Dec. 18, 2024

TRAINER'S EYE #120 - "Arcanine Zoomies For Pokemon TCG" ft. Justin Keller from Special Conditions & Sleep It Off

Show Notes
Transcript

Join Justin Keller, a Pokémon TCG enthusiast and the co-host of both Special Conditions and Sleep it Off, as he shares his journey from Pokémon GO to the competitive Pokémon TCG scene. He reveals how his love for Arcanine and dogs shaped his fandom, and how Pokémon Sleep became his next big podcasting adventure. Tune in to hear about his podcasting experiences and how the Pokémon TCG meta influences his approach to the game.

Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay

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Your next Pokemon adventure begins here!

WEBVTT

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I'm Justin Keller, host of Special Conditions and Sleep It Off, and this is my Pokemon story.

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Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns, where we interview people about their experience with Pokemon.

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My name is David Hernandez.

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Today, I'm joined by Justin Keller, co host of both the Special Conditions podcast, a TCG podcast, and Sleep It Off, a Pokemon Sleep podcast.

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Justin, welcome to the podcast!

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Hey, long time coming.

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It has been, Justin.

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What we were talking about before, I said, I've known you haven't been on the show for a while, but you've had a lot of life experience.

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activities go on, you know, for example, you just got married.

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So congratulations on that.

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you, thank you.

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Booked the venue in August of last year, if that tells you anything, this is now December of the following year.

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And so, you know, it was like over a year of planning and all that stuff.

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So it was quite a long endeavor.

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Absolutely.

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And you know, weddings are important, you know, they're, you know, very necessary, but it's also the anniversary of when you started on special conditions, it's going on two years.

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And I got to ask, how has that journey been just going into talking about TCG with Adam to even now?

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You know, it's kind of wild to think that it's been two years.

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It, I learned about the TCG really through listening to special conditions with Adam and Josh Brown as the hosts.

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and then I was like, you know, this is kind of fun, you know, listening to it.

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I already liked Adam through listening to him from Lure It Up and the Pokemon Go podcast.

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And.

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it kind of like spoke to me like, all right, this could be fun.

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And this was also a formative year for a lot of people.

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It was 2020.

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We didn't have a lot of things to do.

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I was currently unemployed.

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So like, Hmm, let me see what I can do about these cards.

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And so like, you know, I'm starting on TCG online.

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I'm trying to like learn the things and listening to Adam talk about the stuff, getting excited about the cards.

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And this was like right before the whole crash of Logan Paul.

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That's kinda like, how I got started into like, learning about it, learning about the card game.

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And then like I caught the bug.

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I was buying the cardboard.

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I was wanting to play the game.

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I was getting all the codes.

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This was back in the day when you had to pretty much buy codes.

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You had to pay money for these code cards just so you could redeem them for individual cards So like, if you wanted a, Giratina V for example, you might have to redeem 20 code cards worth just to trade for it.

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Or you can try your luck at like opening the packs manually.

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yeah, so I was learning that way.

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And then I was like, come on, locals open up now.

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We're getting into like the 2021 timeframe.

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There's not really like people aren't really like playing in person yet.

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But I finally did find a store near one of my friend's house that had locals.

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So I was able to start building decks and going and playing in person.

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And that's when I really like started to appreciate the game and what it was about.

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Fast forward I noticed that special conditions is getting like fewer episodes and farther between, and all of a sudden it hadn't like, they hadn't posted in, say a month and a half, two months.

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And so I talked to Adam like, Hey.

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I'd hate for you to have to quit this podcast.

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I will help you host if that's something you're interested in.

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And then he was me like, yes.

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And it's like, you know, we talked to Ken cause he's like grandfather of the Pokemon professor network.

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and then that's how we started.

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So basically special conditions started your interest in the trading card game of Pokemon.

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And at that time you didn't play the card game or you didn't collect at all.

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I didn't.

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I hadn't touched cards since I was in elementary school.

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That's crazy.

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So at the time when you were listening to the podcast, you were just collecting.

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Cause of course things were closed down.

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What were you trying to do?

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Were you trying to get like the whole collection completed?

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Were you trying to just get specific ones you were going after?

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I mean, at the early days, I was just learning, like, what even the different rarities were.

