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Pokémon TCG Pocket - Ep 93
55 Plays3 months ago
We all know the Pokémon card game, but what if... it was also a mobile game? Allison is here to tell us that not only does this now exist, but it's just as addictive as it sounds.
Check us out online:
Allison: twitch.tv/pikapeww
James: twitch.tv/grantjam
Music is "Fork and Spoon" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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Transcript
Introduction and Pokémon TCG App Excitement
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello gamers. I am a trainer of Pokemon and cards. And I'm a train wreck. So I feel like we've got a good thing going right now. Yeah. I'm ah i' a hop right in your little pocket and we're going to play. We're going to talk about Pokemon PCG pocket.
00:00:25
Speaker
the new Hotness and Pokemon TCG tech, which is really cool. There is a lot to unpack here. I am very excited. It is a new app that Pokemon put out for their TCG. And as we all know, I'm notoriously in an immense Pokemon TCG nerd. I love this. It's one of my favorites. So when they put a new app out, I um i signed all of my friends up.
00:00:52
Speaker
download I've been playing the fuck out of it. I've been playing it with my girlfriend. I've been playing it solo. I've been doing a lot. I've been trying to explore every avenue of this. I've done feedback surveys. I've been trying to like talk about it a lot. I'm very excited to talk about this
App Gameplay Mechanics and Features
00:01:08
Speaker
game. i've got a list of positives, a list of negatives, and a list of promises that I'm very, very excited for. um I'm going to start with a couple of positives. If you like Pokemon TCG, whether you like collecting or you like battling, there is something here for both sides. I think that's really cool. It is not fully centered on one or the other, and that makes me really happy.
00:01:36
Speaker
Gotcha. yeah And if I may clarify real quick, the yes, I don't actually remember. i'm I'm taking a look through because this feels so familiar. I know you've talked about several Pokemon things. Yeah. um Have we we've done an episode on the actual card game, right? Or am I fully mistaken? I do believe we did an episode on the card game. I don't know if it was on the card game or on the Game Boy Color game. That was the card game.
00:02:06
Speaker
or if I even mentioned that during that. If you haven't played the Game Boy Color Pokémon TCG game, it's great. The music slaps. It's so good. The soundtrack to that is amazing. At the very least, go listen to the soundtrack. like If you like chiptune music,
00:02:21
Speaker
Oh my God, you'll love that soundtrack. it's It is phenomenal. um Here we go. Episode 35. We did talk about the the the actual trading card game. Okay, cool. um I've talked about the PCG. I'm not going to get too heavy into the rules there, but there this is a modified version of that. So kind of a synopsis of this this app.
00:02:41
Speaker
is it is very very centered both on battling and on collecting but it is a simplified version of battling that uh makes the games really short and very kind of not predictable but it takes a lot of the elements of uh pressure off, so to speak. ah One of the main rule changes is instead of energy being a card that you have to draw, like a mana card or a land card in um magic, it is a separate pool that you get one generated every turn that you can assign. So you get one
Mobile Game Dynamics and Engagement Strategies
00:03:22
Speaker
energy every turn guaranteed instead of hoping and praying that you deck one otherwise you can't move this turn.
00:03:29
Speaker
It makes the games go way faster. And it's actually really fun. It makes games like, I don't know, maybe five, 10 minutes tops. It makes it very casual. You can pick up, play a game, and then like move on. It's really nice. um They give you two free packs of cards a day.
00:03:49
Speaker
on a 12 hour timer. So you get one on a 12 hour and then a second on another 12 hours. I get mine. I wish that it was on like a unified global time. That's one of my first desires of like, they're available at 8am and 8pm. That would be really nice.
00:04:09
Speaker
but I can imagine that would lead to a lot of traffic at the same time on the network. so I understand why it wouldn't be that way, but that that would be confusing. Mine currently go off at 9.30am and 9.30pm, which works for me. but if i use There's like a currency that you can use that they give you a lot of upfront because we'll get into the fact that this is a mobile app and it does the thing that mobile apps do. of like floods and droughts, it floods you with resources right up front, and then there's a drought that tries to purge you for money. And then it will flood you again when an event comes by, and then it gives you a drought very shortly thereafter to try and purge you for money. um That's how mobile games work. That's just like a lot of their systems. And a lot of it is. There's a lot of brain trickery in mobile games.
