Pokémon Trading Card Game Has Finally Hit Switch

Oliver Brandt
·2 min read
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Pokemon TCG GBC

In February this year, Nintendo unveiled and released a new expansion to its Nintendo Switch Online retro offerings, this time adding Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance titles to the service. The apps for these systems started with just a few games, but has gradually expanded since then.

Last month we got the excellent Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, two of the best Zelda games ever, but there were a few titles announced alongside the service that have yet to come to fruition. One of those was Pokémon Trading Card Game, and The Pokémon Company and Nintendo are finally making good on that promise.

Starting from today, subscribers to Nintendo Switch Online – either the base subscription or the Expansion Pack – will be able to play Pokémon Trading Card Game (PTCG), and excellent card battler RPG based on the physical TCG. It’s an early version of the TCG, so don’t expect to see VStar or EX cards, but it’s still surprisingly fully featured for a Game Boy Color game.

The Pokémon Company has actually made a few different TCG games, the most notable of which is the sequel to PTCG, which was also released on the Game Boy Color but never made it outside of Japan. The company has also produced two battle simulators, the first being Pokémon Trading Card Game Online, and the second being its replacement, Pokémon TCG Live.

The Pokémon Company and Nintendo still had at least one more game to release on Nintendo Switch Online: Pokémon Stadium 2 for the Nintendo 64. It was announced almost a year ago, and despite the first game coming to the platform, and the game will also be releasing today.

One thing you shouldn’t expect to come though is any main series games. While it’s not strictly impossible that the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance main series games could make an appearance, The Pokémon Company has shown hesitance to do so. It would also require Nintendo to disable the rewind and emulator save state feature for those games, as they were removed from the Virtual Console releases when the games released on the 3DS.

Still, anything is possible.