Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In today's online society, "card guys" are like oriental fans, who usually appear as various types of netizens, and then seem mediocre to some others. but it beautifully shows its identity as an "electronic Viet Cong" in a place that fits beautifully with the stalks in their circle. From the cartoon out of the "game king", towards a strange direction of the "three Kingdoms kill", or manufacturers changed to make tea "hearth legend", their players are so frustrated. However, compared with these exchange card games with a strong sense of existence, the "true god", which accounts for about 90% of the world offline exchange card game market, does not make much noise on the mass Internet.

This "true god" is not an unpopular giant with a low degree of out-of-circle, but one of the three pillars at the beginning of the birth of "IP", the Pok é mon Trading Card Game (hereinafter referred to as PTCG).

The simplified Chinese version of the game was officially launched on October 28, 2022. As early as more than a month before the launch, the relevant news caused considerable repercussions in the PTCG player circle, with a layer of controversy and cheers. But for non-core players, perhaps most of them will be thinking, "Hmm? is this what just happened this year?"

With this in mind, it's no wonder that for a large number of players, PTCG is definitely a national childhood memory-well, maybe there's something wrong with the details. I wonder what readers called PTCG-- "spirit card" when they were young? "Baby Card"? Or a high-end player who can call "PTCG" by his real name? I don't know how readers played when they were young. PTCG-- is able to make every step of the game solidly. Or a wilder poker contest? Or use the water and fire grass energy card to guess the fist? Or do you mix Bao Ke Meng with the king card deck of the game and give your opponent a god soldier under unlimited rules?

These details will be left for you to discuss. In the following article, what I will do is to tell the public players in short and shallow words that this work has gone through a long road of development in the more than 20 years since 1996.

Before it was born in 1993, people already had a certain enthusiasm for the "card collection". Star cards from major football leagues, four major American sports leagues and Japanese baseball leagues have a large following who can devote their money to a card inlaid with part of a star's jersey. But the emergence of Magic:The Gathering really makes many hidden card collection enthusiasts rush out of the water. The new star of the board game world swept the game and toy market as the most fashionable. When each store put its own shelf at the counter and every pack of cards was swept away on the shelf, people realized that a new type of game rose from the horizon with lightning.

After the success of Wanzhi Brand, many imitators have sprung up one after another, and even its publisher, Wei Shizhi, has made some exchange card games with other settings and names. but the preconceived Wanzhi card has always occupied the largest market share both at home and in the world, and competitors fell down one after another-until 1996.

At the beginning of 1996, the GB game Pok é mon Red / Green was released on the Japanese market. The initial sales of this baffling double version of the game were not surprising, but with the launch of derivative cartoons two months later, a promotional model of games and comics sharing resources and assisting each other began to show its power. Combined with the intimate and lovely image of Pok é mon, which is suitable to appear in any scene, and the rising evaluation of the way of playing video games, the new term "Pok é mon" has spread exponentially between children and adults in Japan, and finally formed a hot trend.

This great success in communication makes developers immediately focus on the product direction that is easy to spread, spread and form a trend. At that time, the most suitable thing to spread was naturally the paper media. Nintendo found Kokawa Bookstore, but comics are already popular, and it's not hard to run a different style, but the results may not be obvious; novels and comics overlap, and there may be fewer readers; exclusive magazines are great, but some of them rise to the top; children's picture books are one of the blue seas, but it's hard to reach production-Kakagawa, what on earth can you do for Pokemon?

At the end of the year, Media Factory, a subordinate of Kokawa, brought the answer to the answer. PTCG, an exchange card game based on Pokemon, entered the market with the promotion of comics. Players at the time knew it was Japan's first interchangeable card game, but they could not foresee what kind of empire the card game and the IP behind it would build.

Card Files: the original Card

PTCG's first cards were Pikachu and Pangding, which were presented in the November 1996 issue of Longman CORO-CORO. This anime publication is also the place where the "Pok é mon Special" cartoons are serialized.

Unlike most exchange card games at that time, the way PTCG was played was based on the original rules of video games. In the game, the high-level Pokemon needs the former form to evolve; there is a relationship between restraint and resistance between Pokemon with different attributes; the use of skills requires an "energy card" of PP value; each Pokemon has its own characteristics shown in video games and comics; the victory conditions of the game have a rule that "faints the opponent's six Pokemons". On the other hand, the act of exchanging cards and opening bags coincides with the way in which hidden thunder encounters Pokemon in video games; the process of collecting cards can be deeply replaced by the fun of filling maps in the game.