00:04:58
Speaker
with this flood the feast and famine they give you like a ton of resources and you get into it you're like this is really fun i like the way this plays i like the way this moves i like the the pacing of this and then there's that famine of like okay cool where'd the fun go i want that back all right here's five bucks give me some fun um And then the second thing that it does that all mobile games do is working on this timer of like, hey, you're out of resources to get a pack, you have to wait, and then come back later, which basically Pavlovian trains you to close the app and reopen it.
00:05:34
Speaker
and to come back for rewards. Every time you come back, it feels nice. So you want to keep coming back. that is like ah That is a thing that has been in every video game. That's why you have those like, oh, we'll give you more of this resource in 35 minutes. Come back then. Or, oh, this task, this takes an hour. Come back then. It just trains you. OK, cool. I'm going to close the app, go about my day, and then I'll open the app up again.
00:05:59
Speaker
um It allows you to put the notifications on, which gets them a little bit more revenue, especially if they're doing ad basing, which this one doesn't have any ads, which I really freaking appreciate. But like this is this is the way that a lot of mobile apps work. This one's not ah this one's not immune to that. this That still exists in this. It's a little bit less pressure on money than a lot of games are. But if you are bad with money,
00:06:28
Speaker
This app will take some of it from you if you allow it to. I'm just going to be straight up and straightforward with that right up front. That's just how apps work. ah Most free application games on your phone do that.
00:06:45
Speaker
um And this this app is also created by one of, if not the biggest, if I remember right, like media franchises in the world. Yeah, it is the largest commercial media franchise. Yeah, one of the most profitable social media franchises. It's not like they're not in this for the money. They're not making this.
00:07:03
Speaker
with that with with anything other than that'd be like the primary reason but you know if you want to see that it's not as bad as it could be yeah if you want to play a pokemon pcg game and not spend a single dime go play the gba or the gameboy color game again phenomenal music great game fun full rule set incredibly and entertaining go go play that if you want to play one that doesn't cost you any money go find the rom it's out there um This one doesn't cost money if you have any sort of will or resolve.
Collecting Features and Financial Model
00:07:36
Speaker
I've spent money already. Oops. Well, I guess that that doesn't disprove what you said. but Yeah.
00:07:43
Speaker
ah um So, you get free packs, very fun. It does cater to both the collector and the battler, which I think is really interesting, because a lot of these online games ah really cater towards battling, not towards collecting. When you get a card, the only way to show that card off is physically showing your phone to a friend of yours,
00:08:11
Speaker
or using it in a battle. That is the only way to show off a card that you've gotten. This one has like showcases that you can set up. You can get like a little hard case that you can put a card in and then make that public and people can be like, hell yeah, you've got a cool card.
00:08:27
Speaker
all of your friends in your friends list can see that card on your profile. You can set up a binder with different colors and different orient like different card sets and you can rearrange them and lay them out, title your binder, and make that public to where your friends can see it or to where the world can see it. and like It's really cool.
00:08:46
Speaker
that they make it to where collecting is just as fun as the playing. And I do have friends who are playing this game just to collect the cards. And I think that is really rad. Because that's a large part of the community. That's like a non-insubstantial part of the Pokemon community, is people who just collect the cards because they like the pretty pieces of art.
00:09:09
Speaker
Right. Yeah. The the very brief stint as a as a young in that I had collecting Pokemon cards. That was the only reason I didn't know there was a game attached to it. Yeah. And that's it's good to see that they they acknowledge that. um And that's speaking of kind of the way that mobile games do things. I feel like that is pretty rare among things where it's like a kind of like just collecting and showing off. You don't you don't see that often. and Yeah, the battles are still there. You can still battle people. There isn't a ranked mode. That is one of my negatives. And there doesn't really feel like there's much of a benefit to battling other than the enjoyment of the game. So if you don't really like playing Pokemon cards, the battling is probably not for you because right now there's not much reward for it. You get experience, but that's about it. And like you can level up and it'll give you some stuff, but you don't really know what you're leveling for because the prizes are completely obfuscated.
00:10:05
Speaker
for what the reward for the next level is. Doesn't tell you. um So I think that that's interesting, because I'm so used to like Hearthstone, where it's like, yeah, if you beat like battles, you get dust and then you can use the dust to build a pack. That's not it. Yeah, that's not how that goes. There
Discussion on TCG vs CCG and Future Updates
00:10:24
Speaker
is a solo mode where you can battle against an AI, not like AI is in like chat GPT, but AI is in like the thing that's been in video games forever. Right. What AI meant before AI met everything that it does to the rest of the world.
00:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, um and you can do quite a bit there. There's actually some really good battles, there's some good achievements and stuff like that, and that does get you some packs, that does get you rewards, and you do get to see what what you're fighting for, which is kind of nice. I do appreciate that, and I do enjoy doing those battles. I've done a ton of them. um Collecting the cards is very, very fun. Opening packs is a blast. like It does a lot of the things good. I just wish that It had some of the things that like other CCGs have, which this is still a TCG, which really blows me away. It's not a TCG yet. Let me get into that. um There is two different classifications of online card game, they're ah or like card game in general. There's a TCG, which is a trading card game, and there's a CCG, which is a collectible card game.
00:11:33
Speaker
um The main difference is, in a CCG, you don't really own the cards as much as you have them on your account. You can't trade them, you can't sell them, you can't do anything with your card. Once you get your little piece of digital thing, it's locked to your account and that's but it's yours and that's it.
00:11:52
Speaker
um This one is trying to still be a TCG in that they they have made a promise. it is There's a button in one of the menus saying this will come in a future update coming soon to trade cards, which is wild. Because I don't know another digital card game where you can trade cards.
00:12:14
Speaker
They're doing limited runs of booster sets. They're doing promo events. There's two of promo events running right now where you can get promo cards. One for doing battles and it's a Lapras EX set that has like, I think like 10 different cards in it. And then there's a Chansey set that has a Chansey and a Meowth.
00:12:31
Speaker
And you can get those through random polls once every couple hours. um And those are free polls, which is really fun. I think that that's kind of interesting to actually like continue trying to keep the trading aspect of a TCG in a digital format. I've not seen that before. Yeah, I guess I hadn't thought about the distinction there, but pointing it out, yeah, there there is you know a very tangible difference.
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, you have a little bit more ownership of your card. You can give it to your friend. I can be like, oh, I'm looking my girlfriend. I'm so mad at her one in one set of packs because you can do either one pack at a time or 10 packs at a time. I convinced her to do 10 packs at a time because I'm a silly little guy and I'm like, yeah, rip it. Go, go, go. And she ripped her cards and she got a 10 pack.
00:13:19
Speaker
And there is a slowpoke that I am in love with. If you go back to episode 38 or 36 or whatever it was when I talked about Pokemon TCG, I'm sure I mentioned it. There is a slowpoke card drawn by an artist called Miki Tanaka.
00:13:35
Speaker
that is beautiful it is a wonderful little guy he is just standing there he's like so far in the distance and it's just one little guy in the very middle of this card so far away he's just standing in there and it's so funny and i really love this art i think it's so good and they got me to get Tanaka back in to do a full art version of that card And it's so cute. I love it. And she got two of them in one go and I still haven't gotten one and I've been trying so hard. She's like, I swear, as soon as the trading is the thing, I'll give you one. I'm like, I want it. I will say that does sound very familiar. I think I had the same reaction then as I'm having now, which is just like, oh, that sounds like the most delightful thing I've probably ever seen.
00:14:24
Speaker
Yeah, he's just standing there. He's just like, but so I love him. I love him so much. But getting some of the cool art that's exclusive to this is really cool. Some of the art is it is retro from like the OG first set. You'll recognize the
Challenges in Battling and Deck Building
00:14:39
Speaker
Pikachu. You'll recognize. I always recognize that guy. I know there's a specific Pikachu that like if you saw your you'd be like, wow, that is my childhood in a card. ah Yes.
00:14:51
Speaker
Detective Pikachu. What are you, twelve? You don't know. I I would hope not. I mean, you'd be a really smart 12 year old. You have a beard. Not if I've been playing my cards right. I've been, you know, like you in college. Everyone's got their secrets. Don't blow up my spot. Fine. Keep your secrets then. ah All right, Frodo.
00:15:19
Speaker
ah But yeah, like i just I think that there's there's a lot here. There's good meat, but there are a couple of things that I do just want. I really wish that there is a way to battle my friends easier, because right now I have to go to the social tab, or no, go to the battle tab, go to battle online, and then set up a private lobby, and then set a password, and then text my friend that password, and then have them enter that password, and then we can matchmate.
