Hi everyone.
I've been lurking Pokébeach for years and essentially "lurking" the TCG for even longer. By that I mean I'm a very casual collector, I don't have anything near a complete set but I've been buying packs for years and have a decent albeit non-exhaustive cross-section of cards running from Base Set to late DPPt. In that I'm non-competitive, I used to battle theme decks with my sister and aside from one tournament and a Prerelease I've not gone to many formal events, I've rarely been able to coherently comment on the current metagame, and since I'm not much of a hardcore collector I have the rare Wizards promo I'm proud of but rarely have the sort of 'big deal' cards worth bragging about. In a sense, I've always felt my interest in the TCG has been sort of unique, and I just wanted to ramble on a bit about my favorite aspect of the TCG now that we've hit the 15th anniversary of its existence. None of this will surprise anyone, but you know when you have something knocking around in your head you finally need to just get out of your system? Yeah. (I hope it's also a decent opportunity to expand my posting habits to more than just critical Front Page commentary.)
So, I guess, here's why I'm still prone to buy a pack of cards every now and again. I hope this perspective isn't as unique as I assume, and I also hope this is in the right forum and I don't inadvertently break any rules.
Continuity
I've been a sucker for serialized storytelling my entire life. I think comic books have always done it the way I enjoyed it most, with editorial footnotes prompting you to look back 100 issues to find out this new character is actually a reappearance from 10 years ago, and the way most series often try to establish a method to the madness of changing writers, editorial boards, aborted storylines -- they make a fine tapestry from a mess of tattered patchwork. I'm not going to write an essay about how postmodern it is or anything; in the back of my mind I know most of the writing in comic series is quite simplistic, but I love it nonetheless. Long-running franchises often have this benefit of being able to make callbacks on years and years of backstory, and while the Pokémon franchise has traditionally been light on plot, and the TCG itself even moreso, I essentially love collecting these cards for the callbacks, for the references, the reprints, all of it. For me, it's not quite the sort of back-patting of catching the reference of an inside joke as much as it is the pleasant surprise when, years later, the card game references one of my favorite cards from when I was a child. It's nostalgia, I guess. These 'callbacks' work in a number of ways.
Exact Reprints
I think everyone loves a reprint. I guess the most popular reprint might be any given Pikachu reprint or Stormfront Charizard, but the Hitmonchan reprint is actually my standing favorite. Hitmonchan is my absolute favorite card from the entire Base Set print, and it was incoherently exciting to me that 10 years later the card, exactly as it was, was reprinted in Platinum, a set I went ahead and bought an entire box of. And I got my Hitmonchan!
These literal reprints always benefit from a bit of time -- Base Set 2 was such a terrible idea so early on, and I was even ambivalent towards Legendary Collection (you couldn't even bother to change the cards to Neo-era blanks?), but seeing an exact reprint is always great. I also love when they do exact reprints but with different card art -- I was pleased as punch when I realized on my own that POP2's Pikachu was a reprint of Base Set's.
'Updated' Reprints
I think the best example of this idea would be Undaunted's Sneasel in that there's even a reference to the card art, but this runs everything from Rattata (Base Set/Rumble) to this Chansey. Because of a difference in art, or a variation in the attack cost, power, or HP, if you blink you'll miss it, but if you don't, you'll catch that while it's not exact, the spirit of the older card is clearly there, and it can be interesting to see what tweaks are or aren't made to make the card viable, or even the fact a format-wrecker like Neo Sneasel can be downgraded to an HGSS common and just not matter.
There's a bit of overlap between exact and updated reprints when it comes to card art; POP2 Pikachu, while exact, has that same 'surprise' element when you catch it that these updated reprints do. The classifications are arbitrary and being made up as I go along, don't take it too literally.
Attack/Power/Energy Continuity
There are so many examples of this. It's always nice when Super Psy/Super Psy Bolt reappears as an attack in the TCG. But I love when the TCG assigns a niche to a Pokémon that it revisits every now and again. Like when Scyther has one attack that doubles its other attack in the next turn (Jungle, Neo Destiny, Stormfront) or the almost ironic twist that is Slashing Strike where he CAN'T use the souped-up attack his next turn (Black Star Promo 54, TRR, Undaunted). Sometimes they're reoccurring Attacks or Powers, with or without the exact original names, sometimes they're the novelty of reoccurring Energy requirements -- Jumpluff, anyone?
