and relatively bad sustainability that have potential with their evolutions. why they didn't swap the two and make harden stiffen and stiffen harden is a mystery, but they're meant to have separate mechanics from Onix's version of Harden. Fire Spin was made to be an impairing move to replicate the feeling of being locked into the move from the main games. the synergy with Charizard's power was supposed to make up for that. Psychic type and Ground type having shared typing with Ghost and Rock is due to both Ghost and Rock having nominal numbers of Pokemon. Since the game was designed to have multiple colors like MTG, and MTG had been out for a while, they knew from just sheer exposure to MTG that people gravitate towards mono-color decks starting out. Gen 1 gym leaders being around a certain type also encourage that behavior. If they had made Ghost and Rock their own separate typings, a mono-Ghost deck would have only 3 Ghost mons (Gastly, Haunter, Gengar) at a maximum of 12 Pokemon in the deck that would be, which is extremely bad for card draw, and even worse because they're all in the same evolution tree. nevermind the endless mulligans at the beginning where you wouldn't be able to make a starting hand with an initial pokemon. rock type would have only been slightly better with 4 Rock mons (Geodude, Graveler, Golem, Onyx... no Omastar due to water typing, no Rhyhorn/Rhydon due to Ground being it's own type, and so on), and 3 of them are connected to the same evolution tree which shares the exact same issue as Ghost. Squirtle weakness being different is the exact opposite above - Electric types would have an absurdly high popularity due to Pikachu being the mascot of the franchise. So instead of there being a ruinous mono-Ghost deck to the point where no one would play it, they have an over-abundance of players going for mono-Electric decks, and would therefore create an artificial imbalance by sheer numbers of people running those decks, not by mechanical rock paper scissors. Electric types getting paralysis bonuses also contributes to this imbalance. Squirtle was changed to reflect this.
I mean… I mentioned twice in the video that I’m not actually upset by these changes and that they were made to reflect game balance. But I still stand by my stance on the Squirtle line.
Rhydon, Arcanine, and Exeggutor, three of the most powerful gen 1 Pokémon, with three of them present on the rival’s team in Red and Blue, were all uncommons. Exeggutor and Rhydon were also pretty awful, though Arcanine at least was pretty good..
I'm glad you brought up the magikarp/Gyarados lore Paraspectre, because I wanted to get your opinion on this question, Is Gyarados actually a dragon or not?
hyper beam in the old set discarding a energy make sence IF the card game was made with out the info of the game becase hyper beam in japanese measn destruction beam so they might be like ''oh oke then it wil destory a energy card''
Most of it is probably WOTC's fault, there's a Sandile card with the move "Surprise Attack" which is the original name of Sucker Punch, I'm sure all of these would be accurate to the Japanese move names.
@@Diabl0Mask But WOTC isn't even the publisher anymore. It changed in 2003, and Sandile wasn't a thing back then. Also surprice attack has been an attack name for ages in the tcg. And you can propably quess I don't mind the attack names being made up. It doesn't need to be as clinicly translated as a medical book.
Resistance should have been -10. Having a weakness and hitting for double damage is fun. Not being able to do any damage is not fun. -10 in those old formats is already very strong. Knowing old decks typically run 2 to 4 pluspowers to increase damage by 10 for 1 turn. You know it is powerful. Now imagine -30 permanently. It slows down games and that is something this format doesn’t want. That and : Super Energy removal should be banned or never have existed. Having regular Energy removal is a necessity in the base-fossil format, as it is 1 of the only ways to interact with your opponent, and it makes double colorless energy less oppressive. But having both cards in the format, effectively allowing you to run 6-8 copies can really grind a game to a halt. Resulting in “whoever draws the first professor Oak wins”. And that is also something it wants to avoid. Other than that I think old sets are perfect.
Pikachu being able to beat Onix in the anime makes more sense when you realize some of the writers probably didn’t play the games all the way through and used the cards for inspiration instead
I'm doing a Nido run in TCG videogame (inspired by you) and that Rhyhorn with leer is frustrating, especially when I have to flip to do damage and I SHOULD be doing double damage but "Leer" keeps prolonging the battle.
I wrote most of the next episode. I just wanted to do a couple side videos first. I know a video on Pokémon Channel won’t do as well so I was taking my time with it 😅
Why did they give Magnemite and Magneton selfdestruct, but not give Electrode, the pokemon most famous for exploding, Self Destruct or Explosion, that's the entire gimmick of Voltorb and Electrode, they're pokeball bombs.
Yeah that’s an even better point. Instead we get Tackle and Electric Shock for the Base Set ones. Cool…
Electrode was actually used to set up Zapdos, so you’d actually see them kill themselves in the card game. Magnemite and magneton needed 4 energy’s to kill themselves, so that probably happened as often as a magnemite would self destruct. 20:45 read Buzzap, he has the gimmick
Eletrode does explode. But instead of damage he gives your pokemon energy. That kinda how you view it.