00:15:49
Speaker
Cool. I have a friends list, just let me hit request battle. That'd be really sick. It's not hard, right? Like am I crazy? It doesn't seem like it would be that crazy, but apparently it's been really difficult to just do that.
00:16:06
Speaker
so i
00:16:10
Speaker
i don't I don't know. That's just how it's been. And I'm like, dude, just let me let me just battle my friends by one button. Just tap on the friends list, tap the person I want and then hit request battle, have a notification pop up and be like, this person wants to battle. That'd be really sick. But no, that's not how that works. It doesn't like there's weird. I don't like it. I wish it was better.
00:16:32
Speaker
um I wish there was a better reward for battling just in general. I wish it like gave me packs or like gave me stuff like that. It would be really cool. um I wish the trading function was here already. I think that that would be really nice.
00:16:48
Speaker
ah I wish there was more than two packs, right or three packs right now, because there's three different sets. There's one set that has three different packs that have like slight variations in the cards that they a lot, but ah the card draw is really limited. I think there's like 200 cards in total right now. um which for a card game with multiple, I think, eight different types, ah that's pretty limited. There's there's like not a lot of variation in decks right now from what I've seen. yeah There's a little bit, and it's they do make it really easy to build a deck. I do like it. um Oh, also, ah decks are only 20-card decks. They're really small.
00:17:34
Speaker
um that there are only 20 cards each. You can only do two of each type or two of each card max instead of four. So they've made it a lot more condensed ah to kind of keep battles streamlined. It makes building a deck really easy. It makes battling really easy. It makes it makes things really simple to, like like I said, pick up, put down, get through a battle, and really enjoy yourself. I think it's actually really enjoyable to to play through this way.
00:18:02
Speaker
um I do really think that it is quite interesting to have battles that way. I don't think that I have... ah I don't think I would have expected the battles to be this simplified and work this well, but it really is a completely different rule set that I want to like play with my friends in real life.
Educational Value and Learning Opportunities
00:18:25
Speaker
like I actually really like this rule set enough to where i would I would be interested in playing it myself outside of just this pocket format.
00:18:35
Speaker
um Yeah, that's interesting. i I kind of want to know. I know you already described kind of the way the the battles work on a ah larger level, but I'm that's I know the the kind of the selling point what we've been talking about here is the collecting it.
00:18:53
Speaker
Yeah. the the Because that's the kind of the unique feature here. But the way battling works just because personally, i've you know you've talked about it and I've i've never fully experienced it. This seems like an interesting, pretty accessible way to like get familiar with that.
00:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, if you can play this game, you could play a real Pokemon, like a full fat Pokemon TCG game. It would not be a challenge. ah And I think that this is a really good way to introduce new people into playing this game. I genuinely think that this simplified format makes it so much easier to understand the basic rules and then bringing them over. I i might have mentioned this in the previous one. I have spent time teaching people how to play Pokemon TCG. I own teacher sets.
00:19:37
Speaker
I have numbered decks to ensure no mulligans. I make it very easy and simple to approach. i do do I do my best to make this game easy for people because I really love the game of it. I think it is a very fun card game. um yeah It has a lot of really interesting synergies. It is it is really cool to set up these combos.
00:20:00
Speaker
ah And I think that these this really lends itself well as a teaching aid, if not anything else, um to playing the actual TCG. And if you don't enjoy the TCG, then there's there's the collecting aspect of it, which plenty of people like. If you just like the little critters and you just want to open some packs and show your friends some cool cards you got,
00:20:24
Speaker
That's that's here that the and it will be here and it is free and it will be free. And I think that is really, really rad. Um. Yeah, and then if you want to play Pokemon TCG live, which is the full version where you play the big game and you actually get to see what like a full Pokemon battle is like, that's there too. And I think that they give you very different.
00:20:51
Speaker
avenues, but i do I do still have some desires from Pokemon TCG Pocket. They give you one deck to start with and they don't let you pick it. You get a fire deck and that is your life. That is it.