This high degree of simulation of video games and animation content gives PTCG unique access to initial users who would never have dreamed of other card games. On the other hand, in Japan, card exchange is still a new type of game, and the materialized nature of PTCG makes it a favorite for primary and secondary school students. In terms of publicity, its collection elements also lead to the emergence of business news such as "sky-high price cards" and bring a lot of attention outside the circle. In a few months, PTCG has shaped the entire Japanese market for exchange cards almost on its own.

In this way, Bao Ke Meng entered a multi-habitat development stage in the early stage of development, and its growth is getting better. But on the other side of the Pacific, not many players know that in the distant eastern islands, the future world's first episode of changing cards has been born. PTCG has been active in the Japanese home market for three years without crossing the ocean for a very simple reason-the core video game of Pokemon IP was not released in North America until the end of 1998. By the time the first English version of the PTCG was packed in 1999, the Japanese version had already released a 5-bullet expansion pack. By expanding the package, PTCG gradually strengthened the basic rules and developed wonderful little rules.

Card Archives: the Secret of fossils

The official cards on sale inherit the graphic design of the original cards. Later, the new rule expansion packs are also simulations of video games and animation, such as the "fossil of Secrets" expansion pack of the selling point of "fossil Pokemon"-they are generated from special "fossil" cards, rather than basic Pokemon.

In the early days of the North American market, Wei Shizhi was in charge of the distribution of PTCG-yes, the company with Magnificent Brand did something to "set himself on fire". Although it is normal to represent products for competitors in the local market, in the exquisite temple of the exchange card game, the skill of rubbing hands is invited into such a big Buddha, which is more or less humorous. Sure enough, when Bao Ke Meng entered the Fengyuan region (the red / sapphire generation) in 2003, Nintendo took back PTCG from Weishi almost effortlessly and took care of it himself.

In fact, Nintendo has always been very strict in its control of PTCG, and even though Weishi appears to be a full agent, it still needs to consult with Nintendo in the United States in many places. By the time the copyright was handed over, a global online prototype of a Pokemon exchange card game had been initially formed, and several worlds of different languages had begun to connect. All this points to a wonderful concept that already exists in the Pokemon world-the Pokemon Alliance.

Competitions and leagues from region to country as early as December 1996, just two months after the launch of the PTCG, the first recorded large-scale PTCG event was held at the "next-generation world interest conference" in Chiba, Japan (next-generation world interest conference). The exhibition is organized by the primary school hall of Longman CORO-CORO (a serial magazine of Dora A Dream and Pokemon comics). Around the comics, it gives rise to exhibitions that integrate games, toys, brands, geeks, art and even cars, and the popular Pokemon is one of the most popular booths.

When the PTCG contest in Chiba was held, the novice pre-set card boxes of the game had not even been fully delivered to dealers across the country. Many players needed to buy a large number of cards worth 300 yen at that time to build a reliable card deck, and there were only the most basic childish rules when playing, but even so, the enthusiasm of the players almost destroyed the booth. Under such a trend, it is almost certain that the authorities will come out again and create a more enthusiastic event.

In June 1997, the first PTCG official Championship was held and was still located in Chiba City. It was still part of the "next Generation World interest Conference", but this competition became the absolute C position of the exhibition. Among them, all the contestants are children under the age of 15. They can sign up for the competition through offline, mail, dealers, schools and other channels. Finally, the contestants will be selected by the official lottery to participate in four tournaments in two days. Except for the next morning's competition, only primary school students will participate.

Card file: trophy card

The top four of each tournament will receive a "trainer card" loaded into the trophy, and the third and fourth place will be the "No.3 trainer". This set of trophy cards painted by Pikachu has been used for two competitions.

The successful conclusion of the first PTCG official Championship has accumulated a lot of experience for the event group. Only at the end of the year, the first PTCG official National Championship, the Battle of the Fire Dragon, began to land. The tournament is divided into regional tour qualifiers and national competitions, which are located in six cities in Japan, with a process similar to the first official tournament, but this time high school students are also allowed to participate and are arranged in the middle school division of their peers.

In April 1998, the curtain exhibition hall, the Battle of the Fire Dragon, was held as scheduled. Unlike the competition in Chiba in June last year, there were no video games, no comics, only PTCG. The flow of people and booths filled the whole hall of the conference center. Singing and dancing are performed on the main stage, future artists squat beside the graffiti wall, teaching corners gather novice curious about new things, trading corners and war corners are filled with players who did not participate in the competition, and the card museum wall is surrounded by collection enthusiasts. Behind the scenes is the protagonist of the event, they go to report, check the card deck, and then shine on the stage.

