Weekly Roundup #8 – Presenting a Pokémon Presents Present!

The Actual News:

Today’s news will cover these topics:

• Now that the dust has settled…
• Pokemon TCG Classic
• Language Arts in ScVi DLC
• And The Rest
• Inspired Art
• The Creamy Middles of the Safari Zone HD Remaster
  
• This Week’s Homework: A TCG History Lesson

Now that the dust has settled…

…was last week’s Pokémon Presents any good? Well, at first I was like “just like Ash and the Pokémon League, these Pokémon Presents can’t all be winners, right?” …. but now that it’s a week later… I kinda still think it, lol

But seriously… first off, if you haven’t seen it by now, or need a refresher… or maybe you’re from the year 2043 and want to remember the good ol’ days of 2023… here’s the Presents video:

I’ll be covering the details of what I thought and still think of the updates today!

Pokemon TCG Classic

This one was an honest-to-goodness surprise! Classic cards are being reprinted in a classy, premium product! It’s a way to play the game as it originally was! … or so I initially imagined. Here’s the introduction video again:

At first I was thinking that this would be a straight-up reprinting of Base Set as it originally looked. I mean, just take a look at the cards on the official page!

They absolutely look the part, save for minor changes to have it fit into the modern TCG design style (Illustrator on the right, numbering on the left… but no Regulation Mark…?). Actually, I did a quick layout comparing Blastoise and Charizard to their Base Set Unlimited and either Base Set 2 or Legendary Collection layout, and you can definitely tell they used the Base Set Unlimited card as a foundation:

The main giveaway being the size of the “Pokémon Power” and attack names being the same between the new Classic design and the original Base Set Unlimited design. If you really want to get into the weeds… the “100” damage for Charizard also gives it away (it’s a bit lower on the Legendary Collection version). Anyways, I don’t fault TPC using the original Base Set Unlimited designs as a foundation, if only because that’s the version most people remember. The idea of Base Set 2 and Legendary Collection existing is less “normie” knowledge, if that makes sense.

Anyways, seeing as the video showcases other Base Set cards—Chansey, Pikachu, Charmander, Ivysaur, flippin’ Double Colorless Energy…—you’ll forgive me if I figured this was going to be a straight-up reprint of Base Set (albeit with updated rule text… basically. But then I saw the fact that Venusaur, Blastoise and Charizard were out of “34 cards”… and clearly Base Set had more than 34 cards. In fact, it had literally THREE times as much… like, 102 cards! … Wait a sec….

…naw, it’s just a coincidence, sadly. As it turns out, all three decks will have old and new cards in it, so the fact that the Venusaur deck’s gonna include Lugia and the Charizard deck will include Ho-oh means that some cards from Base Set won’t be included in any of the three decks. Which is a shame, really.

Or… maybe not. See, when I first thought it would be a set that contained all Base Set cards reprinted in old frames but using modern game text, and possibly even delivered in packs allowing new players to recreate the feeling of opening a Base Set pack for the first time… the first thing that popped into my head was Magic The Gathering 30th Anniversary Edition. Which was basically the same idea: MagicTG’s first set, Alpha, reprinted in packs to allow new players the feeling of opening packs of the very first MTG set. But the MTG 30th release had just onnnnnne minor hiccup: they cost US$1000 for a box of four packs. Yeah, US$250/pack. Tolarian Community College did a quick summary of this disaster.

But y’know what? TPC has been doing a hell of a better job running the Pokémon TCG than Wizards of the Coast is doing with Magic, so they might not actually have screwed up a “Magic 30th”-ification of Pokémon TCG’s Base Set. In any case, this point is irrelevant since they’re not even doing that.

So hmmm…. on one hand, since they’re just going to be three 60-card preconstructed decks, you can just buy all three and be done, not much joy of not-knowing involved when you know what you’re gonna get. But that may actually be the charm of them, and a way that TPC has one again out-classed Wizards: unlike Magic 30th which claimed to be a set for Magic fans, Pokémon TCG Classic will actually be able get these cards into the hands of Pokémon fans, and at a far more reasonable price. So instead of having to open 10, 20, 50 packs of a hypothetical “Pokémon 30th” set for the possibility to get Charizard… just get the Charizard Classic deck. One-and-done! Sure it’s not the same feeling as opening a fresh pack—especially now that Logan Paul has seemingly bought the rest of Base Set and only his friends can physically exist in the same room as them—but I’d say it still beats Wizards at their own idea. I mean, unless TPC’s gonna charge US$1000 for Classic as well…

And hey, the damage even LITERALLY stacks in Pokémon TCG Classic! … …. that’s a MTG joke.

Language Arts in ScVi DLC

The other big news I saw from the recent Pokémon Presents, at least as far as this site is concerned with, was the upcoming Hidden Treasures of Area Zero DLC for ScVi. Here’s the trailer again for you:

Y’know, so many people are hyped about all the new (and apparently leaked DLC Pokémon) but the new thing that I was hyped the most about was… THEY’VE ADDED HISUIAN WORDS TO SCARLET/VIOLET!!