00:21:06
Speaker
And then you don't get anything else until you pull some cards. You have to deck some cards. You've got to pack some cards. And then once you get those cards, you can start building other decks. But it took me a couple of days before I was even able to build another deck besides the Fire One that they gave me. um And then I just realized, honestly, what they want you to do is spend the points that they give you, because they give you enough points to like pull 20 packs, which at five cards a pack is like 100 cards, which gets you a good way until actually being able to play the game. I've got like some 300 cards now, and i can I can build a deck pretty reliably. I've got a really cool Dragonite deck that relies on
00:21:47
Speaker
of water and electric energy. so i And the way it works, instead of you drawing energy, it just hands you one energy per turn. And it will tell you the energy you get this turn, and it'll tell you the energy you will get next turn, which is cool. So if you're playing a mixed type deck, which this game does not lend itself well to doing, honestly, I'm just now breaking into that. This Dragonite deck needs water and electric.
00:22:13
Speaker
It just gives you it at random. It is an RNG on whether or not you get a water or an electric card. So I set up the Dragonite deck to also have an Eevee that has a Jolteon and a Vaporeon. So it can go either way depending on what cards I'm getting the most of. um It's actually really cool. It's a nice way of like making that work. So it's it's really, I think that's the thing I like about this card game is it gives you rules and you have to figure out how to make the rules work.
00:22:40
Speaker
um instead of the like instead of just being like, yeah, I want to do this, this, this. It's like, no, I have to figure out how to make this like shortcoming really work in my advantage or like really figure out how to make this like work out the way that I i had hoped it would.
00:22:57
Speaker
um It has been it has been ah a really good time. It's been a very, very interesting game. I cannot wait to play more of it. I cannot wait to see where this is in a year. I think it's very early days. I really am excited to jump in so early and have... There is an item that you get by picking up and downloading the game and logging in before... Sorry if you hear it in the background. I think I haven't muted, but I am ah opening the app myself.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah, there's if you sign up like ah relatively soon, there is a, I think it's between now and the beginning of the year, there is an actual ah event ticket that is called the advanced ticket. This ticket cannot be used yet. Wait and see what it's for. You just get like an extra thing. They're like they're really leaning ah on events. They're doing a lot. They actually have already started, too, and this game's been out for like days. It came out on the 30th of October, and today's the fifth, so it's been out for like a week, and there's two events going on right now.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah, i've heard I've heard people talking about it. um And it seemed like it came out pretty recently. So to have all that going on already, I guess that's part of that feast and famine wave that you were talking about. and ah I don't know how much of a famine they're going to be for the events, but they do seem to be like having little like card drops and different like art drops and stuff like that. I'm really excited to see what they do in
Complexity of Currencies and User Feedback
00:24:18
Speaker
the future of this. One of the things that I do dislike is they've got like 30 different currencies.
00:24:24
Speaker
um and a lot of different timers. um like they've got this thing There's a system called Wonder Pick that I haven't even gotten into that I think is really interesting. ah Essentially, whenever you or someone else opens a pack,
00:24:41
Speaker
ah you get five cards, and then you get all five cards, and then it shows that pack to someone else, and they can see all five cards that you've got, and they can be like, I want one of the cards from that pack. I'm going to randomly draw one card from your pack. So they can select your pack, spend a currency, and then get one of the five cards at random. It doesn't take it away from you, it just gives them a copy of that card, but it gives them and not like a knowing pool to randomly draw from.
00:25:10
Speaker
So it's like, oh, you've got three cards that I don't have and two cards that I do. I'm going to hedge my bets and get a random card from this, and I'll probably get a card I don't have. Or like, oh, you've got a Mewtwo. I want that Mewtwo. I'll spend a bunch of currency. It's three Wonder Point whatevers. And then I will get to draw one card from that, and I'm going to hope that I get that one in five, that 20% chance to get that Mewtwo, because it's a better chance to get that Mewtwo than going through an actual pack.
00:25:39
Speaker
um because I think you get like a 0.3% chance to get a Mewtwo in a pack. So it's like, all right, cool. Like this is worth this currency to do that. And that currency is not purchasable. It just like kind of trickles in on a 12 hour timer, but you get one currency every 12 hours up to five currencies. So that takes two and a half days to refill all of that currency. And you can spend it in no time flat. And then you just wait.
