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Although the Pokémon TCG has been going for over 25 years now, a glaring mistake has finally been addressed for the first time.
The announcement of Pokémon TCG Pocket brought plenty of excitement with it, though perhaps the most important and drastic change is that the back of the in-game cards is receiving a new design. Perhaps ‘new’ is the wrong word to describe this change, and that ‘accurate’ is a better choice.
When the Pokémon Trading Card game was introduced way back in 1996, there was a minor discrepancy with the anime and game’s design. Ordinarily, a stock Poké-Ball opens with the clasp attached to the red half of the ball. Unfortunately, the illustrations for the original TCG show it connected to the white half.
Whether or not people really ever cared about this is completely up for debate, but the reality is that this mistake has finally been fixed. For the digital Pokémon TCG Pocket game, at least.
There’s been no word on whether or not the physical TCG is going to receive an update to the designs on the back of its cards though, though the change to Pokémon TCG Pocket’s back design might be an indication that things are going to change very shortly.
The correction was originally spotted by pixel artist TAHKO, a fellow Pokémon TCG fan. Responses to the change have been fairly mixed. Some have said that they “wished they fixed it without redesigning the card art,” while others have made it clear they never even noticed anything.
Realistically, in order to actualise change to the backs of the physical cards, it would need to become compulsory for all competitive and casual TCG players to sleeve up their cards. While games like MTG and Yu Gi Oh mandate this at times, Pokemon TCG is not yet one of those. We don’t expect this change to reach the physical trading card game for this very reason.