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Within the first, let's say, 15 packs I opened.

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I got this rainbow card.

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It was a rainbow Eternatus VMAX.

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I'm like, I don't even know what the heck this thing is.

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I've never seen a rainbow card.

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I had never, I don't even, I barely knew what a VMAX was.

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I just knew it was a bigger version of something.

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I didn't know about secret rares.

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I knew about the main set.

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I didn't know about TCG player.

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I didn't know about so many things and I was just like, let's get the cardboard.

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Let's watch Leonhardt and all of his opening videos and all the nostalgic videos of like, Team Rocket, Base Set, all that stuff.

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And, you know, before you became the co host of Special Conditions, while you were just listening and you were collecting the cards during the pandemic, what was it about Special Conditions that played a role into you getting involved with Pokemon?

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Like, what was it about that show specifically?

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So, at the time, I wasn't familiar with a lot of TCG podcasts, and they just weren't, they didn't seem as prevalent at the time.

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And, podcasts are my thing.

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That's how I consume a lot of my media.

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for work I'm a mechanical engineer and, at the time I was designing air conditioning systems for school districts and they, while can be technical at times, can also be very mundane tasks doing a bunch of drafting on the computer.

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And so I consume a lot of media through podcast form because I can listen to it while at work.

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And, that was one of the things.

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Pokemon specifically as well as sports and other things, but I really just enjoyed the podcast format because you really feel like Friends you feel like you're part of the group.

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You feel like you know them even if you don't know them.

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you know, that's such a good way to say it because, you know, it's always been said, you know, we get to develop a deeper connection compared to visual formats and you actually remind me of when I was working because I was essential.

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I was a caseworker.

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So I'd have to drive around everywhere, all over Dallas for those, you know, shout out to you guys, cause we don't get paid enough, but you know, basically lived in my car.

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I got tired of just listening to the same music.

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I love the songs, but they would just become repetitive and that's how I got introduced to podcast because it allowed you to kind of consume different topics.

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It you got to hear different subjects being talked about, you know,

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yeah, At one time podcast seemed like a dying art, but you know in the last couple years especially from the Pandemic podcasts have made this huge resurgence.

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It's crazy.

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Everyone has their own podcast now, which I'm all for

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Yeah, it's a new rap album of 2020.

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That's what I call it.

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But on that note, so, you know, we fast forward to when you asked to be the co host of special conditions.

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It's one thing to be just somebody who consumes the podcast.

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Meaning it's another to actually.

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be part of the whole Format of having to develop a show of if you decide to do editing and all that What made you want to step up to become the co host special conditions?

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I just felt like it was time.

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A, I wanted to return the favor for like, what that show specifically had done for me.

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B, I also just wanted to give back to the podcast space at large.

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I enjoy them so much, and I enjoy so much about them.

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I just wanted to give back.

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It felt just like I consumed so many, so ferociously, if you will.

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I just wanted to give back.

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And so I was like, this is my way to give back.

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it was the thing.

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It's not necessarily that I knew the most about, but I had the desire to talk about it.

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And, you know, if people want to listen, they want to listen.

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now when you came to record your first episode, what was it like, you know for me I recorded I had no idea what was going on.

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Were you still kind of scared?

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Were you kind of comfortable?

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Definitely anxious, kind of intimidated, but you know, it's pretty easy when, I'm joining a longtime co host.

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Adam's been doing podcasts for years and years now.

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Even though he would say he's no expert.

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He was an expert compared to me.

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So it made it like smooth sailing.

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So having Adam as a co host made it really easy for you to transition into that podcast role, it sounds like.

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Yeah, I wasn't paralyzed, huh?

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Special conditions pun.

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Or

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flip a

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another one.

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Yep.

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Yep.

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and he didn't get burned either.

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Oh, I'm trying to

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right.

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Now, now I think the joke is poisoned.

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Yeah, I can't think of he found he found one guys.

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I couldn't think of one.

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Now

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He's just confused.

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See, we got there.

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we got it.

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We got it.

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Yeah, we got them all.

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But you know, it's great that you know, you came into the podcast space and you know, started with TCG.

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And now that you've done the podcast, I know you got a chance to 10 regionals.

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And you actually go into like locals playing the TCG.

