Fair Warning: this post is about 2.8 years old, so some of the information might be a bit dated. On the other hand, this post was last modified about 2.8 years ago, so maybe it's up-to-date after all. In any case, please keep all this in mind while reading. Thanks for understanding!
A Quick Diversion:  

The Actual News:

I’m just gonna make this a quickie post just because I really don’t have much to chat about this time, but I’ve got two minor updates out of the way.

 

e-Reader Page Updates

First off: since adding the e-Reader Sprites and e-Reader Entries pages to the site, I’ve been working hard on getting as much as I can added to the site. But I still have a TON left to do! That said, I did get around to adding some important additions to both.

For the e-Reader Sprites page, I added some important notes to certain Pokémon entries. Specifically, as it turns out, not every Pokémon got its own card during the  Card-E era; notable exclusions include Farfetch’d, Unown, Rayquaza, Jirachi and Deoxys. But another issue is that some Pokémon evolutionary families straddled the line between Card-E and post-Card-E, so Pokémon like Spoink, Cacnea, and Swablu had Basic Pokémon cards during the Card-E era, but their evolutions did not. This means that the Basic Pokémon you scanned in will have a main sprite, while “Evolution Info” page will show the Pokémon it evolves to as a mini-icon… but since its evolution doesn’t have a card to scan in, there is no sprite for it for me to rip, nor a mini-icon of the Pokémon it evolved from.

As you can see with Golduck here, we only see its fuller sprite because that was the card we scanned, and we only see the mini-icon for its evolution. In other words, some Pokémon will simply only exist in either a main sprite -OR- mini-icon form! What a bummer…

Anyways, because of this, I’ve updated the Sprites page to denote which Pokémon families straddle the line between Card-E and post-Card-E, as well as which Pokémon simply had no Card-E cards to its name. Pokémon without either a Main Sprite or Mini-icon (or both) will have that section of their entry grey’d out, which you can see an example of below:

Pokédex # Pokémon Main Sprite Mini Notes
#325 Spoink Since its evolution never had a Card-E card, this Pokémon doesn’t have.0 mini-icon.
#326 Grumpig This Pokémon never had a Pokémon TCG card released during the Card-E era.
#331 Cacnea Since its evolution never had a Card-E card, this Pokémon doesn’t have a mini-icon.
#332 Cacturne This Pokémon never had a Pokémon TCG card released during the Card-E era.
#333 Swablu Since its evolution never had a Card-E card, this Pokémon doesn’t have a mini-icon.
#334 Altaria This Pokémon never had a Pokémon TCG card released during the Card-E era.
#335 Zangoose This Pokémon never had a Pokémon TCG card released during the Card-E era.
#336 Seviper This Pokémon never had a Pokémon TCG card released during the Card-E era.

I haven’t gotten around to adding grey’d out cells to EVERY instance of a never-existed graphic… but you can at least safely assume that if a particular cell is grey’d out, then that means that graphic simply does not exist.

…

As for the e-Reader Entries page, I did a touch of refining for the page… namely, adding the Pokémon’s main sprite on its “Pokémon Page” section, adding a “Notes” column, as well as only including the “Data Page” column when applicable (otherwise the “Card Page” info is extended to cover it). This is what it looks like!

Info Pokémon Page Card Page Data Page Notes
Charmander (HP: 50)
ID: A-10-#

Expedition 98/165

NO. 004
Lizard
HT. 2’00” WT. 19.0 lb.

If it’s healthy, the flame on the tip of its tail will burn vigorously, even if it gets a bit wet.

 ◆ Gnaw needs only 1 Energy of any type, meaning you can use it even on your first turn.
◆ Searing Flame does 10 damage to the Defending Pokémon. If you get heads on the coin flip, Searing Flame also makes the Defending Pokémon Burned.		 This side Dot Code contains data for construction function blocks.
Charmeleon (HP: 80)
ID: A-11-#

Expedition 73/165

NO. 005
Flame
HT. 3’07” WT. 42.0 lb.

If it becomes agitated during battle, it spouts intense flames, incinerating its surroundings.

