1st Official Tournament Report Translated

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Thanks to Quinlan on the EFour discord, I got access to some scans from 1997’s September issue of Pokemon Fan Club Magazine.

Pages 4-8 of the magazine have a tournament report for the very first official Pokemon TCGtournament. I’ve gone ahead and translated it to divine the mysteries around the start of Pokemon’s organized play.

Here’s my writeup (complete with many pictures): pokumon.com/article/1st-official-pokemon-card-game-tournament/

Fun Facts:

  • The youngest champion was in Elementary Grade 3, while the oldest was Junior high Year 3
  • The decks they used were are pretty garbage aside from the 6/15 afternoon session’s. This is probably because they didn’t have real qualifiers and people were admitted based on lottery. Nobody was running Base Set’s more powerful trainers like Professor Oak, and there were only 2 copies of Bill in all 4 winning decks. Some of the winning decks lacked 3rd stage evos (one had Squirtles + Wartortles, but no Blastoise).
  • Though Fossil had not yet been released, you can spy a picture of Fossil Mew’s card in the background on page 5
  • Jungle Jigglypuff was in 3 out of the 4 winning decklists. Big pink energy.
  • The Pikachu costume is nightmare fuel

If you’d rather just see translated scans instead of clicking around my website, here they are (though it does help my SEO if you do click around so I appreciate it):

Hope you guys enjoy the article and scans! If you have any ancient Pokemon magazines (Fan Club or Trainers) please free to shoot them over to me for translating. It’s fun preserving bits of history and exposing them to a wider audience :blush:

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That’s awesome, thank you! If you have a lot of time on your hands and want to translate some more, you could go through this thred right here: www.elitefourum.com/t/trainer-magazine-scans-photos/31563/1
Many people here would certainly appreciate your efforts!

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Oooh thanks! I’m happy to translate whatever scans I can find for these events. The Trainer’s magazines are a treasure trove of information :blush:

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Wow! Great writeup. I have often wondered what decks were used to win the Pikas and I am thrilled to see a Chansey included in a winning deck of the first ever tournament since I hadn’t been able to find much info

www.elitefourum.com/t/is-there-any-info-on-the-decks-used-in-1990s-tournaments/31483/1

You can really see the level of appreciation for Chansey in 1997 with the beautiful coin distributed, costume at event, and Fan Club Mag that year. I love early documents it’s like a first hand experience of people slowly deciding their favorites back when Clefairy was super popular as well and the Poli line featured due to Tajiri’s fondness.

This love for Chansey was prominent from 1997 - 2000 (when Chansey was included in No 1 Trainer despite Blissey being released by then) and has re-emerged in the past two years with promotional campaigns for beautiful man hole and Mister Donut as well as more merchandise and toys than in the entire decade prior.