Translating "lowering speed" to "causing paralyses if heads" sounds fine to me
18:45 This one always stuck out to me as a kid because I thought it was a weird thing for Nidorina to have. To make things even weirder in the original Pokemon anime, episode 100 Ash's pokedex says "Nidorina, the Poison Pin Pokémon. The evolved form of the female Nidoran. It emits supersonic waves from its mouth to confuse its enemies." it seems like from that episode and the card maybe Nidorina was originally going to have it be a notable supersonic user but that angel got dropped later. Interesting little tidbit there.
Some of the attack name confusion is due to literally translating the Japanese name and not applying the updated English version (like "Stiffen" instead of "Harden"). Should have been caught by localizers, but it was early on, I give it a pass.
That was my guess too, but it's not completely correct.
Harden in the Japanese games is "かたくなる," which apparently more directly translates to "stiffen." In the TCG, that is also the name of Japanese Base Set Onix's attack.
Japanese Base Set Metapod and Kakuna instead know the move "かたまる," which translates to "harden."
So at least in that case, it was actually the designers, not the localizers, who decided the moves should have different names. I wouldn't be surprised if similar things are going on with the other cards, but I'm not going to check them all.
(Disclaimer: I don't know Japanese. I'm just going off of the translations on Bulbapedia and Google.)
A top ten list with a bonus top 13 list in the number one spot?!
Heck yeah!
It was kinda like a top 13 with another top 13 😅
Loving these videos. Incredible that among so many Poketubers you're managing to do something completely different
Lullaby is a better name for a song that specifically induces sleep than Sing is, since Sing could be any kind of musical vocal performance, not just a soothing lullaby.
I agree. It should’ve been Lullaby in the main games then
Something that always bothered me was how thunderbolt was often stronger than thunder in the tcg
The move name thing is because WotC didnt have official translations from gamefreak back then. Most of the time they had to wing it. Look at rockets scyther. It has shadow images, when the english translation would obviously be double team. Then again WOTC did get a lot of translations wrong.
To be fair, Pokemon's JP TCG move list didn't even have proper translations from Game Freak. MediaFactory/Creatures Inc. made up their own moves, many of them just being straight up borrowed English words, or perfectly translated English words, like Lullaby and Sing (in addition to differently printed move naming balance)
Oh absolutely. But all I can go on is what was officially changed, whether it had a good reason or not.
I remember also being pretty surprised to learn magnemite couldn't actually learn selfdestruct in the games. Pretty weird.
As for charizard, having used one in Red version, I figured the idea for fire spin is that it effectively does loads of damage over several turns that might as well be one, as the opponent isn't doing jack during it, and the user just keeps doing fire spin, so the card game developers just compressed all those turns into one for the card game.
Some of these move set names are direct (and bad) translations of the japanese names for these moves in both the card game and the video games.
Your mention grass weakness on Gyarados being wrong and that reminds me about my biggest gripe from the modern is how they moved Poison to the Dark group, and now Crobat who should have a resistance to Fighting on both poison and flying types, now has a weakness because it's in the dark grouping? They also gave a lot of dark pokemon recently a random Grass weakness that makes absolutely no sense. Galarian Moltres and Darkrai are not weak to grass in the main games yet in the TCG they overlook the actual weaknesses of the cards to give it a random weakness it shouldn't have
crobat is still weak to rock (fighting) and Darkrai is still weak to bug (grass).
Galarian moltress though... yeah got nothing it's just wrong.
- Golem didn’t get a Holo in Fossil, despite only having 15 holos and clearly deserving it being a big stage 2 Pokemon with high HP. Plus Golem is my favourite trade evo, so I can’t stand him being shafted
- Arcanine not having a holographic card in base set, yet unevolved Clefairy getting one. I’m not saying Clefairy isn’t cute, but Arcanine not getting a Holo isn’t fair IMO
Wait, I had a holo Arcanine as a kid. It was my favorite card and my first holo. Don't have my cards anymore after the fire, but I remember that vividly.
@@PatchyConvert There was a Blaine’s Arcanine Holo, but the one in base set wasn’t even a rare
This is something I really should’ve mentioned. Arcanine and Golem not being rares is really pretty ridiculous. Even the lore makes out Arcanine to be this mythical pseudo legendary. But nope, uncommon.
@Harold It was a base set though. It was Arcanine in a field with partly cloudy sky. It had star shimmers and looking freaking cool.
@@Paraspectre Golem would finally get justice in Expedition, Skyridge and ex Dragon. In the latter set, he would have a holo and an EX.