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how did you transition from being a collector to becoming like an active player and trying to go out to these tournaments?

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First, to help seeing a friendly face there, wink.

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That was the first time we had met in person, right?

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Oh, yeah, yeah.

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I forgot about that.

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Yeah, that's true,

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Yeah, Arlington 2022.

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In December, right?

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December 22.

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Man, something about that month and year was just special, I guess.

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Mm

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no, I just like, a, it was convenient because it was really close by B, since I was pretty involved in my locals at the time, I knew a bunch of people going.

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So it made it easy.

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see, I really just wanted to experience what a huge tournament was like.

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Now, I had been in some like box tournaments or local star tournaments that pushed like, 60-80 people, but you know, this tournament was pushing, 1500 and that's masters in TCG specifically.

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It doesn't even include, you know, all the VGC or the, the juniors and seniors or any of that stuff.

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Now, you're competitive in TCG, and you know, the other ones people are familiar with are with VGC and specifically also Go.

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Why did you lean towards being more competitive in just the trading card?

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Is it just your experience because of the podcast, or is it just more of you like the card game more?

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So like, I like Pokemon Go.

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I like VGC.

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But their play styles are more remote oriented.

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You're not really going in person to these things.

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I enjoy the in person experience.

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So.

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TCG is largely in person.

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Granted, when I started learning, it was TCGO and a lot of online only.

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But it's largely people dedicating their time during the week to travel to their local store to play.

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And there's just something different about the in person experience.

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I'm sure, like, you experience when you go to the Pokémon GO events in the summertime.

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the reason why people go to in person GoFest, it's, or just like even remote GoFest, but you meet up with a bunch of people.

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It's just that in person personal connection.

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It's just can't be beat.

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So if you're going to like play a fun deck, what would you play?

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Like what's a fun deck for Justin?

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hmm.

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everyone enjoys what's called like a beat stick deck.

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I do big damage.

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So like Roaring Moon, fun deck.

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You can hit big damage.

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Any HP you want, it has a, it has a move called, frenzied gouging where you just like, I knock you out and then it then does 200 damage to itself, but it doesn't matter.

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I knocked you out, so

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think of Charizard base set.

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Basically.

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yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Exactly.

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Exactly.

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Do the most damage possible.

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Another one that was really fun there was an Eternatus deck that I really enjoyed because, you didn't need a lot of energy to power it up.

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It had a special ability where instead of putting 5 Pokemon on your bench, you could put up to 8 Pokemon on your bench.

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And you just got to play more cards than the other person.

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And you just played faster and it just was so much fun.

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And then you could also, there was a Galarian wheezing that turned off their abilities.

00:12:06.413 --> 00:12:11.548
So you could basically stall while you set up everything and they like, can't use their abilities.

00:12:11.558 --> 00:12:12.359
So it was fun.

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The other people didn't enjoy playing against it, I certainly enjoyed it.

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You enjoy being on the, uh, giving it, but not the receiving.

00:12:20.403 --> 00:12:20.864
Yes,

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what they say.

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Yeah.

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Do you ever try to play a deck based around your favorite Pokemon at all?

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you I try but like man, so my favorite Pokemon is arcanine.

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He doesn't have a lot of competitively viable cards now the Hasuian Arcanine Did see a small amount of rogue deck play but really He just doesn't see a lot of play right now.

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Now, we did just in TCG Pocket, there was like an event, and you can play the Arcanine in like regular PvP in TCG Pocket and do okay.

00:12:52.886 --> 00:12:55.407
But, as far as a trading card game goes, not really.

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Now you said Arcanine is your favorite.

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How did it become your favorite Pokemon?

00:12:59.423 --> 00:13:02.903
So like many things, Foundation from Childhood.

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the year is 1998.

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We're in a blockbuster.

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I'm like, come on, parents, please let me get a pack of Pokemon cards.

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I think I'm in the first grade.

00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:16.110
they're like, okay, if you share with your brother, cause they didn't know what it was, they don't know what they're buying.

00:13:16.110 --> 00:13:18.899
And just like a little piece of cardboard for three or 4.

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Why?

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And so in that first pack that we open, there's an Arcanine card in there, which I had never seen before.

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I didn't know about this Arcanine.