Some of them are subtle, some of them are overt. Sometimes I'm not sure if they're meant to be easily noticable or why they're done -- while I know Conductivity is reoccurring for a reason, has Jumpluff ever really mattered in a format? -- but it's always been fun for me to catch on to these when I see them in the exact way it's a pleasure to catch on with more verbatim reprints.
Another reoccurring idea I used to love was HP limits -- Basics that evolved used to have an HP cap as high as any given Pokémon they could evolve into, even when it was impractical. A lot of Dark evolutions from Team Rocket and Neo Destiny meant some Pokémon were capped ridiculously low, but I loved when they nonetheless kept with it. You'd knew you'd never see a Charmander with 60 HP because Team Rocket's Dark Charmeleon only had 50 HP. It used to be that way, anyways.
Similarly, while I was alright with breaking the 120 HP limit for Pokémon-EX, I've got to admit one of the things that made me buy less packs from DPPt-on was an unconditional break of the limit. I knew it meant things like potentials for evolutions with a net loss in HP were at the doorstep. Does it really matter to anyone? No, not really, but it was something I loved and missed. Actually, speaking of something that I'm not as cool with..
Different Approaches To Updated Trainer Reprints
Scenario 1:
Scenario 2:
Scenario 3:
It used to be if you wanted to reprint a Trainer, you'd reprint it exactly -- or not at all. I do have to hesitate and admit Bill was reprinted as a Supporter at one point and I didn't really bat an eye, but the name and effect was identical, and everyone knew Bill was Bill. In the same way, everyone knew Energy Removal 2 wasn't Energy Removal -- they wanted to reprint the same card but they wanted to change the effect, so they did -- and they also changed the name!
BW's handling of Gust of Wind and Potion is annoying to me in a way I haven't found anyone else agreeing with. If they wanted to update Potion, they should've given it a new name (Potion 2 might not be it, okay, but don't just call it Potion when it's not the same card...) and Gust of Wind should've been Gust of Wind. But now we have a mess and I don't know where to start. Bill is Mom's Kindness, there's two Bills, there's two Gusts of Winds, I don't-- I'm confused. I used to not be confused. Trainers used to have a continuity to them. Where did it go? Why have you foresaken me, TCG? And why am I the only one upset by this? It's because I'm insane, to be sure.
Other Callbacks
It occurs to me now that the Rattata might be a case of a pseudo-reprint, but it's the art I'm interested in. But the Poliwhirl here -- I love it. Honestly, please, maybe I'm just nuts because Neo Discovery was one of my favorite sets but if you have those two Poliwhirls, at some point do me a favor, take them out and put them next to each other. The cards are 7 or 8 years apart in their printing, have essentially nothing in common, and for all intents and purposes just don't matter. And yet, there they are, 8 years later, with a callback to a favorite set I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
There IS A Story, Dammit!
At this point you're either interested in the novelty of this post, or dismissed me as a weird guy that's been buying cards for the past 10 years for all the wrong reasons. I'm a consumer without a cause, trust me, I know. But my favorite part of the entire franchise -- yes, even more than elements of the video games themselves -- have been when the set themes implied a story, even if it's little more than a shared location. e-Card was probably the first instance of it, in a sort of lackadasical way where it jumped from Venice?-themed The Town on No Map to the ecosystems of The Wind From the Sea to the underwater caves of The Split Earth and finally the mystery zone and the ruins of Mysterious Mountains. The ADV-era did it the best it ever will, IMO, with the mystery of Eidolon Forest's Mew giving way to the regioncity of Holon and the Delta Species sets. I honestly think that as much as Game Freak tries (and IMO fails) at plots from Generation V onwards, it'll never succeed again the way it did with the more understated plots of Generation I and II, and as far as understated plots go -- the TCG has it beat in the Delta Species sets. What a novel idea, and what a shame they'll never make a game based on Holon. There have been thematics since, with the SP sets typing in with game events and the e-Card-style Lost Zone motif, and even those have been interesting in their own way.
To be sure, there's so much more to mention -- this is the meat and bones of the continuity in the TCG, but I don't want to go on too much longer for worry of overwhelming or inadvertently breaking rules with respect to post/image limits (assuming they exist and I haven't already). For 15 years, the card game's managed to take advantage of its medium to tell an implicit serialized story in a way you honestly can't find anywhere else -- cameos come close, but TV series, movies, comics, etc. usually have maybe hundreds of things to reference, this card game literally has thousands. The closest thing this franchise has is the long-running anime and when you think about it, that comes across as repulsed by the idea of continuity, which is such a shame.