Onyx doesn't resist electric, because Ash made Pikachu aim for the horn.
That was Rhydon tho - makes even less sense then since Rhydon ends up resisting Electric in the card game.
@@andreivaldez2929 I mean the iconic episode when Ash fighted brock for the first gym badge
Amnesia making your opponent temporarily forget how to use one of their moves makes a lot more sense than the move purposefully giving its own user amnesia to somehow make them stronger
100%. This was more of a critique with the main game move
something that makes your comment about hyper beam even weirder.
In current Tcg there's a lot of attack with a "recharge" effect (this card cannot attack next turn) and yet hyper beam in recent cards STILL discards an energy from the defending pokemon instead of the recharge.
See I didn’t even know this. My knowledge on cards beyond the OG Rocket set is extremely limited
8:59 that exactdescription is why Gyarados is my favorite mon, what a beast.
Caterpie's String shot paralyzing the opponent is slowing them down, it prevents a retreat or attack for a turn. Also vs Seel, it has less health. It would be a green Magikarp if it just had a tackle.
I’m glad to see someone else loving Mitsuhiro Arita artwork on Gyrados. I still love the Rattata and even grabbed a Base Set 2 reverse holo of it a while back. Outside the cards that just used the stock Sugimori artwork, Arita’s stand out to me.
He’s still doing TCG art and I’m still chasing the Lugia V from the newest set that he did the art for and am hoping for a jumbo of it at some point.
Love that Gyarados artwork
I actually like the cards not being an "exact" (or as exact as possible) copy of the games, because they are a different game and you need to come up with different strategies. However, I agree with most of what you said. I never really understood level, but some types are just so off, it's weird. Btw, the Gyarados reminds me of the newest Seismitoad in the Obsidian Flames expansion: it is weak to Lightning because it's a Water type, but in the games it's also a ground type...
In the end I just say to myself "they are different games that go by different rules".
I would love to see a splash move for Magikarp - “Flip a coin”, if heads this attack does 0 damage. If tails, this attack does nothing”.
Just for a truly silly card
This would be amazing. What a missed opportunity
I could see the heads flip technically still doing damage with a plus power attached 😂
@@TheSaxRunner05 new challenge acquired! Win a match with only splash knock outs
these videos are videos I never knew I needed
They were quite fun to analyze!
I remember how surprised I was to learn that Magnemite and Magneton can't learn Self Destruct, given how they had it on the cards I saw so often as a kid. At least Magnezone can learn it as of Sword and Shield.
Metapod using "Stiffen" just makes me laugh lol
I guess they aren’t wrong 🤷🏻♂️
Personally, I like the TCG having its own spin into the game, with these crazy moves that have nothing to do with the video games or anime/manga. If you think about it, all the Pokemon adaptations are unique, their own separate universes.
I pretty much agree with this too. As I said, these don’t ACTUALLY bother me, it was just fun to point out the big differences (although I still say Gyarados was fumbled).
When one Metapod hardens, the other stiffens.
In the TCG game for Gameboy Color, I really like using Golduck and hyper beam. You can only attach 1 energy per turn so hitting an op mon forces them to attach instead of preparing another mon on the bench. I know you get it, and the focus of the video is how the move isn't at all like the video game, but it is a good attack imo. It's brutal, but repeatedly hitting a mon and getting to a point where the mon is 2 energy down from attacking so the trainer attaching 1 energy does nothing but waste their turn is so satisfying haha
19:54 even though Magnemite/Magneton couldn't learn it, Explosion was TM47 in Gen 1 before disappearing for Gens 2/3, then returning as TM64 Gen 4 onward.
Love this entire video. As a mostly main series player, there's always been so many little things that annoyed me about the TCG.
2.40 in the the morning and a new paraspectre video. Guess I go later to sleep😁
Hyper beam might not do a lot of damage like the games but it is still a really good move. If you can keep it powered up it is a energy removal every turn. Which is crazy if you’ve ever played base fossil
Can I just say fossil Dragonair's art looks really pretty 😍 ✨️.
Agreed. Probably one of the better looking OG cards
Just about to watch the video, but your thumbnail brings me such validation - not only does Gyarados' Flying type cancel out its weakness to Grass, but it makes it resistant to Bug. . . and makes it 4x weak to Electric (Lightning in the case of the TCG)! The Fighting resistance at least makes sense, since immunity to Ground further offsets its weakness to Rock.
Back then he was only a water type
@@tanzolo4487 LOL
The Rattata Raticate not knowing bite, and magnemite and magneton not knowing self destruct must be causing someone to experience Mandela effect 🤣
I never got why they put levels on the cards. It doesn't visually show anything in the card art, like you said if they don't follow the games model for when a Pokemon can learn a move why put it? The levels don't correlate to HP or the number of moves on the cards. It's so simple to put a level that correlates to what the games say the Pokemon can learn.