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And At the time, I really wanted a pet dog.

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I was trying to convince my parents that we should get a dog.

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And so I immediately gravitated like, Oh, this Arcanine is a dog.

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It is now my favorite.

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So

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was the card out of curiosity?

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What set was it from?

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The good old Base Set Arcanine.

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Oh my gosh, the legendary Pokemon.

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Heh heh, I think that's what it says on the card.

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The Legendary Pokemon.

00:13:52.876 --> 00:13:56.509
So I want to close off this section with something that y'all do on special conditions.

00:13:56.830 --> 00:13:58.182
It's called art of the week.

00:13:58.476 --> 00:14:00.796
Well, how about you explain what is art of the week real quick.

00:14:01.375 --> 00:14:12.703
Art of the Week is something we do from time to time where we focus on a certain Pokémon and it could be a Machop, it could be a Articuno, it could be whatever.

00:14:12.703 --> 00:14:28.241
A lot of times it's like randomly generated and then we go through, before the show, we go through all the art and we go through some honorable mentions and we rate like our top three and we just visually talk about the art and some of these crazy cards you may have never seen.

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And some of these Gen 1 Pokemon have an obscene number of cards.

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Like I'm trying to complete my Arcanine set and there's like 60 cards or something crazy.

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I don't even know the number anymore.

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There's, there's like variants of cards and some of these cards are like 200 and I'm just like, I'll get it eventually, but it's not high on the list.

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So for the sake of time, I didn't prepare that much, but we're going to just do one card.

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Ah, this is Blaine's Arcanine.

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So, this is from back in the day when there were Gym Leader Pokémon.

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So it's an Arcanine and he's opening his mouth like he's about to breathe a fire blast.

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And the background is a holographic, you know, with a Cosmo holo pattern.

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And it looks like the fire blast is just directly behind him.

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It's a first edition.

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He's a legendary Pokemon it's just very classic late nineties Pokemon card.

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It is.

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So the reason why I brought this up is this was actually when the gym sets basically came out.

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this is the first set that I ever got.

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I got the Blaine's deck'cause I saw this Aine and I saw it.

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So for those who don't know, it has an attack called Firestorm.

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It deals a hundred think big damage 120 damage.

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And I'm like, dude, that's stronger than jars are.

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And that's the only, it was, but that's the only reason why I got it.

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I think it was a blockbuster as well.

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And so I card.

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Yeah.

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Hold on, hold on one second.

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I'll be back

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All right.

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While he's looking for stuff, follow the podcast, Spotify, Apple music, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast, follow as the pokeball turns, do it now.

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Give me five stars.

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Dang, I must have put it away.

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But what I was gonna do is I have a sealed box of that deck

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Oh, wow.

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Dang.

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Yeah, a friend of mine had it from their childhood and they knew how much I loved Arcanine so they gave it to me There's sealed collection

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Oh my gosh, that's crazy.

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as you were saying

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so I have my car.

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I still have that car.

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It's a little bent, unfortunately, but I still have it.

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And the fact that, you know, Heim was your favorite, I had to bring it onto the show.

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It's like, I haven't had a chance to talk about Now it's not first edition guys.

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It's not first edition.

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Trust me.

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Yeah.

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arc and I

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Luckily you can like get a replacement for like 20 bucks now or something.

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Yeah, I don't wanna replace it.

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It has, uh, nostalgia

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Well I meant like a better one like, you know, think about now that you wouldn't, you would never replace the original.

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I finally, after like, I don't know, 15 years found my original Arcanine card.

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It was buried behind another Arcanine card in my childhood binder that I didn't know about.

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It was buried, it was in my parents basement.

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really?

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You didn't even know about it?

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Well like I knew, there, but I don't live in Kansas anymore.

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And so my chances to, like, when I go back to remember to go find the, I mean, put the binder in the basement was like slim to none.

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So,

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So that's the first card.

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The second one is my favorite Pokemon.

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And I decided to pick this one.

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for those who don't know, it's actually the promo Articuno, which came out during the power of one.

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It had three legendary birds.

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And what you see here is Articuno shooting like a ice mist.

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It's only probably an ice beam, but it's ice mist kind of attack.

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It's called

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ray or something.

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Yeah, exactly.

