This is probably the longest and most time-consuming article I’ve written due to the amount of material available. After over a month of translating, typesetting, and research, I’m proud to finally present a comprehensive history of the 1997-1998 Lizardon Mega Battle.
Read the full article with 30+ scanned translated pages here: pokumon.com/article/lizardon-charizard-mega-battle-tournaments/
The Lizardon Mega Battle was the only national championships event to have an entire 120+ page commemorative book written about it. I have a copy of this book, but was loathe to deconstruct it to scan in properly since they’re getting pretty pricey ($200+). Thankfully, @prochaos was kind enough to do so. Much thanks goes to him for uploading the digital files!
Due to the length of the book and the work involved in *completely* translating it, I chose to focus on the pages that would be most relevant to the history of the event. Someday, I hope to go back and translate the whole thing, but there are other things on my website that need to get fixed up first.
Some highlights:
- The 3 Pikachu trophy cards came from the regional qualifier games. Each one of these cups was named after a town / city in the Gen 1 games. There are no trophy cards for the actual national championship. These cards differ from the ones given to winners of the 1st Official Tournament if you look at their card text closely.
- The event was split up into 3 phases: the Challenge League, Qualifying League, and Final Tournament. During the Challenge League, the 4th place players from each of the regional qualifying tournaments were given the opportunity to play their way into the Qualifying League. The Qualifying League would narrow down the pool of 46 players down to 8 (4 for juniors, 4 for seniors).
- The only girl competitor at the event was unfortunately eliminated in the Challenge League
- All competitors had to wear the champions’ cap they got earlier for winning their regional qualifier, as well as an exclusive parka given to all competitors who made the Qualifying League
- One of the most commonly played Pokemon throughout the tournament was the Hungry Snorlax promo card from the N64 Campaign.
- The Junior League final was over just 3 turns after it had begun, with Chansey striking the final blow using its Double-Edge attack (a fun fact for @qwachansey ). The runner-up had gotten greedy with his play and only had one Pokemon on the battlefield.
- In contrast, the senior league finals went to time, and the runner-up lost with 4 prizes remaining to his opponent’s 2.
- There were only 2 copies of each trophy created (one for juniors, one for seniors). @149montblanc actually owns one of them!
In addition to the main tournament, there were a lot of side events. In particular, the first-ever Parent-Child tournament was run at this event. While winners did not get the valuable unnumbered Kangaskhan promo card here, the 1st place winner did get a special trophy made specially by Ooyama:
This side event was also the source for the an exclusive Pokemon baked good, the Kangaskhan Dorayaki (eat your heart out, Pokemon Oreos)
Take a read and let me know what you think. This will be the last article I write for a little bit since I’ve recently closed on a new home and will be moving in soon 
Cheers!