I've thought it would be neat to have Pokemon cards that follow a level path like the games. Your level 5 Squirtle has tackle and tail whip. When you compete in enough official battles at your local store, you get a code maybe or something and then you get your level 15 Squirtle that now has tackle, tail whip, bubble and water gun. Each card would have moves relating to the games. You can't pick the moves like the games, but when you level up your card it comes with at least 2 new moves when possible. Each card has 3-4 level up stages before the next one would make it evolve; in the case of Pokemon with stones or other special conditions I haven't thought that part out. Yeah, it's basically the games in TCG form, but I think that would be neat; and a logistical nightmare however they plan to get the cards to you etc. but seems cool. Maybe they can bring back the GB printer and let proxy cards be legal; annoys the heck out of me I don't want to spend $1k or more on cards just to play the game.
People would cheat and abuse this so hard, the game would be dead after like, one event.
Tbh, why didnt they have some of the psychic types be weak to grass, since theyre weak to bug and bug types are grass types? They could have absolutely afforded to give some of the grass-weak mons to water instead of grass, if what your thing showed is true
This was a cool video, glad the algorithm lead me to your channel, you deserve way more subscribers!
Btw here are a couple of ideas for Pokemon challenges:
- No Evolutions, but only Pikemon that can evolve (Card game).
- Only moves with fixed damage like Dragon Rage and Seismic Toss (Any main game).
I like both of these ideas.
As far as printing cards with the same name but different effect would likely set off confusion of misprints or updates. An faq might remedy now days but back than probably not as easily.
Charizard uses Fire Spin because it's the last move that Charizard can learn in gen 1
This is true, but the move on the card is so much more Fire Blast-ian
@@Paraspectre I agree I'm just trying to find the logic in this game were Boyfriends is a valid move
Probably because fire spin was the last move charizard learns, so they made it the "ultimate move"
It's also the main move for Stadium's Rental version of Charizard which was probably done for similar reasons. Even as a kid I knew it was better to pick Charmeleon.
I remember being pissed paying gold because dragonnite was not actually weak to to fighting moves like it said on the card, so my level 88 tyflosion lost its first match to lance when dynamic punch did not kill it in one hit. Edit nevermind I just misread the card, I had a japanese dragonnite card growing up and resistance icon shows up where the weakness icon is on american cards.
Well that probably made it even MORE confusing for you
@@Paraspectre yeah I felt gas lit writing this comment
Regarding Charizard's Fire Spin -- 1) Charizard didn't actually learn Fire Blast by level up 2) in the indigo anime Fire Spin was like the strongest Fire attack, stronger than Fire Blast. It wasn't powerful in practice in the games but you can see Fire Spin being considered a very strong move by the devs by it being the last move a lot of pokemon learn.
This is true. But all of my points were made just in relation to the main games. The anime certainly changed things a lot from that as well.
I like your Gyrados analysis(14:34). I agree that lowering the damage to 40 would be a good idea. I would like to add an effect that it ignores all damage reduction from cards(Graveler Harden) and trainer cards(Defender). This would reflect Dragon Rage's ability to do 40 damage to the opponent regardless of the opponents defense in the base game.
Agreed except it should also ignore all weaknesses.
Yeah, I was surprised about Rattata and Raticate and only learned this when I made my attempt at the TCG Style Nuzlocke. A real, "Da F*dge?" moment. XD
Gen 1 Bite was normal, so I guess they figured Hyper Fang was just a better exclusive Bite?
If they gave Base Rattata Hyper Fang, would that have worked better? It sounds too good. Very bizarre that they can’t learn Bite.
The Hyper Beam thing is bc energy removal is probably the most powerful effect in the game, so for a move to be the ultimate power move, like hyper beam is billed as, making it reusable energy removal feels right.
Cough cough. Gen 1 Hyper Beam recharge mechanic.
But it still does the opposite here. The intent is for the move to do a lot of damage and then you lose a turn. It shouldn’t affect your opponent’s energies at all.
Can't wait to see this video hit RUclips's trending page. XD I will forever find it hilarious that Nidoqueen has an attack called "Boyfriends". Is that also in the TCG game. Could it be gimmicky enough to possibly be a Valentine's day video?
Haha maybe!
I haven’t watched it yet, but NOTHING bothers me more than all other water types (that aren’t really ice) being weak to electric, when they could be weak to grass, and in fact certainly should be cause of the grass, water, fire starter trio, and the ONE that is weak to grass is Gyarados…. A flying water type that is grass neutral and DOUBLE weak to electric types in the game.
Poliwag, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath, Omanyte, Omastar, and technically Kabuto and Kabutops (although they are Fighting instead) are weak to Grass.