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And the reason why I chose this is I feel like this is Articuno is my favorite and I'm trying to have a binder full of Articuno cards for those who don't know.

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And I feel like this one is so underrated.

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Because it just has Articuno with movement.

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It's not hollow.

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I know I get it, you know, it's not shiny, I guess, but I've always just appreciated just kind of how they get Articuno in a very serious pose.

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And it's actually has a whitish color, which I really, really enjoy.

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So,

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yeah, it's like the Articuno is like the Articuno is charging up for that blast.

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That's why he's whiter.

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And, uh, another reason I think it's cool is it it can paralyze the other Pokemon, a special condition.

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Oh

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but

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but very cool.

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I had not actually seen this card.

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I familiar with this Bromo.

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Yeah.

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I've seen a lot of the older Articunos, but I don't remember this one specifically.

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no, this one's came out during the, it was a given out when the power one was in theaters, you would get a random one.

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I don't think, I don't think you got all three and they had Articuno Moltres.

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I think they had one other.

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So I've always appreciated this one.

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They all have pretty cool art, but this one, I just always felt like it was the most underrated because it's not holographic.

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It's not EX or it doesn't have those fancy big numbers that, you know, all the other current ones have.

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So, Justin, we dived into, you know, your experience with TCG back in 2020.

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And you talked to briefly about how you got a Pokemon cards in blockbuster.

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Was that kind your first experience with a franchise?

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Did you dive into the games at all?

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so I Would say a typical for Pokemon people.

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experience was the anime.

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I was all about the anime I I loved it, you know every day after school gotta watch it gotta see what Ash and Pikachu were up to now I thought Pikachu was a little a hole back then I Was like no you gotta raise the Charmander.

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Come on.

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Keep the Charmander But yeah, so that's like that's what started the interest and everything and then you know it evolved from there There was you know, we're going into blockbuster because I wanted to rent Pokemon snap.

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You know, we get some of the cards.

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I collect some of the cards, you know for like base set up through I Kind of dabble in like gym heroes gym challenge, but really like team rocket and like fossil and jungle or my sets My first video game was Gold.

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My brother had Blue.

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Even though my brother was younger, we both got the games at the same year.

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He got Blue, I got Gold.

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I enjoyed Gold because you got to experience Game 1 in quote unquote better graphics.

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And you got the second gen, right, to go along with it.

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I didn't have to switch, my account.

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I didn't have to start over.

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I didn't have to do a lot of these things.

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Sometimes I forget that, Johto was not the first generation.

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Like, I know the Pokémon are different, but, like, it was the first game for me.

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So did you keep, collecting over time?

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Did you keep watching anime?

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Like how

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No, so

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Mm

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like, you know, hot and heavy for a bit.

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I still continued with the anime up through the Orange League and then through Johto.

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but then it kind of died off.

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I really kind of got out of the Pokemon space.

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It was all about Lego.

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It was all about Star Wars.

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I kind of got out of Pokemon for a really long time.

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Now what do you think brought me back?

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Oh, I, uh, is it something, I think something big happened in 2016.

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It's to sunrise.

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That's gonna.

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Yeah, yeah,

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Is it?

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Okay.

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that's what it was, Pokemon Go in 2016.

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Now, like, I am not a jump on the bandwagon person.

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I'm a, we'll hold off.

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And then, okay, fine.

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If enough people are doing it, I'll do it.

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And so that's what happened.

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I didn't want to play.

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I was like, I don't want all these people playing this game.

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Fine.

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I'll do it.

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And at that point I was, I wanted to be an instinct player.

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I wanted to be yellow.

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I liked Zapdos better, but all my friends who now no longer play were Mystic.

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So I joined team Mystic.

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And so, and so that's how, that's how it was.

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And I played it.

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Oh man.

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You know, you remember the 2016.

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It was crazy.

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Everyone and their uncle was out.

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It was crazy.

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It's crazy how many old people played the game people was like gray and white hair old people.

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Hey, I'm, I'm, open in an age, my friend.

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So I can't really say anything anymore, but

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and then this like went on through like the november time frame We just still would see like hundreds of people at the park and then like one day in january of 2017.

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I'm like I'm freezing my butt off out here.

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There's not even really that many spawns, even though I'm in a park.

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