I've found other things to spend money on and other things to do with my time than sort cards, but I'm happy having spent as much time on them as I did. I check Pokébeach a few times a week out of habit, and I won't be able to help commenting on the more interesting stories now and again, and I so much look forward to the potential of a 20th anniversary commemorative set. I really do hope that instead of relying heavily on the video game plots as sources for inspiration future sets continue to create their own running narratives, because it's such a unique method of telling a story you just don't see anywhere else. I'm on a self-imposed hiatus out of lack of interest for Gen V and the blander earlier sets of any given era, but I know for a fact when BW starts to experiment as well and another continuity teasing card comes out, I'm going to want that card more than any DVD of LOST, issue of Spider-Man, or even any chapter of Pokémon Special.
EDIT 1: Shared Artwork
As pointed out by a few replies, shared artwork is another big draw to some sets. That is, literally, a number of cards whose individual artwork has as its source a single larger artwork. So contrary to my earlier allegation e-Card is the first to imply a common location/etc, Southern Islands would've been the first set to do it. And then again, that's ignoring the shared motifs of Jungle and Fossil. Obviously again you have Team Rocket, Gym Leaders, and Discovery and Relevation, etc. also implying a shared scenario, though I'd still stand by the idea e-Card was the first to really fully commit to it, by conjuring up shared specific geographical locations outside of shared artwork.
Shared artwork also shows up in Neo Revelation, POP3 (Plusle and Minun), POP9, and a number of promotionals and I'm sure many other sets. This one was in my mind when I was originally writing the post but I got carried away with some of the less readily noticeable shared locations that it slipped my mind by the time I ended the post. Shared artwork probably has the most literal appeal to collectors and would be the most readily noticeable to anyone, which isn't to take it for granted and it's always great when they do more, but the blink-and-you'll-miss-it kinds are a bit snazzier, aren't they?
I've been lurking Pokébeach for years and essentially "lurking" the TCG for even longer. By that I mean I'm a very casual collector, I don't have anything near a complete set but I've been buying packs for years and have a decent albeit non-exhaustive cross-section of cards running from Base Set to late DPPt. In that I'm non-competitive, I used to battle theme decks with my sister and aside from one tournament and a Prerelease I've not gone to many formal events, I've rarely been able to coherently comment on the current metagame, and since I'm not much of a hardcore collector I have the rare Wizards promo I'm proud of but rarely have the sort of 'big deal' cards worth bragging about. In a sense, I've always felt my interest in the TCG has been sort of unique, and I just wanted to ramble on a bit about my favorite aspect of the TCG now that we've hit the 15th anniversary of its existence. None of this will surprise anyone, but you know when you have something knocking around in your head you finally need to just get out of your system? Yeah. (I hope it's also a decent opportunity to expand my posting habits to more than just critical Front Page commentary.)
So, I guess, here's why I'm still prone to buy a pack of cards every now and again. I hope this perspective isn't as unique as I assume, and I also hope this is in the right forum and I don't inadvertently break any rules.
Continuity
I've been a sucker for serialized storytelling my entire life. I think comic books have always done it the way I enjoyed it most, with editorial footnotes prompting you to look back 100 issues to find out this new character is actually a reappearance from 10 years ago, and the way most series often try to establish a method to the madness of changing writers, editorial boards, aborted storylines -- they make a fine tapestry from a mess of tattered patchwork. I'm not going to write an essay about how postmodern it is or anything; in the back of my mind I know most of the writing in comic series is quite simplistic, but I love it nonetheless. Long-running franchises often have this benefit of being able to make callbacks on years and years of backstory, and while the Pokémon franchise has traditionally been light on plot, and the TCG itself even moreso, I essentially love collecting these cards for the callbacks, for the references, the reprints, all of it. For me, it's not quite the sort of back-patting of catching the reference of an inside joke as much as it is the pleasant surprise when, years later, the card game references one of my favorite cards from when I was a child. It's nostalgia, I guess. These 'callbacks' work in a number of ways.