But yeah, Gyarados REALLY shouldn't be weak to Grass.
@@hv433
I should have made it clear I meant single type, the rocks being weak to grass of course makes sense, but I legit didn’t know that Poliwrath, whirl and Wag were. So thank you for that.
I refuse to believe that Grass weakness wasn’t a mistake.
I miss the good old days when the strongest Pokémon were stage two. You couldn’t just throw down a charizard or some 200+ HP card. It took time to build up and more planning
The Evolutions in the early game were garbage, nobody played them, it was the basics that had strong moves that cost 2 or 3, and Hand Control once they got to the Rocket sets
The only really viable evo pokemon early on were wigglytuff, blastoise, muk. I think on the revist to this era primate is seen as solid
The strongest Pokemon were Electabuzz, Mr. Mime, Scyther, Hitmonchan, Mewtwo... evolving was always a pain in the ass.
basics have been the best pokemon since day 1, what are you talking about? The game you played on the playground was not how the game was actually played if minmaxed, sadly
@@ich3730 yeah, but I feel like I’m the early days more people wanted to get to their charizard, blastoise, Alakazam, etc. and it forced them to have to evolve to get there. Now you can just throw down all the “cool” Pokémon. No need to plan, etc. All the cool Pokémon now ARE just powerful vmax.
Kid me actually really liked the TCG String Shot. I know it is inaccurate with the game as a source material, but it actually felt more like the anime string shot, like when caterpie would encase team rocket in its debut episode.
But yeah, I agree it is one of the worst cases there and it is actually broken in terms of gameplay. The TCG itself would avoid making 1 energy 10 damage paralysis moves later on, and cards printed later with String Shot would only paralyze and not deal damage.
Even just paralyzing would be better in my opinion. It’s that 10 damage that gets me.
I had fun watching this.
The Grass weakness on Gyarados drove me nuts.
I think the issue that dragon rage is how different it is in every Pokémon media. The games have it at 40 set damage and the anime made it out to be a powerful move. So it seems dragon rage was always inconsistent depending on which Pokémon media it was portrayed in.
To be honest, having a lot of electric Pokemon weaknesses by Electric makes sense... The Pokemon TCG was struggling to make electric Pokemon more viable.
Yeah that’s true. But if they don’t want to add more Grass weaknesses for water types, I think they should’ve switched the Squirtle line with the Poliwag line then
@@Paraspectre and get that lightning weakness in for Gyarados! I noticed they fixed that for its XY Evolutions retro printing... much better :)
Was electric unviable back in base-fossil?
@@ultimapower6950 , yeah, and I have even heard that WoTC was actively trying to improve its viability, which is why it did stuff like make the first ever Western card (Dark Raichu) be electric-type.
I got into Pokemon as a kid via the cards first, and afterwards got Red and later Yellow.
I remember raising my Charmander to a Charizard, finally leveling him up to getting access to Fire Spin and was immediately disappointed in how trash that move is. lol
See? You get it. It’s so misleading on the card
Squirtle evolution line not being weak to grass and gyarados not being weak to electric will bother me forever now 😂
Nothing will convince me otherwise 😌
Tbh i learned about Pokémon from TCG first when my brothers and I were gifted some old cards
from my older cousins who had lost interest. It was several years before we’d ever played the games. For pretty much my whole life I thought that the video games were the spin-offs, not the other way around.
The way they set up Charizard's fire spin would work much better for hyper beam. Having to discard 2 energies makes you have to have a "recharge" turn.
Charizard's fire spin seemed to be an ok fit because of how devastating it looked when Vulpix debuted it on the show
It sounds terrifying and perfect for the card in name alone. It’s just that the move itself sucks haha
I think the Squirtle line's weakness to electric is simply meant to show that they are the superior starters.
Well I’d agree with that part.
Love this ❤️!
You should do a tcg Playthrough where you are not allowed to use the Pokémon and Item list of any of the starters booster packs! (Obvs you can use the energy cards)
23:24 my favorite version of Pikachu is the pingpong ball one here.
The different move names are probably faithful translations to their Japanese names, unlike the main games which have their own naming sense for moves, for example there is a Sandile card that has the move "Surprise Attack" which is the original translation to the Japanese name of Sucker Punch.
Dratini also had a resistence to Psychic on that card. Which it definitely does not have anything close to in the main games. Poor base Dratini.
Yeah that really doesn’t make sense. They had no idea what to do with Dragon at the start
@@Paraspectre In fairness, neither did GameFreak.
always interesting paraspectre, keep de good work!
