The Pokémon Trading FIGURE Game

if you like Pokemon chances are very likely you've at least heard of the Pokemon Trading Card Game the classic card game has existed within pokemons multimedia franchise almost as long as the games themselves the trading card game is even older than the Pokemon anime if you can believe it if you simply say the phrase pokemon TCG most could tell you what those three letters stand for well what about the Pokemon TFG anybody remember that today we're going to talk about one of pokemons most intriguing and most forgotten physical games the Pokemon Trading figure game debuted in late 2006 and early 2007 depending on what region you lived in and seem to be pokemons attempt to capitalize on the growing trend of miniature figure games the mid 2000s were a big time for figure games such as mage Knight HeroClix and heroscape Pokemon look to enter the market in a big way with important names like suna kazoo Ishihara designing the game and Kyoto sculpting the figures the figures themselves are gorgeous they're bigger than many other trading figures at the time and while my collection might not be the largest there are a handful of really awesome poses they chose for some of these while the release format varies from region to region the game generally relied on a mix of starter sets where you get a trainer and guaranteed figures and random packs where you get a mix of guaranteed figures with a blind random one hidden from the purchaser figures come with different black and white rings that you can add to each base theoretically if you collected enough you should have enough rings of each color to mix and match to make your team a different color from your opponent's opening the secret figure is always the most fun you never know you're gonna get both international and US figure sets also had an extremely rare version of figures international figures included pearl which have an off-white coat of paint for the whole thing the u.s. got crystal figures which have them in a see-through plastic material the gameplay while simple when compared to other trading figure games at the time is a lot of fun and had surprising strategic depth your main goal is simply to take one of your pokemon into the opponent's goal there's a basic map for three-on-three battles and the main map which expands gameplay up to six on six each figure has a variety of information from movement points which dictate how many spaces you can move a figure on your turn - static abilities to attack information in general the game's best attackers all seem to have low movement so finding a mix between power and utility on your team is key what made this game unique for better and for worse is that each figure has a spinning base instead of a stationary one whenever two figures reach adjacent spaces on the board you can choose to start a battle by having a spin off yay spinning criminally a hitmontop figure was never produced each figure has multiple colored areas and depending on which one you land on your outcome and the babble will change if you roll a red you lose to everything else and miss if you roll blue you will dodge any incoming attack if you roll a white that's a damaging attack which will beat any white with a weak or damaged number if you and your opponent both roll white the higher number wins knocking your opponent's Pokemon off the board and sending them to the Pokemon Center and finally Purple's beat whites they also beat other Purple's that have less stars in the attack name these attacks don't deal damage but they often create special conditions such as moving opposing figures on the board or disabling them you might also be wondering what the trainer figures - they're all exactly the same with a high chance of success and a small slot for failure even though they're all the same in function this is one of the very few times that you can collect figures of important Pokemon trainers and even gym leaders which I always thought was awesome in each battle you can also bring in three trainer cards which come in two starter sets and packs only eight of them exists in the first set and they provide a striking resemblance to regular Pokemon trading cards just horizontal instead of vertical to use a trainer card you spin your trainer hit miss and your turn ends but if you hit success you can use one of your three cards once in a game it might sound complicated but I found the game very easy to jump into and play there are many different strategies to learn such as avoiding battle to keep an important opponent locked inside of the Pokemon Center games can run long but I never seem to get bored of them so here's where things take a dark turn at this point you might be thinking and actually looks kind of cool how many sets of this do they release the short answer is one I know you think it but she waits the figures you've shown us all say next quest on them surely that's an expansion right it's a actually not next quest confusingly enough is the base set of the Pokemon TFG I guess they meant that the trading figure game was the next quest in Pokemon physical games but I don't know it's really confusing there was also an official second set called ground breakers that was planned for 2008 but its release was pushed back month after month until eventually in mid 2009 when Pokemon announced that the entire game was cancelled before it was too late some ground breakers product made it to store shelves only hardcore collectors have been able to track down the full sense but as far as I can tell sealed packages of ground breakers just simply don't exist anymore it's a shame too because some extremely popular and beautiful figures come from the set like Blastoise Venusaur and Mewtwo going even deeper than this is an unreleased third TFG set which was planned for 2009 it never got an official name but it's on test figures show up at promotional events and eventually from Asia on to the grey market this set even added new elements such as burn frozen and golden attacks with increased priority like extreme speed so why did the TFG get cancelled after just one set the game is fun the figures look great and people obviously love Pokemon so how could it fail from what I can see there are three major reasons for one the TFG has a much higher cost than their main line the trading card game now I obviously don't have the price figures for the cost of producing product but I do know this the Pokemon TFG products sold for around 10 to 15 dollars each and require molding assembling and painting process for each one the Pokemon Trading Card Game sells boosters at around 4 dollars with the index at around 12 but the cards are literally sheets of cardboard yes I know Pokemon prints all kinds of plastic figures but these ones came specifically for a game the casual consumer was probably more driven to regular stationery years instead of ones that come with numbers a spinner and a part of a grand scheme that many might not have wanted to play in to the TFG wasn't very competitive the first step for the TFG was to introduce it to existing Pokemon Trading Card Game League's and then maybe over time roll out some kind of organized tournament structure the biggest issue with the TFG is that it doesn't quite attract a core competitive audience while there are many reasons behind this one of the biggest I can find was the spinners the fundamental problem with the spinner is not only that it's luck-based but then it could potentially encourage players to practice their spinning to make sure they land on the best results there's just no way to police this the closest solution I can think of is having a third neutral party to do all the spins for both players but you can't realistically do this in a real tournament setting I found the spinners fun and I'm sure many other players do as well but their design prevented the possibility of a truly competitive TFG environment and third perhaps the most depressing was that the trading figure games were on their way to a huge decline they're an expensive hobby for collectors and an expensive product to produce just look at this list of popular minifig games mage Knight canceled in 2005 revived for just one set in 2013 Star Wars miniatures canceled in 2010 heroscape canceled in 2010 Dungeons & Dragons miniatures canceled in 2011 even the mighty HeroClix line was canceled in 2008 before eventually being purchased and continued by a new company now I'm definitely not saying that collectible figure games are dead there's a huge audience for them but there's more of a heavy focus on the Warhammer and more machine-type army play that can run up to hundreds of dollars per team overall I think Pokemon probably made a smart business decision realizing that the trading figure games were on a decline in mass markets and deciding to cut their losses before getting too deep in a risky business I'm bummed the Pokemon Trading figure game never really got far if it began production in the earlier 2000s we might have seen a handful of sets over the years but for now it's just an obscure little piece of Pokemon history hard to find but still worth your time for a few fun games if you ever have the pleasure of picking the game up thanks for watching today's pokemon fact video if you want to see a few other Pokemon videos that I've done you can check them out right here also if you want to learn when new videos are being released in this channel you can click here to subscribe for more updates thanks for watching and I'll catch you guys next time with more Nintendo content

