HEY, LISTEN! Classic PA! old skooler @chronikerdelta is an a spot of trouble and would like your hand up to help her out! In her words:
Hi, I’m Sylvie, I’m an unemployed trans woman living in Missouri. I’ve been having dental complications that have been at the forefront of my life in the past 6 months. ... I’ve been saving up money throughout the pandemic, but sadly this procedure was a big financial hit for me. I still have some savings, but the cost of the scheduled implant procedure in September would wipe most of it out. I’d like to be able to pay for this procedure and still have my savings stay stable, especially since Missouri is cutting off federal unemployment benefits starting in June, so until I get a job I won’t be able to keep building up my savings after that.
If you could help contribute to this, it would be a tremendous help. Insurance is only paying a few hundred dollars for this, because it’s considered a “specialty procedure”, but missing teeth can have long term effects on the rest of the teeth in one’s mouth. I would like to get this handled as smoothly as possible.
Thanks for the help!
Sylvie was a big deal on PA! back in the day, so I’d like to help return the favor and share this with all you fine folk. Visit her GoFundMe page for more info and to help; as of this moment she’s reached $784 of her $3,200 goal, and every little bit helps! Hopefully by September she can get the help she needs. But hey, don’t do it cuz your ol’ pal Nick15 said so, do it because it’s the right thing to do! … And because your ol’ pal Nick15 said so. :P
The Actual News:
Even though I’ve been out of class for a week, I’ve been playing catchup with a whole bunch of other things that I missed out on, so let me share some of it with you!
The Most Important Pokemon Card
HEY! Remember that article I wrote about that super rare Prototype Blastoise card? Well, it’s now a featured article over at www.theMostImportantPokemonCard.com! You guessed it: it’s an entire website dedicated to the Prototype Blastoise card. It’s a really awesome site, and it gathered every other article and video about the Prototype Blastoise card.
Will I continue to write sentences which end in the words “Prototype Blastoise card”? Yes. Wait, DANG IT
Datacraft Sozaijiten Sharing Time
While I don’t have any Datacraft Sozaijiten updates for you YET… I do have three really nifty things I’d like to share with you! Good times…
First off… ever noticed something a bit off when Seel’s tail there on the Misty’s Seel card (posted above)? That’s right: the artwork didn’t mask out the hole in the tail there properly! In fact, it’s an error so subtle you might not have even noticed… but your brain did. Of course in the past there wasn’t much we couldn’t do about it, at least if we wanted to have any semblance of accuracy… but with the discovery of the Datacraft Sozaijiten collection, we can finally see what should have been seen all those years ago. So I thought I’d take a few minutes to right a two decade-old wrong: let’s get Seel’s tail looking right!
Ok, let’s take a bit of the original DS background… adjust its coloring just right… add in Seel’s pea-soup yellow outline… and BLAMO!, it’s fixed!
Aaaahhhhh… God is in his heaven, and all is right in the world once again.
Secondly: I created a Google Docs document which is open for collaboration, as well as created a folder for uploads. Namely, it’s set up so that if you happen to find a one-off TCG background that hasn’t been added to the MEGA LIST yet, then share it in the document and maybe even upload an example of the background if you happen to spot it! I think you might need to have a Google account to be able to edit it, but surely you have one of those by now, right? (JOIN THE GOOGLE.)
And finally, GC| Linkinboss over at the PA! Discord showed off their really awesome faking abilities when they recreated the artwork for a Game Boy-only card!
OK so get this… in both the original Pokémon TCG Game Boy Game, as well as its Japan-only sequel, there were a series of cards which were exclusive to the games themselves. Most of the time they involved randomized abilities which aren’t possible in real life. In any case, the cards all had unique artwork, which were clearly based on an existing card design. For example, take a look at “GB Marowak”:
On the left is the Game Boy sprite for the in-game only card, and on the right is the actual artwork for that card. If you’ve never really seen it before, it was because it only appeared in a Japanese-language player’s guide for the game itself, showing what each GB-only card would look like as an actual card:
Pretty neat, huh? I wish we got something like that in English, but I digress. In any case, while the GB-only cards from the first game were given an IRL-esque version, the GB-only cards from the second game did not! We’re only left to imagine what those cards might have looked like in real life. But at least top tier fakers like GC| Linkinboss can help give our imaginations a bit of meat to work with, especially when we also have the entire Datacraft Sozaijiten collection to pull from!
So take for example, this sprite picture of Dark Clefairy:
First off, lets grab a Ken Sugimori-penned Clefairy and give it angry eyes:
Next, lets grab a few pictures from the Datacraft Sozaijiten collection which seem to be the most similar to what the background of the card might be… like, we have a giant moon in the background, so below it must be a moon-lit horizon…
…and tadah!, a Game Boy-only card artwork brought to life!
My jaw dropped when I saw this on the Discord, and then my jaw dropped its own jaw! Like, y’know, double jaw, xenomorph style.
How many more GB-only cards will we see like this? I’m hoping all of them!
V-UNION Fakes a-Comin’ Soon to a PA! Near You! (Maybe, hopefully)
One thing that sucks about being out of the loop is that I don’t get to see all the really awesome announcements being announced. Like, did you know they’re gonna make a sequel to BREATH OF THE WILD?!?
Well one other thing I missed out on was the introduction of the “V-UNION” card type to the Pokémon TCG, specifically as part of the V-UNION Special Card Set being released in Japan on August 20th. Take a look!
Head over to our old friends over at PokéBeach for the fuller details, but the key takeaway here is that the V-UNION type has two main mechanics:
- When your Pokemon V-UNION is Knocked Out, your opponent takes 3 Prize cards.
- During your turn, if you have the 4 different XXXXX V-UNION cards in your discard pile, you may put them together onto your Bench. You can’t play more than 1 XXXXX V-UNION in a game.
So they’re KINDA like the classic LEGEND type, except that you can’t ever play them from your hand. Rather, they’re played only if you have all four in your discard pile. Nifty idea!
But no good TCG idea goes un-faked… just as soon as the cards were announced, fake card master wizard aschefield surprised the PA! Discord’s Fake Card Mania channel with this little tidbit:
Izzat? Could it be???
Of course, before I even get a chance to consider making a fake for these new cards, aschefield already went there and got the t-shirt. But that’s OK, I’ll have to settle for Plan B: politely asking aschefield if PA! can host this blank as well. Afterall, we have both his SwSh Blank collection AND his Raid blanks!
But either way, that’s on the horizon, so I’ll see about making some fakes with them as well. Only time will tell!
T-T-That’s All, for now!
That’s it for today, boys and girls. But this is merely part one! I have a few other parts to cover soon, like a new kind of fake card, some awesome Pokémon language discoveries, and a few other bits of tids… so keep a fresh eye out for them. Huzzah! Good times.