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Discard 1 Energy card attached to 1 of your own Pokémon in order to choose 1 of your opponent’s Pokémon and up to 2 Energy cards attached to it. Discard those Energy cards.
illus. Keiji Kinebuchi
Formats: Other: 1999–2001
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Mantidactyle
This card was so powerful that it was banned in Japan.
Oh, and it’s combo with Recycle Energy, just in case it wasn’t broken enough.
C.Ezra.M
The first Recycle Energy card was released after the ban took place.
This card was replaced with the more powerful Super Energy Removal 2 (https://pkmncards.com/card/super-energy-removal-2-aquapolis-aq-134/), which actually had an even greater drawback than this. Only has a 25% chance to succeed in your favor.
Guest
japan didnt ban this card
Anonymous
It was restricted in the Hall of Fame format.
http://blog.livedoor.jp/aqwsderft/archives/55777043.html
Basically, 26 cards from the Base-Neo format were assigned a point value from 1 to 3, and you could not use more than 4 points worth of cards in your deck. Super Energy Removal was worth 2 points. Japanese fans liked the Hall of Fame format that they later created their own, fanbase-curated points lists years later to balance the format even more. (One of these lists had 76 cards on it, including many cards that were never released internationally.)
feyblade
It’s cards like these that make you wonder just what sort of discussions the design team was having when they made up their trainer cards. Base set’s trainerbase ranges from “situationally good” to “stupifyingly powerful.” If this card saw printing, what OTHER card ideas were deemed too powerful for play, and what ideas were nerfed before the initial print?
Nick15
Discussions? LOL
The original designers has NO IDEA what they were doing. To be fair, neither did Richard Garfield and the rest of Magic’s Alpha/Beta designers. Stuff like this, Oak, Bill, are effectively Pokemon’s “Power Nine”, akin to Magic’s Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, and Moxes. That said, it’s fascinating how the most expensive card in Magic and Pokemon are 180 from each other: Black Lotus is kinda boring looking but has serious game play value, while 1st Edition Base Charizard is just super cool looking, but has zero play value.
JickFown, Cheung
I think if this card is a prima star card, it may be not too broken, but every deck will have one instead.
Otaku
It would have been interesting to see how an Ace Spec or Prism Star version of Super Energy Removal panned out; without serious playtesting and just Theorymon, I could honestly have seen such cards range from probably-broken-staples to niche-specialist cards and anyplace in between.
As for what the game’s designers from the time were thinking, it was NOT that they were releasing a TCG that would not only stick around for over 20 years, but be played competitively around the world! Looks like there was about 10 months between the official release of the first Pocket Monsters video games in Japan and the official release of the TCG, which means less than that was spent designing and balancing the gameplay.
Remember early suggested guidelines for deck building from official sources? If you actually follow those, a card like Professor Oak and Super Energy Removal, while still powerful is also super costly.
Benjamin Poke Battler
OP card. I neeeeed more.
JP
Tiny bit of trivia: the original Japanese print of this card does not specify “up to” 2 Energy cards. However, the Pokémon Card Official Book 2000 (aka “Silver Bible”) lists errata for many old-back Japanese cards and does say “up to”; this updated effect was used for Base Set. There never was a physical Japanese print of the card that used the updated wording.
linkinboss
The game would have been such a mess if it had been printed concurrently with the Japanese releases from the start, I can’t imagine what WOTC would have done with the rules changes and the several errata they made.