Channel: TheJWittz

Views: 1,121,966

Keywords: JWittz, TheJWittz, Josh, Wittenkeller, Fact, of, The, Day, Pokemon, Pokémon, Banned, Censored, Hot, Top, 10, Anime, Manga, Red, Blue, Yellow, Wittz, Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Doney, Kong, Card, Game, Deck, Review, Playthrough, Cheats, Nintendo, Lore, Pokémon Trading Figure Game (Game), Role-playing Video Game (Media Genre), Pokémon TFG, Groundbreakers, Next Quest, Third Set, Trading Figure Game, Pokémon Spinner

Id: d5WliMM2h6I

Length: 9min 12sec (552 seconds)

Published: Sat May 16 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/Gundamwilliam]

Yeah! This is another reason why I loved this game so much it gives a shoutout to those og players who couldn't play with these

[u/Uzichike]

There was also a metal disk collectors version of this that had no board so you could just play anywhere with people who also had them

[u/enragedbreakfast]

I had a couple metal discs that were similar too, about the size of a toonie. One was butterfree, not sure on the others. They were similar to this but without the figures on top.

[u/justplainjay]

Holy crap this needs to come back!

[u/Green_Nightlight]

I remebered these and it was why I was so excited. I was really into TCG when this was first going to come out and I had preordered some from a local comic book shop but they never came because manufacturers kept using lead paint on the figures (a tale as old as time, right?). Either way, I've been waiting to play this for years (literally!!) and I'm just so pumped we get a new play style with Pokemon

[u/[deleted]]

Meant to post this

[u/MrStu]

Never knew about this, and literally just raped ebay.

Now I need a proper wooden board to play on :) I'm thinking of recreating the spinners in a tablet app to sit next to it for battles. to reduce the "oh I know just how to spin this to get the awesome move" factor.

[u/leitgo65]

I still wish the my rerelased this. I remember when I was waiting for TFG to come out, but it was cancelled. So unfortunately I was waiting for years to play this game.

[u/SpaceV]

I used to play this all the time as a kid. I still have all my figures!