00:26:08
Speaker
And I think that that timer's too long. I wish it was like six hours at max. But ah yeah, and ah there's that. You get two two free packs a day, but they're set apart on a 12-hour timer. So you're you draw five cards and then you wait 12 hours to draw another five. Or you spend a currency to reset that timer, get a pack, and then go from there. But if you rate reset it at a weird time, it makes things a little annoying. Because if you like reset it at 1pm, you're not going to get another pack until 1am, because it resets it to another 12 hours. um The good news is, unlike a lot of other mobile games that I've had, where it's like, yeah, the reward is ready, the timer has stopped.
00:26:54
Speaker
It's like, hey, the reward is ready. We're counting down to the next 12 hours to the next pack. And once you get both packs, then the timer stops. Gotcha. So if you do set it to where like, oh, I picked my pack at 1 p.m., so my pack's ready at 1 a.m. when I'm asleep, that pack will be ready in the morning and your timer will already have passed. and Let's say you wake up at 8 a.m., it'll pass seven hours. So you'll have the next five hours until you get the next pack.
00:27:21
Speaker
That's good. well That kind of feels like the least they could do. Yeah, it it does kind of stink, but they give you a decent chunk of that currency to reset that timer pretty pretty regularly. um But I feel like I'm hitting the point where I'm running out of that currency and it's becoming more scarce. ah They don't let you directly buy that currency. You kind of have to get it through winning battles and some other stuff. It's it's it's a little bit convoluted, I will say. And then the event has started for Lapras and it's a battle event. You get five battle tokens.
00:27:58
Speaker
And those reset on a 12 hour timer. So you can only battle it five times. And then after those five times, you have to wait 12 hours for each token. So another two and a half days before you can fully refill that to battle again, which feels like just like a lot. Yeah. And they give you a different currency to reset that timer. Um,
00:28:23
Speaker
ah it's It's a lot. I feel like they like really thought about this in a box and then now they're showing it to people and people are like, why are there like six different timers and five different currencies to reset them?
00:28:37
Speaker
Um, and they're like, oh yeah, I guess that is a lot. So like they have an open survey. I have filled it out and I've kind of been like, Hey, this is weird. I don't love this. Uh, can you not? And I'm hoping the deal with all these currencies, all these currencies and all these damn timers, but, uh,
00:29:02
Speaker
I am hopeful that in a couple of updates they'll like kind of refine it and make it a little bit more streamlined of an experience and a little bit less ah menus and menus and all sorts of other stuff. But I
Art Style and Future Potential
00:29:13
Speaker
do have a really cool binder going. I've got a really cool Giovanni card.
00:29:17
Speaker
I've got some really, really cool full arts. They have some animated art cards, which is really cool. You can see that in their trailer. If you go and watch it, you can like press and a hold on certain cards and it will have like a whole like animated sequence that happens is in the story behind the art on the card. Like one of them is Mewtwo breaking out of the stasis chamber that Giovanni held him in on Santa Bar Island and the Pokemon Mansion, which is just cool.
00:29:43
Speaker
and you like see him like reaching for freedom as like he shatters out, and like you see this whole scene play out when you watch it. It's sick. It's really f***ing rad. You could see Mew travel the world in Pikachu, like it exists in a happy little meadow with a bunch of other Pokémon, like an all-out crazy battle with Charizard, and it's really cool. like They have some really neat features that I've not seen in other...
00:30:08
Speaker
card games and it's Pokemon so like I'm happy. I do think that there are improvements to be made for sure but I do definitely think that you should play this game especially if you're interested in Pokemon TCG. I don't think that there is a better time to get into it. I don't think there is a better way to learn this game. I've taught people. I've taught hunt like dozens of people how to play this game As you said, I heard like guns going off and helicopter blades, just like the flashbacks of it. I've taught people. I really have. I've taught people who like ah don't really want to learn, but I wanted to play. Um, so you've conscripted people is what I have. I have conscripted people into playing Pokemon TCG with me. And there has never been an easier way to show people, Hey, here's a quick 10 minute way to just play this game. It's got a really robust tutorial.
00:31:04
Speaker
Just check it out. It's really fun. It's a good time. ah You get to collect some funky little monsters. You get to look at some beautiful artwork, some absolute, and in all sorts of different art styles. There's 3D models. There's colored pencil. There's Amigurumi, which are like little crochet dolls. There's clay sculpture. There's ah watercolor. There's animation.