Exact Reprints
I think everyone loves a reprint. I guess the most popular reprint might be any given Pikachu reprint or Stormfront Charizard, but the Hitmonchan reprint is actually my standing favorite. Hitmonchan is my absolute favorite card from the entire Base Set print, and it was incoherently exciting to me that 10 years later the card, exactly as it was, was reprinted in Platinum, a set I went ahead and bought an entire box of. And I got my Hitmonchan!
These literal reprints always benefit from a bit of time -- Base Set 2 was such a terrible idea so early on, and I was even ambivalent towards Legendary Collection (you couldn't even bother to change the cards to Neo-era blanks?), but seeing an exact reprint is always great. I also love when they do exact reprints but with different card art -- I was pleased as punch when I realized on my own that POP2's Pikachu was a reprint of Base Set's.
'Updated' Reprints
I think the best example of this idea would be Undaunted's Sneasel in that there's even a reference to the card art, but this runs everything from Rattata (Base Set/Rumble) to this Chansey. Because of a difference in art, or a variation in the attack cost, power, or HP, if you blink you'll miss it, but if you don't, you'll catch that while it's not exact, the spirit of the older card is clearly there, and it can be interesting to see what tweaks are or aren't made to make the card viable, or even the fact a format-wrecker like Neo Sneasel can be downgraded to an HGSS common and just not matter.
There's a bit of overlap between exact and updated reprints when it comes to card art; POP2 Pikachu, while exact, has that same 'surprise' element when you catch it that these updated reprints do. The classifications are arbitrary and being made up as I go along, don't take it too literally.
Attack/Power/Energy Continuity
There are so many examples of this. It's always nice when Super Psy/Super Psy Bolt reappears as an attack in the TCG. But I love when the TCG assigns a niche to a Pokémon that it revisits every now and again. Like when Scyther has one attack that doubles its other attack in the next turn (Jungle, Neo Destiny, Stormfront) or the almost ironic twist that is Slashing Strike where he CAN'T use the souped-up attack his next turn (Black Star Promo 54, TRR, Undaunted). Sometimes they're reoccurring Attacks or Powers, with or without the exact original names, sometimes they're the novelty of reoccurring Energy requirements -- Jumpluff, anyone?
Some of them are subtle, some of them are overt. Sometimes I'm not sure if they're meant to be easily noticable or why they're done -- while I know Conductivity is reoccurring for a reason, has Jumpluff ever really mattered in a format? -- but it's always been fun for me to catch on to these when I see them in the exact way it's a pleasure to catch on with more verbatim reprints.
Another reoccurring idea I used to love was HP limits -- Basics that evolved used to have an HP cap as high as any given Pokémon they could evolve into, even when it was impractical. A lot of Dark evolutions from Team Rocket and Neo Destiny meant some Pokémon were capped ridiculously low, but I loved when they nonetheless kept with it. You'd knew you'd never see a Charmander with 60 HP because Team Rocket's Dark Charmeleon only had 50 HP. It used to be that way, anyways.
Similarly, while I was alright with breaking the 120 HP limit for Pokémon-EX, I've got to admit one of the things that made me buy less packs from DPPt-on was an unconditional break of the limit. I knew it meant things like potentials for evolutions with a net loss in HP were at the doorstep. Does it really matter to anyone? No, not really, but it was something I loved and missed. Actually, speaking of something that I'm not as cool with..
Different Approaches To Updated Trainer Reprints
Scenario 1:
Scenario 2:
Scenario 3:
It used to be if you wanted to reprint a Trainer, you'd reprint it exactly -- or not at all. I do have to hesitate and admit Bill was reprinted as a Supporter at one point and I didn't really bat an eye, but the name and effect was identical, and everyone knew Bill was Bill. In the same way, everyone knew Energy Removal 2 wasn't Energy Removal -- they wanted to reprint the same card but they wanted to change the effect, so they did -- and they also changed the name!
BW's handling of Gust of Wind and Potion is annoying to me in a way I haven't found anyone else agreeing with. If they wanted to update Potion, they should've given it a new name (Potion 2 might not be it, okay, but don't just call it Potion when it's not the same card...) and Gust of Wind should've been Gust of Wind. But now we have a mess and I don't know where to start. Bill is Mom's Kindness, there's two Bills, there's two Gusts of Winds, I don't-- I'm confused. I used to not be confused. Trainers used to have a continuity to them. Where did it go? Why have you foresaken me, TCG? And why am I the only one upset by this? It's because I'm insane, to be sure.