I can’t even believe that they actually made IRL assets written in Hisuian to use in an actual video, but here we are! I still owe you guys a proper breakdown of Hisuian—as deciphered by our language expert ElementsnStuff on the PA! Discord—but in the mean time, let’s just share some of ElementsnStuff’s own notes about what was written in the trailer:

• something interesting…
• Lots of Hisuian in the new Pokemon presents video is reused from Legends text
• Craftworks sign, Warden banner text, Hyper and Max Potion, and Full Restore text can be spotted at various points
• One of the texts to the left of the Tatsugiri stall ends with ‘sushi’!
• Interestingly, one translation spotted is ‘yurutera’ or ‘yuru tera’. Yuru, or 閖, is a Japanese verb meaning ‘to rinse and shake,’ typically applied to gold or gemstone panning
• ‘to rinse and shake earth’ is quite fitting in this regard. The IRL Kitakami village in Japan (in Iwate prefecture) is quite close to the site where gold was first historically discovered in Japan, in Tamayama in 749 A.D. I wonder if part of the plot will involve the discovery of Tera Shards/Tera Gems in Kitakami?

You can see the sushi text in the 8th row in the above translation guide and in the left-most green-with-gold-bordered sign in the second trailer photo.

Anyways, unlike Galarian and Paldean—which I’ve called consistent gibberish with NO regular connection to specific letters—Hisuian is almost absolutely a proper script that is connected to the Japanese syllabry… even though this text may just be nothing special. As ElementsnStuff puts it:

Still thinking about how the first line of text includes the entire T-row of kana – this would correspond to QWAZ9S on a Japanese QWERTY-layout keyboard, so I don’t think it’d just be keysmashing – too many sudden ‘area’ changes on the keyboard. Might be intentional, then? Very hard to say

I honestly don’t believe any of this is translatable beyond what’s been already used, except ‘sushi’ – it’s Hisuian lorem ipsum, meant to simply fill textual areas. The possible exception, of course, is ‘yuru tera’ – it fits too well to simply ignore. We’ll see whether it pans out, ha ha.

So we’ll see what happens when Area Zero drops and if Hisuian ends up appearing there as well. If anything too, the fact that it’s clear the current Pokémon universe has these different scripts strongly implies that Galarian/Paldean represent European Latin script while Hisuian represents Japanese kana scripts (Katakana/Hiragana), and Nintendo/GF/TPC is definitely leaning more into this idea.

Speaking of Galarian/Paldean, the second part of the trailer also included some Galarian/Paldean words! But are they anything new? Let’s see…

Let’s cut to the case: there are some interesting words written in these pictures! Take a look:

	V8CLM9S7C	The first bit, V8CLM, is “Paldea”! Or at least, it seems to be. That word only seems to have appeared on maps of the Paldea region and nowhere else, unlike the word for Galar (GA9A4). So some have suggested that V8CLM is “carta” or “map” (in Spanish). And since we’re looking at another map… is this a section of Paldea, or just another “map”?
	suo1^	This is definitely a new word! I haven’t the slightest clue what it could mean, however.
	A5fn2i	This word also appears in a Dedenne advertisement seen at ScVi Pokémon Centers.
	R!1U5PHU MNI 5u^6f Q!56Fu 5h ^n5u1z^o	This is actually—oddly—a slight misspelling of text seen in a classroom’s chalkboard (glassboard?) about Alolan text. But instead of R!1U5PHU it’s R!15UPHU The rest of the text has appeared in other random text, such as ^n5u1z^o which appeared in a Real Estate advertisement. Maybe they’ll add these in the DLC?
	MNI5u^6f	Same text as above.
	Cu Jfu6u^ aoznp 9611 +^nu6f 9p	The top text Jfu6u^ has appeared before, but the rest appears to be new!
	V8CLM	fgg

Pretty neat! Some stuff is common and boring, but there were actually a few new words added to the list. Again, since this is all just consistent gibberish, there’s no real clues that could be added, other than if maybe the words above the map means “Paldea” or simply “map”. We’ll keep more eyes out for new clues when the DLC drops later this year!

And The Rest…!

Like I said, this wasn’t much of a winner Pokémon Presents, so I’ll just cover the other bits here.

• The Pokémon World Championship 2023 will be in Japan for the first time ever! Specifically in Yokohama. It’s kinda interesting, and this may just all be a coincidence, but Yokohama was one of the first cities to be opened up to the West when the US Navy and Commodore Perry visited Japan to… politely ask them to let them buy and sell stuff with them. Knowing this, it’s kinda fitting that the first time Japan opened itself to the World Championship would be here.
• Pokémon Concierge, Pokémon Unite, Pokémon Café Remix and Pokémon Masters EX are things that I am reminded exist (or will come to existence).
• Pokémon Sleep actually looks pretty neat! Kind of a passive game like… the kind of passive mobile games that exist… but also it reminds me of the sleep tracker on my Samsung Gear Watch. Maybe I’ll run both and compare the two?
• Pokémon GO Plus Plus ….couldn’t they just call it something like Pokémon GO Plus Extra, or Plus More or something other than PLUS PLUS
  • COMING SOON DISNEY PLUS PLUS
  • …I’m still gonna get it tho.
• Pokémon GO events just remind me that I haven’t touched my account in two years, not since moving from the Bay Area. You’ve probably friended me by now, but I’ll friend you back soon!