First of all, the runners-up of the qualifier will participate in the "challenge", and the winner will be able to win the place in the "qualifier", and then compete with the champion and runner-up of the qualifier for the championship in the "qualifier". In the final, the original silver tables and chairs were replaced with gold, in such a throne, Japan ushered in their championship.

Card Archives: painter Competition

Children can not only participate in the card game, but also get a "painter card" and 20 self-drawn cards in the Pokemon card painting contest held in "Longman CORO-CORO". The winning works will be made into finished cards in the "vending machine expansion pack".

It is worth mentioning that this "painter card" has only 41 cards in the world, including 39 prizes for painting competitions and 2 internal staff outflow cards. Its long age, special vertical painting and this unique rarity make it one of the most valuable cards in the exchange card since its inception, the Gao Han star card with Jordan and James, the famous pure gold blue-eyed white dragon. The Black Lotus of Wanzhi Brand is in the first echelon of card price. What is even more outrageous is that after the global Pokemon card hype suddenly began to roll up again in recent years, the card was bought by one of the most notorious speculators for a full $6 million this year, directly forming a complete cliff price record.

In 1998, from the whole country to the world, Pokemon finally appeared in the eyes of North Americans, and in order to warm up the IP, the city of Topeka in Kansas even temporarily changed its name to Topikachu. The subsequent landing of the Bao Ke Meng animation series directly swept all the TV stations, and with this trend-level publicity bonus, video games became a sensation without a window, and game consoles were once in demand. At the end of the show, Wei Shizhi starred in the show. They first produced several copies of PTCG's "trial kit" and distributed them to a few selected dealers. The Bao Ke Meng card bag, which quietly appeared in the Wanzhi card bag, caused a quick response. When the heat was about the same, at E3, Wei Shizhi showed the exhibitors the PTCG cards they represented, distributed the rest of the trial kit, and announced that Pokemon would meet the players on January 9 of the following year. All went well, and the lovely elves from the other side of the Pacific sold more than 400000 copies at the end of February alone, more than ten times more than Weishizhi expected.

Pikachu dolls and event reports released in the sky of Topeka in 1998. This kind of impact success, not long after Wei Shizhi won the agency, he began to plan games and events. However, this project is not only different from the big cups in Japan, but also does not rush to copy the very mature Wizhi brand "DCI" (Duelists' Convocation International) model, but instead begins to plan and run the "dojo".

Since March 1999, Wei Shizhi has provided a set of special card sets-"trainer card sets"-to local game vendors, Toys R us and other venues. These cooperative dealers are required to use these card sets to play the role of "dojo owners" to accept the challenges of players and provide corresponding rewards. This set-up and creative marketing model immediately received a huge response, with children carrying cards after school and holidays, crowding the dojo. The enthusiasm of the players is the greatest motivation, and the planning team will soon strike while the iron is hot, and the alliance-"Bao Ke Meng Alliance", which carries the dreams of countless trainers in the Pokemon world, will be established in this world!

With strong positive feedback from all sides, Wei Shizhi was relieved to apply the more serious and competitive Magic brand DCI model to PTCG, together with Nintendo in the United States to start the "summer training trip of the Pokemon League." The first stop of the event is located in Minneapolis, USA, and the competition is held in major Visage stores, authorized card stores, Toys R us and other stores, and is not limited to PTCG events, but also matches with Bao Ke Meng video games.

The summer training tour of the Bao Ke Meng Alliance has been such a success that when almost every city site opens, cooperative stores need to open a lottery to limit the flow of people, and even seek government support for order maintenance. After the end of this event, a perfect prototype of Pokemon Alliance model has also been built. The league starts a new season every once in a while, and players have a variety of goals during the season, and they can earn season points to win dojo badges and season prize cards. These goals revolve around offline communication, such as checking in, gathering new players, playing cards, helping museum owners work, successfully exchanging cards, teaching novice players, and so on. Among them, the teaching player's points need to pass 15 examination questions to obtain the "coach qualification"-a sticker posted on the back of the league's badge book.

The Pok é mon League's first season dojo badge is not limited to Japanese and American revelry. As PTCG has become a world-class topic, global events can finally be put on the agenda. The official kung fu can be said to be perfect while the iron is hot, and while the "summer training tour of the Bao Ke Meng League" in the United States is in full swing, the Japanese side has launched the first round of the "grand party" tour, called "the Road to Challenge Summer."