00:31:28
Speaker
like any art form you can think of they have a card in that art form and it's so rad because it comes from fans it comes like some of this art comes from like contest winners of fans who put their art out there who got paid to do a thing that they love i can't speak higher to the fact that Pokemon really works with its fans on card art. Yes. That's something I remember you mentioning earlier that still sticks out to me is very, very good to see. It's really, really cool. And I really love this TCG.
00:32:01
Speaker
ah Check it out. i I can't recommend it more than I already have. ah This is my second episode talking about it and I will probably do a third where I deep dive into the GBA and GBC game because I think that that deserves a little story of its own because there's there's there's some more to unpack there. There's a sequel that is kind of hidden but like fan translated and that's actually really good but it's interesting because yeah, we'll get into it. It's a good time.
00:32:28
Speaker
But for now, I think that's all I really have to say about this. I i wish that there was a little bit more refinement, but I think that will happen in the coming years. It's six days old today, ah and already I think it has some great meat on those bones. I cannot wait to see where it goes.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah, love it. I know it's you know, we've we've talked about a couple of very new games recently to kind of watch them grow and turn into something even cooler. And then yeah, I'd love to to watch this as it goes by, especially like you said, no, no cost of entry unless you really want to get on get on top of that ball in a major way. um But yeah, I'm I'm I'm interested for sure. In fact, it is now downloaded on my phone.
00:33:16
Speaker
Hell yeah, send me your friend code and we can but ah organize a battle through pain-saking methods, but someday maybe they'll streamline that process. Right, I'll go into my app and I'll find the code and I'll send it to you through a third party and you'll use that code to find me and request a battle ah in the app. And then hopefully nothing will go wrong during that process. Yeah. It's Nintendo, they've got a great acts understanding of the internet.
00:33:45
Speaker
Exactly. We know how things work. Yeah, they saw the Internet once. I think they have like dial up somewhere in that office. I'm not sure. I don't know if anyone ever informed them of what the Internet actually is, but they're they're figuring it out. I think Miyamoto's son has an Apple II in his basement collecting dust. that They've probably, you know, tooled around with a one point or another. I just give it a little kick or something. Yeah, exactly.
Conclusion and Social Media Engagement
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, but I think that's where I'm going to leave y'all. Check us out. I stream on Sundays. yeah um I'm trying to stream more, but Sundays are a pretty regular day for me. I usually i usually stream Sunday night, 8 p.m. Central.
00:34:28
Speaker
ah Central American time. um And then, yeah, James streams sometimes sometimes i'm I'm trying to get it more regular recently. um Weekends and times and things have been very ah goofy recently, but I intend to to actually get that going again before too long here. um Yeah, but I'm I'm Grant Jam Grant is in Ulysses S and then Jam is in, you know, on an electric guitar.
00:34:59
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Find me on Twitch and nowhere else because that's the only place I exist. I realize I did not say my Twitch handle. It's Peekapew. P-I-K-A-P-E-W-W. There are two W's there. W-A-W. Are you are you considering adding a third W just for funsies? ah That'll be my website. p P-I-K-A-P-E-W-W-W dot.
00:35:26
Speaker
www dot p ik a p www dot www. Yeah, no, it's just it's ah it's iterative. i e but or w do youov What is it? What is it in code when it like just but ah recurring recursive? Yeah, yeah, it's recursive. So it's b ik a www dot p ik a www dot and just keeps going. um Recursive. So whenever you figure out how to type that into the search bar, you'll be able to find me.
00:35:56
Speaker
If you can type in an infinite loop for the rest of time, then you can get to the Twitch channel pretty easily. Yeah, just um yeah but that I think that's it. ah Check us out on Apple podcasts and give us a rating. Ask us questions on Spotify or tell us what you want us to cover.
00:36:17
Speaker
If we haven't played it, we probably will play it just so we can talk about it because that's always really fun. I love getting recommendations from from the fans. It's really exactly seeing new things and know what people are interested in. One hundred percent. It's it's super cool. But ah yeah, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a great day and I will transcend this mortal plane and become one with the Buddha.
00:36:44
Speaker
And I hope you have a great night and I'm going to just sit right here in my chair. Oh, that sounds nice too. I might do that instead. Transcending just sounds it sounds so exhausting. I know that's probably not the reality of the situation, but like I'm comfortable right here. Yeah, that's that's very fair.
00:37:01
Speaker
I think that might be transcendence. Who knows? That was it the whole time!
00:37:10
Speaker
Bye. See ya, everyone.