Pyramid Review

Pokemon Trading Card Game

Two-Player Starter Set

Published by Wizards of the Coast

Designed by Tsunekaz Ishihara, Kouichi Ooyama and Takumi Akabane

$7.99

If you don't have anyone in your immediate circle who's in the preteen set, you might not know what Pokemon is. It started in Japan, where it is the current fad du jour, and is spreading to the U.S., thanks to a Game Boy computer game and a Saturday morning cartoon show. Pokemon (it means "Pocket Monsters") are cute little monsters with various special powers that bash the stuffing out of each other. In the process, you can train and "evolve" your monsters into bigger, nastier versions (nastier in combat value only -- they're all still really, really cute) and rise to be the toughest Pokemon trainer on your block.

The latest salvo in this cultural invasion is from Wizards of the Coast. The Pokemon Trading Card Game is not a WotC design -- the game was first published in Japan in 1997, before being translated and released here this month. Pokemon is the second most popular CCG in Japan (behind Magic: The Gathering, of course), and it's no fluke. The game plays like a kinder, gentler version of Magic, with easier rules and graphics geared to the younger crowd.

That is by no means a bad thing. I've got a six-year-old stepson who is a certified Pokemon freak, and while I couldn't get him to look at a Magic deck for more than three seconds before he got bored, he will go nuts over this stuff. I'm not sure . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: January 29, 1999

Copyright © 1999 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.