How about the concept of deevolution? Mew’s de-evolution beam and the de-evolution gas trainer card come to mind. I’d love an Eevee that could evolve and devolve at will…
Hey, Paraspectre! I already left a comment (thanks for the "❤", btw!), but that was before watching the video. I forgot to mention afterwards that at 22:10 you showcased the Dratini line, but didn't mention the thing that always bothered me about it---the Psychic resistance (barring Dragonite)!
It's already semi-problematic that even Normal types have that resistance (as you do mention), let alone Dragon.
I understand it from a tcg designer's perspective, but it's still totally inaccurate, lol.
I also forget whether you mention Sneasel not being weak to Fighting, despite having a 4x weakness to it, and a 2x weakness to Rock (as if that card wasn't broken enough, lol). But yeah, not even a Fire or Steel weakness!
I thought I did mention the Psychic resistance with Dragon? Maybe that was another video. I for sure agree that it’s a weird choice
The squirtle line’s weakness is a terrible mistake! I hate it now that it was brought to my attention
Ok, I'm actually glad they didn't make Horn Drill and Guillotine auto-KOs in the TCG. Here's why: Gardevoir Lv. X's Bring Down from the DPPt era. This move _automatically KOs_ the Pokemon with the lowest remaining HP, regardless of which side it's on. Once you've even just _damaged_ your opponent's lead with something else (in the deck it was run in, usually a Gallade) you can pretty much just outright sweep your opponent out of existence. Because of this and Gallade's just outright unfair attacks in general, Gardevoir-Gallade was one of maybe two or three decks in the entire Pokemon TCG that managed to achieve tier-0 status, with the only other two I can think of being Slowking and Sneasel Beat-Up (not sure if those were run as the same deck or separately, hence the two or three).
My knowledge of cards beyond the Rocket set are very limited, so I didn’t even know about this. I think they could’ve still pulled off these being one hit KO moves by just making them more difficult to happen. Flip 2 or 3 coins or whatever
@Paraspectre exactly this. Flip enough coins, and "you win the game" can become balanced.
@@Paraspectre I guess that could work. An extremely stacked move that requires a lot of coin flips.
@@SurriSama A theoretical card that says "Flip 100 coins, if all heads, you win" would not be balanced. Balancing is done to ensure a healthy competitive enviroment. A card that lets you literally play the slot to win is not healthy for a competetive enviroment. "Just make the broken effect RNG" is not a solution, it makes the problem worse.
No it doesn't, you do not know what balanced means. @@ich3730
I am shocked (heh) to hear the Voltorb line has to wait Generation VII to learn Thundershock.
Right? It’s pretty baffling
Blastoise the Shellfish pokemon... because it's water type and has a shell lol
In my head, "Nuzzle" is really Thunder Jolt
As a kid I was always annoyed they merged types. Some sort of make sense like rock and ground, but half of them don't.
Making Dragon colorless is kinda lame
So the Magnemite line can self-destruct, but the Voltorb line doesn't. You know, the whole gimmick that they're known for.
I never understood while Dratini and Dragonair had a Psychic resistance. I mean neither of them have any Psychic or Ghost resistance or immunity ever. They could've chosen Grass, Fire, Lightning, or even Water, but Psychic? Is it because they are Colorless and they did not pay attention to them being actually different types from Normal?
A fire resistance would be fitting as no card has it in the first sets.
Also fun fact, poison type has had the most type changes that being 2 starting as grass type, they moving to psychic type (how does that make sense?) and now they are dark types.
At this point they month as well just give poison it’s own type
Think the idea behind making them psychic is that they're both weak to "psychic" (poison being weak to psychic an psychic being weak to ghost which fall under psychic).
Now maybe the rationale is that both poison and dark are weak to "fighting".
You went all the way to celadon and then right to the battle music? What happen to the rest of the video? I’m not actually mad about it though. LOL ! Good video my friend.
Haha I wanted the end to ramp up a little. I’m surprised anybody noticed 😅
@@Paraspectre It was one of the reasons I watched the vid through the end these different layers you add in is what captured my attention and ultimately imo what makes your videos better. I enjoyed it and definitely interested to see what other content you got in store going forward!
So, the reason that speed lowering moves cause paralysis is because speed doesn't exist in the TCG and paralysis lowers speed in the games. It also works out because lowering speed can result in the opponent not getting a chance to attack.
I'm not really sure why that one bothers you so much.
Well like I said, it doesn’t *actually* bother me. My only thought behind it is that it stops attack for only one turn, essentially equating it to the Pokémon missing an attack. Then it goes back to normal, unlike the real paralysis that is permanent until healed. In regards to the card game, it probably IS the best representation for it though.
@@Paraspectre Oh, the reason for that is so that Paralysis and Sleep don't just do the exact same thing lol
@@TechHug was about to say that as well, almost every pokemon status condition boils down to "thing no more attack enemy" its hard to work with that
Another great video bud!