Other Callbacks
It occurs to me now that the Rattata might be a case of a pseudo-reprint, but it's the art I'm interested in. But the Poliwhirl here -- I love it. Honestly, please, maybe I'm just nuts because Neo Discovery was one of my favorite sets but if you have those two Poliwhirls, at some point do me a favor, take them out and put them next to each other. The cards are 7 or 8 years apart in their printing, have essentially nothing in common, and for all intents and purposes just don't matter. And yet, there they are, 8 years later, with a callback to a favorite set I wouldn't have noticed otherwise.
There IS A Story, Dammit!
At this point you're either interested in the novelty of this post, or dismissed me as a weird guy that's been buying cards for the past 10 years for all the wrong reasons. I'm a consumer without a cause, trust me, I know. But my favorite part of the entire franchise -- yes, even more than elements of the video games themselves -- have been when the set themes implied a story, even if it's little more than a shared location. e-Card was probably the first instance of it, in a sort of lackadasical way where it jumped from Venice?-themed The Town on No Map to the ecosystems of The Wind From the Sea to the underwater caves of The Split Earth and finally the mystery zone and the ruins of Mysterious Mountains. The ADV-era did it the best it ever will, IMO, with the mystery of Eidolon Forest's Mew giving way to the regioncity of Holon and the Delta Species sets. I honestly think that as much as Game Freak tries (and IMO fails) at plots from Generation V onwards, it'll never succeed again the way it did with the more understated plots of Generation I and II, and as far as understated plots go -- the TCG has it beat in the Delta Species sets. What a novel idea, and what a shame they'll never make a game based on Holon. There have been thematics since, with the SP sets typing in with game events and the e-Card-style Lost Zone motif, and even those have been interesting in their own way.
To be sure, there's so much more to mention -- this is the meat and bones of the continuity in the TCG, but I don't want to go on too much longer for worry of overwhelming or inadvertently breaking rules with respect to post/image limits (assuming they exist and I haven't already). For 15 years, the card game's managed to take advantage of its medium to tell an implicit serialized story in a way you honestly can't find anywhere else -- cameos come close, but TV series, movies, comics, etc. usually have maybe hundreds of things to reference, this card game literally has thousands. The closest thing this franchise has is the long-running anime and when you think about it, that comes across as repulsed by the idea of continuity, which is such a shame.
I've found other things to spend money on and other things to do with my time than sort cards, but I'm happy having spent as much time on them as I did. I check Pokébeach a few times a week out of habit, and I won't be able to help commenting on the more interesting stories now and again, and I so much look forward to the potential of a 20th anniversary commemorative set. I really do hope that instead of relying heavily on the video game plots as sources for inspiration future sets continue to create their own running narratives, because it's such a unique method of telling a story you just don't see anywhere else. I'm on a self-imposed hiatus out of lack of interest for Gen V and the blander earlier sets of any given era, but I know for a fact when BW starts to experiment as well and another continuity teasing card comes out, I'm going to want that card more than any DVD of LOST, issue of Spider-Man, or even any chapter of Pokémon Special.
EDIT 1: Shared Artwork
As pointed out by a few replies, shared artwork is another big draw to some sets. That is, literally, a number of cards whose individual artwork has as its source a single larger artwork. So contrary to my earlier allegation e-Card is the first to imply a common location/etc, Southern Islands would've been the first set to do it. And then again, that's ignoring the shared motifs of Jungle and Fossil. Obviously again you have Team Rocket, Gym Leaders, and Discovery and Relevation, etc. also implying a shared scenario, though I'd still stand by the idea e-Card was the first to really fully commit to it, by conjuring up shared specific geographical locations outside of shared artwork.
Shared artwork also shows up in Neo Revelation, POP3 (Plusle and Minun), POP9, and a number of promotionals and I'm sure many other sets. This one was in my mind when I was originally writing the post but I got carried away with some of the less readily noticeable shared locations that it slipped my mind by the time I ended the post. Shared artwork probably has the most literal appeal to collectors and would be the most readily noticeable to anyone, which isn't to take it for granted and it's always great when they do more, but the blink-and-you'll-miss-it kinds are a bit snazzier, aren't they?
I just happen to have a full set of POP 9 practically right by me so I'll check that out lol.
