Pokemon has come a long way over the past 20 years. Nintendo is celebrating the series that skyrocketed Game Freak into stratospheric success and made many of Nintendo's portable handhelds must-own devices by re-releasing the original card pack that got it all started back in 1996.
Siliconera did a brief cover of the news that originated from a Tweet on the Japanese Pokemon Twitter account, in which they announced that the original Pocket Monsters Card Game pack would be re-released on February 27th, 2016 as part of the 20th anniversary of Pokemon.
The news about the trading cards making a comeback has been spreading throughout the Pokemon fandom quite quickly, with a lot of card players and long-time followers of the series being interested in whether or not the cards will be released in their region.
I suppose that's really the big story here: will Nintendo release the cards in a region near you?
According to the Anime News Network, the cards will be available for 1,300 yen ($10.80). The card shields will carry a 715 yen ($5.94) price tag, and the original battle mat that's used as the playing field for the card battles will be re-released and available for 5,000 yen ($41.50).
Before Pokemon became the phenomenon that it is, the whole thing originated as a card game. The portable games and cartoon followed and became just as popular. There were even those reports about kids leaving home to go fulfill their destiny to emulate the adventures of Ash Ketchum.
The game series has somehow managed to maintain its luster after 20 years, with the newer games still selling in the millions. There are also regional and international card game competitions taking place featuring Pokemon, which just goes to show how embedded the whole brand has become in gaming and pop culture.
In fact the last two games that came out on the Nintendo 3DS, Pokemon X and Y and Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire have both managed to move more than 10 million SKUs each – the former actually did close to 15 million SKUs according to the sales data posted on the official Nintendo of Japan website.
As for the card game, expect to see the re-released cards make an appearance on store shelves in Japan starting February 27th, 2016. There has been no date set on whether or not the original cards will be released in North America and Europe.
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