Hi all,
For some time I’ve been working on writing up articles that chronicle the long history of the TCG. Right now I’m doing some research on the 2000 Tropical Mega Battle and have run into a little bit of a confusing situation.
There are 2 Tropical Mega Battles events that happened during the year 2000. One of them is the more well-known international Tropical Mega Battle that took place in Hawaii and produced the famed 9th Lucky Stadium card. The other was a tournament in Japan for children who either didn’t make the top placement for the international event, or weren’t able to attend.
According to a couple of sources, here’s the facts that I’ve compiled:
- The Japanese TMB 2000 (Known as World Challenge Summer Tropical Mega Battle Best in Japan) occurred on August 26, 2000 in Tokyo. This can be verified by the date written on each of the trophy cards that have surfaced from the event. Here’s the 2nd place card and the 3rd place card that share this date.
- The International TMB 2000 (sometimes referred to as the World Exchange Battle in Hawaii) occurred August 26-27, 2000 in Hawaii. This can be verified by a few firsthand accounts www.pojo.com/Features/0900/090100TMB2000.html and www.edo-hrzic.com/archive/Tmb2000.htm .
I also personally contacted Jason K. who won the international TMB events to confirm this date.
- Bulbapedia states that “Overall winners of the Tropical Mega Battle regional events would represent their country in the World Exchange Battle in Hawaii while the remaining top ranking players would compete in a domestic “Best in Japan” final. Both of these events were also held in late August 2000. The champions of the Secret Super Battle and Tropical Mega Battle “Best in Japan” finals were awarded Holofoil No.1 Trainer cards bearing their photograph superimposed on the illustration.”
So it would seem that both events occurred at the same time in different places. However, a recent set of Yahoo Japan auctions has me confused.
If you go to this sold auctions listing for TMB, you’ll see several items recently sold by the user ‘execa22657’. He claims to have won all of them first-hand:
-
page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k543782155
This is the 3rd place card from the Japanese TMB event in Tokyo. The surname here that is showing is ‘Tanabe’. -
page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/o465492855
page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/r476565310
These are nametags for the player with surname ‘Tanabe’ for the International TMB event in Hawaii and their guests -
page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/f465102152
This is the medal given to the international 2000 TMB event participants / runner ups in Hawaii
If you go to this old WotC article covering the international 2000 TMB event, you’ll see that Jason K. defeated Toshiya Tanabe in the finals: web.archive.org/web/20010429024702/http://www.wizards.com/pokemon/main.asp?x=tmb2000 . When interviewing Jason K. over email, he also confirmed that the Japanese player he defeated in the finals was named Tanabe.
The question here is–how was Tanabe in two places (Tokyo and Hawaii) at the same time? The old explanation I was going by was that there were simply 2 players named “Tanabe” in the Japanese tournament circuit.
However, the fact that the same seller has trophies / medals from both the International and Japanese TMBs seems to imply that he attended both, which means they could not have happened at the same time. When I asked Jason K. about this over email, he said he didn’t recall any players being awarded trophy cards at the international event, and as the first place winner he would’ve probably gotten one.
Any ideas on what’s going on here? I feel like I’m missing something rather obvious…