Fair Warning: this post is over one year old. The information in this post is probably still as accurate as when it was originally posted, but things do change quickly. Please keep that in mind while reading, and thanks for understanding!
A Quick Diversion:  

The Actual News:

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new idea I have planned for the site: the PA! Weekly Roundup! This is where, instead of writing up a bespoke post every time I do something, I’ll instead just pull everything cool that I found, or that others share with me, and just stick them into a single post. It’s just that, this past year I’ve gotten a good idea of what time I have to work on the site—which is very little—so something like this might fit my schedule better.

Today’s roundup will be short, but will also serve as an example of what I’d like to show in each Weekly Roundup from here on out. I’ll also explain more about what my goals are for these weekly posts towards the bottom. So without further ado, let’s cut to the chase:

 

 

Safari Zone HD Remastered

This is a fun little project that GC|Linkinboss started on the PA! Discord, but I thought that it was cool enough to upgrade to something more official. Let’s set the scene…

So when Wizards of the Coast ran the Pokémon TCG, they had the rights to release ALL Pokémon TCG cards released in Japan. But despite this, one set famously missing from the Western release schedule was the “Vending Machine” set. A few Vending cards were released as Black Star promos, but for the most part they were left in the Pokémon TCG vaults.

Now as some of you old skoolers may remember, I took it upon myself to right this wrong and make my own English release of the Vending Machine set, titled “Safari Zone“. The idea was to more than just translate the cards into English, but to also make it a proper set and imagine what it would look like had Wizards released Vending as its own set. Even the name was my own idea, one that made the most sense as the Safari Zone in Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow was a sort of “medley” of different Pokémon, and this set felt like something similar. It was a fun experiment and did the whole “other timeline” thing before that became a thing.

Well fast-foward to 2023, and GC|Linkinboss started asking for my Neo Redux Gendai blanks for a fun project, and even though I haven’t officially released them yet, I figured I’d oblige. Well it turns out that GC is remaking the Vending Cards in the Neo format! But then I thought… well, there’s Resident Evil HD Remastered, Final Fantasy X HD Remastered, Smashmouth’s “All Star” HD Remastered… so why not Safari Zone HD Remastered? I mean, take a look!

 

I’ll give you two guesses which one is the updated version.

But seriously, isn’t this awesome?! Plus this makes a load of sense given that a lot has changed over the last 20 years… better scanners, easier access to Japanese cards, more people adept at translating Japanese text… this, and combined with my new Neo Gendai blanks? I think this will make for a super awesome idea!

So here’s the plan: with every Weekly Roundup post, I’ll be releasing at least one new Safari Zone HD Remastered card by GC|Linkinboss, as well as share more info about it. I mean, like all HD Remasters, there’s going to be a few new and different things. Like, why is the updated version 19/133, versus the original 16/108? I guess you’ll have to come back in order to find out, won’t you? ;)

 

The Faker Becomes The Fake’d

Y’know those signs that say “X days since our last accident”? Well I had one that said “1024 days since the last time a fake card tricked me”. Alas, that recently got reset, because I saw this card:

I mean, of COURSE this is a real card! Like, don’t they release promos of the starter Pokémon whenever a new game is released? They’ve been doing that since at least Gen 2! So why shouldn’t I just accept that this is real?? :'(

But seriously, the best fakes are the ones which are subtle. They’re not ones trying to blow out some new amazing bit of news, but one that simply slips under everyone’s radars and everyone simply accepts it as fact. And after years of making fake news and getting people to believe them for so long, it’s fun to have it done to be me as well. Hahaha, fair game! :D

 

 

In-Browser Holo Foils = Holo Fake Cards

Now THIS is some amazing stuff, and I gotta figure out some way to incorporate it into the site AND for my (eventual) fake cards. I’ll get straight into it:

This is Pokemon Cards V2 by Simon Goellner, a CSS package that allows Pokémon TCG web designers—like me!—to add in-browser cards COMPLETE with their own holo-foil effect. Like, when you roll your mouse over it and/or click on it, you can turn the card around and get a really awesome holofoil effect! I didn’t even think this was possible IN BROWSER, but the proof there is in the pudding!

This has been something I’ve been dreaming of ever since I started the site. There was basically NO WAY to incorporate shiny holofoil effects on your cards. Even emulating it via some kind of special Photoshop layer kinda worked, but it still required a lot more imagination than something like this… and admittedly Zeo was much better at making convincing reverse-holos than I was…

So I’m sure there’s ways to customize the holo effects… it’s probably just a bump map or something. Still I’ll be getting the packages installed as soon as possible and giving it a test run. Imagine a reverse holo Missingno card? :D Keep an eye out for this!

 

 

That’s pretty much it for this very zeroth entry in the PA! Weekly Roundup! This was just a test run, just to get the format down and introduce the idea. The actual FIRST one will be this weekend, and every one afterwards will be released each weekend.

So yeah, all of this is stuff that I don’t think is worth writing a whole post about. I also want to use this as a way to share random tidbits and stories from the world of Pokémon, fake cards, and/or other things that I feel are interesting to my visitors and Pokémon fans in general. I won’t exactly cover HOT NEWS, as sites like PokéBeach are better at that than I am now. But I WILL cover stuff that I feel like those HOT NEWS websites don’t feel like covering. Alternatively, if I do cover a piece of HOT NEWS, it’ll be to share my perspectives on it as an old OLD skool player and someone who has always never seen it through nostalgia goggles.

Aside from that, I’d like to also cover cool things in the world of Pokémon fan art and fake cards. Like if someone shares a cool fake card or Pokémon fan art on the PA! Discord, I’ll try and share it here. Like, BittersweetNSour has been writing really awesome music for their Orre Arc Pokémon fangame series and have been sharing new updates in the Discord… here’s a really nice one:

That’s just a small taste of what’s out there that I’d like to share with you. So I hope you can come and visit every week for each installment and not only see some fun new news in the world of Pokémon but also enjoy some awesome fan art and fake cards as well! Good times….