Why thanks! It’s pretty fun analyzing these
I love using Kakuna whenever I play Pokemon TCG on my 2DS: I can deal damage and there is a chance to poison enemies, hehe...
Ah yes the root of my confusion that electric type are week to fighting. Because the card game fighting type was also ground&rock.
I love how (I was massively into the original Pokémon r/b/y and tcg as a kid) half of these are thing that also really bothered me forever, and the other half I didn't even realize, never thought that some of those Pokémon didn't know those moves in the games! Drowzee with Confuse Ray and Magnemite/ton with Selfdestruct shocked me the most. Really sweet collection too, super jealous of the starter/theme decks!
I also really need to get back to my tcg game and finish that challenge I set up awhile ago, It was going well, I just got caught up doing other stuff for the longest time. I want to now cause I have another challenge I'm reminded of that I wanted to try. I don't remember if it's been done by someone else, but I wanna try beating the game with the original tcg Starter deck list. Probably not THAT hard, but always sounded fun to me.
I thought about doing the Starter Deck as well, but on Pokémon Red or Blue like I did with Overgrowth.
@@Paraspectre Oooh, that sounds cool! Would probably be Red cause I think Growlithe wasn't in Blue. Shame you wouldn't get Machamp without trading or hacking, but if you wanted to mod it in I wouldn't blame you.
Always look forward to your content!
Thank you!
You made some great points. But I can tell you don’t play the tcg. Bubblebeam lowers speed in game but now causes paralysis. Pretty sure paralysis is the closest way in game to slowing down your opponent. Detaching energy I guess, but that is pretty busted.
I mean… I’ve done multiple challenges on the TCG. But if you mean I don’t play modern TCG, that’s absolutely correct. And I’m only taking it literal here just to mention it. Bubblebeam paralyzing in the TCG is not a bad way to go about it. But it does not do that in the main games so I had to at least mention it.
The issue with the early TCG (even now) every POKEMON is a single type. No dual types exist.
And that leads to strange things like rock/ground types not resisting electric as they lose their ground type and gyrados being weak to grass since he loses his flying type
I was like you, because of the card game, I always thought Magnemite and Magneton learned Selfdestruct in the games, and fairly recently I was flabbergasted when I found out that they don't
And they went hard with it on the cards too. All 3 original cards blow up
I didn't mind the TCG creators taking creative liberties. A lot of their ideas were better (and later taken by) Game Freak!
Wizards of the Coast didn't powercreep that much other than Gen 2 era.
For sure. And I mentioned this as well. I just thought it would be fun to point out these changes
Horn Drill and Guillotine would be a cheaper energy cost(GCC), but would flip 2 coins and do 100 damage if both were heads if it were up to me. It may seem weird to grant this on Turn 2, but it still does an average of 25 damage for 3 energy, which is really bad, and it would be enough to OHKO almost every pokemon in the first few sets not named Chansey or Charizard.
all of these complaints come from a pokemon fan, not a card game fan. pokemon's tcg wasn't designed to be a straight adaptation, which come with a cost of all of gen 1's flaws, it was designed to be a fun card game that competed with WOTC's MTG, so most of these things are the result of conscious changes.
all move related quirks are due to uniquely printed named moves, which become the basis for a moveset pool in all future cards with the same shared effects.
Sing and Lullaby do different things because they don't want someone to sleep stall the entirety of a match. Sing is gated by a coin flip, Lullaby isn't, and Pokemon TCG has a limit of 4 shared named cards, so if someone had up a deck with up 12 mons that all had a guaranteed sleep, sleep stalling would have been overpowered since in the TCG you cannot switch slept pokemon out. and for anyone who played the TCG GB game, they know how terrible the coin flip RNG to wake up can be.
Stiffen is a different mechanic from Harden because Kakuna and Metapod are in-between evolutions with middling health pools and relatively bad sustainability that have potential with their evolutions. why they didn't swap the two and make harden stiffen and stiffen harden is a mystery, but they're meant to have separate mechanics from Onix's version of Harden.
Fire Spin was made to be an impairing move to replicate the feeling of being locked into the move from the main games. the synergy with Charizard's power was supposed to make up for that.
Psychic type and Ground type having shared typing with Ghost and Rock is due to both Ghost and Rock having nominal numbers of Pokemon. Since the game was designed to have multiple colors like MTG, and MTG had been out for a while, they knew from just sheer exposure to MTG that people gravitate towards mono-color decks starting out. Gen 1 gym leaders being around a certain type also encourage that behavior. If they had made Ghost and Rock their own separate typings, a mono-Ghost deck would have only 3 Ghost mons (Gastly, Haunter, Gengar) at a maximum of 12 Pokemon in the deck that would be, which is extremely bad for card draw, and even worse because they're all in the same evolution tree. nevermind the endless mulligans at the beginning where you wouldn't be able to make a starting hand with an initial pokemon. rock type would have only been slightly better with 4 Rock mons (Geodude, Graveler, Golem, Onyx... no Omastar due to water typing, no Rhyhorn/Rhydon due to Ground being it's own type, and so on), and 3 of them are connected to the same evolution tree which shares the exact same issue as Ghost.
