What is Pokémon Card GB?

Pokémon Card GB, released in the West as Pokémon Trading Card Game, launched in Japan on December 18, 1998, and in North America on April 10, 2000. Developed by Hudson Soft and Creatures Inc., it adapts the trading card game into a story: the player travels between eight card clubs, defeats their masters, and challenges the Grand Masters for the four Legendary Cards.

The adaptation is faithful to the paper game of its moment, with 228 cards in all: the Base Set, Jungle and Fossil expansions nearly complete, the first fourteen unnumbered promotional cards, eighteen cards created for this game alone, and two Phantom Cards, Mew and Venusaur, meant to be generated between two cartridges by the infrared Card Pop! feature.

The physical tie-in is the collector's detail, and it splits by region: Japanese copies included a promotional Dragonite card, while copies outside Japan included a promotional Meowth card. The cartridge itself differs too, the Japanese release carrying a built-in infrared feature that the Western versions instead borrow from the Game Boy Color's own infrared port.

Card GB treats the card game with a seriousness the paper hobby rarely received in video games, and it remains the only official way to play the 1990s card game against the computer in its original form.