The tour follows the previous system and is divided into two groups-the youth group below the sixth grade of primary school and the youth group from junior high school to the second grade of senior high school. The qualifiers were held one after another in Osaka, Fukuoka, Hiroshima, Sendai, Nagoya, Tokyo and Sapporo. The champions of the seven regions will receive a card called "Tropical Wind". The youth group was then invited to Tokyo for a national competition called "Secret Super Battle", which has a different dark mystery with the legendary Super Dream as its mascot-even the address of the game has not been made public, which is reported by the exclusive PTCG magazine, "Secret Super Battle" (Pokemonka fan club).

The junior group winners of this competition will set foot on a more distant and open land, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, an island called Hawaii. In a foreign country, the event they will take part in is the "Tropical Super War". Surrounded by the sun and sand, they not only have to decide on the name of "the strongest in Japan", but also have to compete with children from the United States. However, these American contestants did not pass the special qualifying test, and they are the top 12 players in the invited Wieshi DCI system.

Card Archives: secret Battle and Tropical Wind

The trophy card face of the top four contestants in the Secret Super War is characterized by a "colorful black" super dream outline, which is quite suitable for the mystery of teenage girls in the second year of high school.

While "Tropical Super Battle" takes the coconut treasure dream-the coconut egg tree as the mascot, not only the prize trainer card of the internal competition of the Japanese players takes the coconut egg tree as the theme, the Japanese and American exchange contestants were also given a precious matte version of the bilingual coconut egg card on the second day of the event (all cards of the same name issued thereafter are glossy). The card "Tropical Wind", featuring leisurely Koda Duck and Pangding, is the prize of the Japanese qualifier.

However, it is regrettable that, unlike the first day of Japan's internal war, the result of the Japan-US exchange war is very one-sided. Because Wei Shizhi has not yet released the English version of the "fossil" expansion package, and the competition officials have not made any response, the Japanese players have the advantage of surpassing the version. These children who won the regional championship even put the "tropical wind" of the winning prize of the Japanese qualifier into the card deck, although the new card did not have the intensity of dimension reduction, but the American players were completely ignorant of the effect of the new card and the fossil way of playing, and the competition ended with a complete victory by the Japanese side.

Apart from this imperfect exchange competition, the official international event, which spans an entire Pacific Ocean for the first time in PTCG's history, is still successful, countless new players are attracted by the grand exhibition, participants outside the contestants also have a good time of communication, and the worlds of two different languages finally overlap. Before the new millennium, the competition system arrangement, exhibition layout arrangement, Japanese tour model and North American alliance model have all been established, and these models will accompany players to this day. At the turn of the millennium, everything of Pokemon will move from the first generation to the second generation.

PTCG card growth history really has an enviable background, with Nintendo and Bokemon as the back, with a user base from kindergarten to nursing home, it is almost like lying in bed and being fed. The history of such an exchange card game can be summed up as a process of changing clothes basically every three years-renaming the final form of Pokemon, rescheduling the rules of the first round, and finally adding a special way of playing in the mood. However, the social environment is changing, the card balance is also changing, overlooking these decades is boring, but if we get close to the details, especially the history of the initial period, we can still see some interesting twists and turns and see PTCG's efforts to change and break through.

Although the new generation of Neo-- connects the world's events and the hot foreign market appears to be endless, but in fact, at the turn of the millennium PTCG is not so easy, in Japan, a variety of exchange card games began to emerge, "Leaf Fight", "Monster Collection", "Aquarius Battle" and other games have risen, from Galgame to Japanese fantasy various angles to kill to the market. But the outsider Magic doesn't harvest fans as crazily as PTCG does in North America-but don't be happy too soon, it's not because of anything else, but because of the King of the Game.

On the other hand, within PTCG, with the increase of the expansion package, the balance problem gradually appeared, the most prominent of which was the "infamous" cards in the Rockets card bag, which were banned in the Tropical Super Battle and Secret Super Battle in 1999. However, perhaps because of players' feelings, the ban on these unbalanced cards has not been fully spread among mass gamers. In contrast, Game King released a list of banned cards shortly after its launch to balance them. PTCG paid a considerable price for this indecision, and as excessive cards turned the competitive part of the game into a game of luck, many deep players turned to King Card in pursuit of a more balanced and diverse game. And unlike the relatively young age of Bao Ke Meng animation, the audience of the game king animation covers more college students and office workers. The children of the original core users also began to match the game king's card set with the freshness, fighting with blue-eyed white dragons on the battle mat printed with Pikachu, the domestic and foreign PTCG ushered in the first crisis. And the new generation of Bao Ke Meng Card (Neo Genesis) was born in this environment.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: UCGmedia (ID:UCG_Media), author: bean chaos

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