“Hey! Learn our syntax here.”
- zoom
- jpg (129 KB)
- cred: P.P.
3.8K
- ↓ 64.00
- ꩜ 87.66
- ↑ 198.99
{L}{L}{L} → Surprise Thunder : 30
Flip a coin. If heads, flip another coin. If the second coin is heads, this attack does 20 damage to each of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon. If the second coin is tails, this attack does 10 damage to each of your opponent’s Benched Pokémon. (Don’t apply Weakness and Resistance for Benched Pokémon.)
illus. Mitsuhiro Arita · LV.31
External: Bulba ↗ · #ad / Affiliate Links: TCGplayer ↗, cardmarket ↗, Amazon ↗, eBay ↗
Stores up electricity in its body, then suddenly releases it to surprise and shock everyone.
The Hawth
Pokémon’s first Secret Rare.
Psykicked
This is kind of subjective, but Dark Raichu’s rarity is stated as Rare Holo, but because it’s set number is larger than the limit, it should be a secret rare or a secret rare holo.
Adam Capriola
I agree—good catch. I’ve switched the rarity to Secret Rare. Thanks!
100000Volts
Such a waste of time by the stupid Wizards. Bad enough they gave the non-holos Dark Vileplume a fighting weakness (on purpose of course), they made a worthless card like this one. I am glad that I DID NOT pull this one.
Nick15
They didn’t make the fighting weakness “on purpose”; when designing cards, they likely used Adobe InDesign, and you can place graphic elements by name. What likely happened was that the person who was designing the card simply typed “F” on their keyboard thinking they typed “Fire” and accidentally selected “Fighting” instead. This is why a majority of “wrong type” errors are “Fighting/Fire” mismatches, like on Blaine’s Charizard (Gym Heroes) and Crystal Nidoking (Aquapolis).
Strč prst skrz krk
So this card was designed by Wizards? Was it ever released in Japan?
PartTimeTCGCollector
Yes, in the set Crossing the Ruins, the equivalent of Neo Discovery
Ambassador
Continuing a theme on BS Jynx, I’m once again looking into Pokédex entries that were most likely written by WOTC¹, and in this case Dark Raichu, known for being the “WOTC-created” Pokémon card, would naturally be the next card to look for. WOTC certainly noticed that all the other Pokédex entries for Dark Pokémon in this set are TCG originals, and decided to write an original entry for their own Dark Pokémon as well. However, we once again see a pretty uninspired entry that seems to be immediately derived from the card itself – i.e. “Dark Raichu” has the attack Surprise Thunder, and so the entry talks about it releasing electricity as a surprise. (Bravo…)
Dark Raichu did later show up in Japan in Neo 2, where its Pocket Monsters Gold Pokédex entry was used – basically putting it in line with the Dark/Light Pokémon from Neo 4, who all seem to all use video games entries this time, as opposed to TCG original entries²𝄒³.
Dark Raichu also made an appearance in Pokémon TCG GB 2 (which released about a year after Neo 2 came out in Japan), and I found it interesting that, instead of the Gold entry the Neo 2 card uses, the game’s dex entry appears to instead use a translated version of the Pokédex entry that WOTC wrote⁴𝄒⁵;
身体にたまった電気を、いたずらに放電して、まわりをおどろかせる。
¹ It is possible someone at NOA or some other relevant org wrote these for them, but considering how banal they are, I’d be shocked (pun very much intended here) if anyone went through any level of reaching out to an external department.
² Feel free to double-check this! I did a quick selection of several random cards from both sets and this appears to be the case for me; Rocket is all original, Neo 4 is an apparently random selection from Gold, Silver, and Crystal.
³ That some of the English card dex entries seem to be TCG originals – Dark Haunter would be a great example of this – can be chalked down to original translations. Why would WOTC bother with doing original translations vs. copy-pasting from the games like they usually do? Beats me, but I suspect because Neo Destiny uses a mix of entries from Gold, Silver, and Crystal, WOTC might’ve gotten confused and thought they once again had original entries like the last Rocket themed set, and went ahead and translated things themselves again.
⁴ ポケモンwiki: https://archive.is/81aEl
⁵ PCG search: https://pcg-search.com/card/gb2/gb20012.php || https://archive.is/gjNJc
Vomer
I’m really bummed we never got a WotC set. With what has come out about Jamboree, it seems like the arguments were between the higher ups while the designers just wanted to make cool cards. A world where both worked well with each-other could have really made the TCG better. The bean-counters squeezing every penny out of the game and not treating the game well is such a shame. We could have a world where things like limited formats, eternal formats, and multiplayer formats were adopted from Magic.
Nick15
anon-san
I always found it funny how this was originally in the japanese neo discovery set but came to the english side before we even got neo genesis.
Lief Katano
That’s because it wasn’t really “originally” in the Japanese Neo Discovery. It was originally made by WotC for the international Team Rocket set, and brought over to Japan by Media Factory as soon as possible.
…Which, incidentally, does make the random inclusion of a Dark Pokémon in a set otherwise without far more sensible.
Rich
Dark Raichu in Neo Discovery, and then Rocket’s Hideout in Neo Revelation, hinted that Dark Pokemon would come back again in Neo Destiny.
anon-san
Destiny was originally called darkness into light and I hate that they didn’t call it that in the English game.