 ◆ You can use Double Scratch with any type of Energy. It can do up to 40 damage.
◆ Flamethrower is a powerful attack, doing 50 damage. You have to discard a Fire Energy card attached to Charmeleon to use it, though. To make sure you always have enough Energy to use this attack, you should include Trainer cards like Energy Restore in your deck.
Charizard (HP: 100)
ID: A-12-#

Expedition 39/165

NO. 006
Flame
HT. 5’07” WT. 200.0 lb.

It uses its wings to fly high. The temperature of its fire increases as it gains experience in battle.

 ◆ You can use Tail Smash with any type of Energy. With heads on the coin flip, you do 40 damage to the Defending Pokémon. Tail Smash does nothing if you get tails.
◆ Flamethrower does 60 damage to the Defending Pokémon, but you have to discard a Fire Energy card attached to Charizard to use it. To make sure you don’t run out of Fire Energy cards, you should include Trainer cards like Energy Restore in your deck.

Nifty update, huh? At least hopefully it makes reading through it a bit easier on the eyes as there is less blank, open spaces.

OH! One last thing… while I was going through the various e-Reader entries, I discovered a few interesting little errors or random useless trivia with a few of them. I mean, I’m sure some random kid noticed these from time to time, but I suspect that basically no one noticed them all to compile them all together into a single post about it until now. Take a look!:

Anyways, that’s the e-Reader updates I have for you. I still need to work on creating the foundation for two remaining pages: one covering the e-Reader Applications (the stuff you get when you scan the Long side Dot Code bar) and the e-Reader TCG Glossary pages (the TCG info you get when you click on the red TCG keyword links). I’ll most likely get them going sometime this week, and I’ll let you know when that happens.

 

Zeo Blank Archive Update

Secondly: this one is a bit overdue, but I did a bit of an update on the Pokémon Zeo Blank Archive! If you don’t know, when Pokémon Zeo went dark, so did their blanks. But a while ago, Alveinhero on the PA! Discord contacted me saying that they have a sizable collection of Zeo’s blanks saved—which were in turn archived by Zeo superfans kyatt7 and angurisneo. On top of that, I’m actually getting hits from people searching for Zeo’s blanks. So until Zeo somehow comes back online and restores all their old blanks online, I’ve decided to do the faking community a service and hosting whatever of Zeo’s blanks that we’ve been able to find.

Since the last time I updated the Zeo Blank Archive, Alveinhero gave me a few new cards he rediscovered from Zeo, such as some of the blanks made by Marril2k. But another important breakthrough is that I was able to recreate all of Zeo’s Neo English blanks! Well, basically… the idea was, I took bottom half of Zeo’s existing Neo English blanks and dropped them on the full set of Zeo’s Neo Gym blanks in order to recreate every other Neo English blanks that are no longer online anywhere. Here, take a look:

+ =

Now with those blanks recreated as well as including other blanks recently rediscovered (such as a nearly complete set of Zeo’s Dragon blanks), I was able to basically double the size of the archive to what it is now. Take a look (left = before, right = after)!

One other blank recreation plan I was able to realize is possible is recreating Zeo’s Refractive Blanks. I will admit that I always thought their refractive blanks were kinda cool (of course I wouldn’t have admited it back then, ahem)… but some 20-ish years later, I was able to work out how Zeo did it specifically and in turn how to apply it to the rest of their blanks. So check it out:

On the left is one of Zeo’s own refractive blanks. Using special elite Photoshopping techniques, I was able to extract the refractive layer they added to their blanks (middle picture)… which I was able to add to one of their Dragon blanks (right picture), which to my knowledge never had its own refractive foil blank version. Pretty neat, huh? The idea here is that I can then use this technique to recreate the rest of Zeo’s refractive blanks and to fill in one more missing piece of the puzzle. Which, alas, is better than nothing, especially when almost all of this (and then some) are still missing…

Ooof! Well, hopefully one day some kind online citizen will rediscover their own personal copy of Zeo’s blanks and share them with everyone else online. But until that time, we’re here to protect and preserve.

 

 

Alright-yo, that’s all I have for you today. I’ve got some other tidbits for you in the pipeline, so keep visiting to site to see them when they go live! Good times…