Squirtle weakness being different is the exact opposite above - Electric types would have an absurdly high popularity due to Pikachu being the mascot of the franchise. So instead of there being a ruinous mono-Ghost deck to the point where no one would play it, they have an over-abundance of players going for mono-Electric decks, and would therefore create an artificial imbalance by sheer numbers of people running those decks, not by mechanical rock paper scissors. Electric types getting paralysis bonuses also contributes to this imbalance. Squirtle was changed to reflect this.
I mean… I mentioned twice in the video that I’m not actually upset by these changes and that they were made to reflect game balance.
But I still stand by my stance on the Squirtle line.
This was such a fun video to watch/listen to. Perfect balance of not taking it too seriously, but having valid points
Rhydon, Arcanine, and Exeggutor, three of the most powerful gen 1 Pokémon, with three of them present on the rival’s team in Red and Blue, were all uncommons. Exeggutor and Rhydon were also pretty awful, though Arcanine at least was pretty good..
Great video
I'm glad you brought up the magikarp/Gyarados lore Paraspectre, because I wanted to get your opinion on this question, Is Gyarados actually a dragon or not?
Gyarados is absolutely a Dragon. That’s the first thing I questioned when I got into Pokémon. Flying?? What??
The golem and onix lines should at least have a normal resistance for their rock typing
Especially because rock also resists flying, the other type included in colorless in the TCG.
hyper beam in the old set discarding a energy make sence IF the card game was made with out the info of the game becase hyper beam in japanese measn destruction beam so they might be like ''oh oke then it wil destory a energy card''
I wonder how all the attack names stack up in Japanese and how many of the discrepancies are the fault of Wizards of the Coast
Seeing how we still have cards with attacks that don't exist in the video games, it probably wasn't WOTC's fault.
Yeah I did not look too deep into this. Good question though
@@Paraspectre This is vital information for my Gym-only Blaine's Quiz #1 competitive deck!
Most of it is probably WOTC's fault, there's a Sandile card with the move "Surprise Attack" which is the original name of Sucker Punch, I'm sure all of these would be accurate to the Japanese move names.
@@Diabl0Mask But WOTC isn't even the publisher anymore. It changed in 2003, and Sandile wasn't a thing back then. Also surprice attack has been an attack name for ages in the tcg. And you can propably quess I don't mind the attack names being made up. It doesn't need to be as clinicly translated as a medical book.
Resistance should have been -10. Having a weakness and hitting for double damage is fun. Not being able to do any damage is not fun. -10 in those old formats is already very strong. Knowing old decks typically run 2 to 4 pluspowers to increase damage by 10 for 1 turn. You know it is powerful. Now imagine -30 permanently. It slows down games and that is something this format doesn’t want. That and : Super Energy removal should be banned or never have existed. Having regular Energy removal is a necessity in the base-fossil format, as it is 1 of the only ways to interact with your opponent, and it makes double colorless energy less oppressive. But having both cards in the format, effectively allowing you to run 6-8 copies can really grind a game to a halt. Resulting in “whoever draws the first professor Oak wins”. And that is also something it wants to avoid. Other than that I think old sets are perfect.
Pikachu being able to beat Onix in the anime makes more sense when you realize some of the writers probably didn’t play the games all the way through and used the cards for inspiration instead
I'm doing a Nido run in TCG videogame (inspired by you) and that Rhyhorn with leer is frustrating, especially when I have to flip to do damage and I SHOULD be doing double damage but "Leer" keeps prolonging the battle.
Rhyhorn and any Pokémon with moves like Smokescreen or Sand Attack are the absolute worst to face off against at the start
I know im late to the party but base set pikachu with gnaw and thunder jolt feels like it should be on the list somewhere lol
Question bro? When u making the next Paraspective??
I wrote most of the next episode. I just wanted to do a couple side videos first. I know a video on Pokémon Channel won’t do as well so I was taking my time with it 😅
Me: "I think I know gen 1 pretty damn well!"
Para: "flail was introduced in gen 2."
Me: "NANI!??!?!"
Haha yeah. Magikarp had to learn how to flail around a whole generation later
If you didn't know Flail was gen 2, then here's some fun little trivia: did you know that Waterfall is a gen 1 move?
@Vengeance shockingly I did only when I was older, in my early 20s replaying blue. I'm 31 so.... technically yes lol
The unexpected sequel!