Cyndaquil · Sword & Shield Promos #SWSH221

5 comments

1. 

   Ambassador

   (2 years ago)

   This card has the wrong Pokédex entry. The entry of this card’s Japanese counterpart comes from Pocket Monsters Y (and/or BDSP), rather than the respectively PLA entry. I suspect the reason for the slip-up is that this is effectively an alt art of ASR Cyndaquil, whose Japanese counterpart did use the PLA Pokédex entry.

   I suspect this kind of mix-up happens semi-often. Particularly during the BDSP/PLA-adjacent block of TCG sets, I noticed that it didn’t feel like there was any great rhyme or reason as to which games entries were being taken from. Like, you’d figure any Pokémon that was in PLA would take its PLA entry, or else any Pokémon in BDSP would take their BDSP entry, but it all feels a bit scattershot (even in the JP edition).

   I honestly don’t have much regard for the inclusion of Pokédex entries on the cards themselves – their absence during the e-Card/ADV/PCG era went unnoticed by me, and their Papyrus-looking return in the DP era made me less than excited to see them return. I’m glad they swapped out that uglier typeface, but something about them looking the way they do, even now.. idk

   Reply
   • 

     TwylisAmbassador

     (2 years ago)

     I have mixed feelings on dex entries on cards. Visually, they’re kinda terrible, stuffing all this tiny text in the corner and visually clashing with the relative simplicity of everywhere else.

     But functionally, they’re important. Many people, particularly kids, collect cards without necessarily playing the video games. For them, the cards become the main exposure to a pokemon’s “lore”, which is often interesting or tied into the design in a significant way.

     But at the same time, most kids have internet now, and can easily access that same info from Bulbapedia or whatever. And even if they didn’t — are they even reading the cards anyway? I don’t know, but they certainly can’t with no entry at all.

     I do think part of the issue is the layout. Dex entries that end up wider and limited to two lines instead of three are a lot more pleasant to look at and read than cases like this one. There’s a lot of flexible negative space there – there’s no need to squish it all the way they do.

     Reply
     • 

       AmbassadorTwylis

       (2 years ago)

       It’s definitely a layout problem. Aesthetically, the EN game seems to have stumbled on something that looked really nice with the Base–neo cards allocating a vertical chunk of the card to the dex entry, but I think the JP game (and subsequent EN templates) have been slow to adapt it because it doesn’t make any sense to prioritize that much of the card’s space from the functional, TCG as a game, perspective¹. On the other hand, you’re exactly right that they do need to be there in a functional sense, where functional means less about the game more about the branding of these cards, etc.

       My pitch would unironically be to bring back something akin to the e-Reader in terms of a way to digitally interact with these cards. I can see it being unpopular because it might feel gimmicky, but what else was the e-Reader but a prototype of QR codes and other optical-encoding tech we’ve basically mastered at this point? I think if it’s done right, adding a non-proprietary tech like a QR code (modified to be aesthetically pleasing, somehow, not unlike the way that e-Reader dot codes were integrated into the e-Card-era template¹), would re-introduce an element of card design I’ve always been personally fond of, and give the dex entries the space they need to breathe.

       ¹ Like, just slapping a black-and-white QR code onto these cards would look ugly, so I’m not advocating for that. But there are other non-proprietary formats out there and some have different levels of tolerance for optical variance in color, etc. to better blend with the existing card template aesthetics.

       Reply
       • 

         TwylisAmbassador

         (2 years ago)

         My knee-jerk response is that making it reliant on technology would make it too prone to becoming inaccessible over time, but at the same time, having a QR code type thing on the cards alongside a dedicated Pokedex app to “scan” the pokemon for info the same way the anime characters do would be incredibly cool. Could also include way more info that way.

         Reply
2. 

   Tina

   (6 months ago)

   Found in both the Collector Bundle and Spring 2022 Collector Chest.

   Reply