Actually, speaking of Pokémon Masters EX…

Inspired Art

This was shared in the Fake Card Mania channel on the PA! Discord quickly after before the Pokémon Presents, and I thought it was just too cute to not share…

This one comes from PA! Discord fake card maker DMNBT! Awesome job! Thankfully I didn’t see this one until after the Presents was released… I don’t like to be spoiled But then again I don’t play Masters EX.

The Creamy Middles of the Safari Zone HD Remaster

We’re not necessarily half-way done with the Safari Zone HD Remaster release, but we’re definitely at the point where we’re dealing with all the marshmellowy Colorless-type Pokémon. Last week we showed off Wigglytuff, and what does Jigglypuff use to evolve into Wigglytuff??

 

Having Moon Stone in this set is great because of Moon Stoney Pokémon like Clefairy and Wigglytuff in it… but… I don’t think they actually have their relevant Pokémon in the original Vending release. Oh well, maybe we’ll see some ACTUAL Colorless-type Evolution Pokémon next time.

But yeah, these are the squishy, marshmelon Pokémon that I could find for you… though I would be hard-pressed to call Tauros “marshmellowy”. I mean, not that it’s artwork doesn’t depict a marshmellowy Tauros, but I feel like if I implied that Tauros were soft and marshmellowy to its face, it would probably gore me with one of its horns. And that’s not an experience I would like to experience twice.

Anyways, these cards continue the kind of creative design that seems to be baked into the Vending Set. Like, if Tauros was in any other set, its attack would just do 10 more damage with a flip. Here it actually does a pseudo-Switch/Gust effect upon a tails… so you either do 30 damage or get to disrupt their strategy for a turn. Not too bad! Snorlax’s Roll Over attack also spreads the love as well, as opposed to just making one or the other Asleep. These creative attacks just make me all the more sad that this was never released in English… but at least we can still dream.

Thanks again, GC|Linkinboss, for making these for everyone!!

This Week’s Homework: A TCG History Lesson

Why do they call it “homework”? You’re not working on your home! lol, these jokes never get old….

But check this out: a couple weeks back on the TCG Zone channel of the PA! Discord, I got into a good discussion with deltaseeker about Wizards of the Coast’s run of the Pokémon TCG, but we had two fairly different perspectives of that history. Specifically, I took the position that Wizards of the Coast was ultimately hamstrung by “Japan” (Nintendo, Creatures, the Pokémon Company, Media Factory, etc), who’s restrictive demands on Wizards ran contrary to the agreeable goal of “expand and support the game, but most of all: make a TON of money for us” and ultimately prevented Wizards from making the best of the TCG. However, the fact that the Pokémon TCG of today has never been better, combined with the fact that everything about organized play first appeared during Wizard’s run of the TCG… all this leads me to believe that whatever failures that occurred during Wizards’ run was simply because Wizards’ was not given the freedom to act the way they should have been. Deltaseeker, on the other hand, was trying to do some research about that era of the TCG and felt that the facts and evidence they had come about didn’t exactly reflect that. Of course I’m greatly summarizing their point, but that’s only because… well, you’ll see!

Now I can easily admit several important facts about my position:

• this was 20-25 years ago, so memories of the facts might be hazy
• this was 20-25 years ago, so the information we—the Pokémon TCG community which participated at the official Wizard’s PokéGym forums—had to work with concerning what was going on in Japan was simply no where near as accurate as we would expect it to be today, so we were all debating a point that simply was wrong to begin with
  • think of it like two people debating on whether President Truman was assassinated on February 12th, 1947 or October 3rd, 1948… both of which are completely ignoring the fact that President Truman was never assassinated to begin with
• and most of all, perhaps Wizards’ reps understood this and ensured that only their side of the story was told, and I bought it all

The thing is tho, since those 20-25 years, I wasn’t really given a reason to believe otherwise; nothing new had come up to challenge those beliefs. That said, I’m always open to having those beliefs challenged; afterall, being challenged will either help me replace WRONG info with RIGHT info, or strengthen my understanding of that info, so it’s Win-Win regardless. As I mentioned, Deltaseeker was working on pulling together data about that period of the TCG’s history, covering not just what Wizards said but what was happening in Japan to give further contexts to Wizards’ actions; when I found out about their plan to turn it into a video, I mentioned that I would love to share it when they were done. And, here it is!

Now it’s a bit of a long video, and my discussion of this it is going to be huge… so let’s just make this a homework assignment for next week. Let’s watch this video, understand the history it covers, and then we can come back to talk about this it in greater detail next week. Whether I’m right or wrong, I do look forward to having this history filled in!

OK, it’s almost 1am, and this post took a bit longer than expected. I’m actually planning to come back to this later on Monday because I need to give you your weekly Safari Zone HD Remaster cards! Don’t worry, and please be sure to come back later today!