This year for Worlds 2025, I’m releasing four custom cards to help promote Pokémon Aaah!, and I want to share more info about each card being released. The first promo card is “Sample Pikachu”.
Now this card may not appear all that special—after all you’ve likely seen plenty of Pikachu from the Card-E era—but this is actually kind of a unique Pikachu card which has never been released in English… and arguably not even in Japanese! This particular Pikachu card was part of several “Sample” cards that Nintendo made to show off the e-Reader game cart at Space World 2001, but never officially released.
Here you can see a some pictures from the original event, showing the various cards used to showcase how the Dot Code bars work to scan data into the GBA e-Reader cart:
Unfortately, these cards would never be released, or even have their scan data recovered… until now! Well, at least the Pikachu card; it made its way onto Mercari Auctions some time ago, and was purchased for JP¥770,000 (about US$5,467). Better yet, the eventual buyer released the card to be data mined by GamingAlexandri, of which you can download the raw data for use on your own e-Reader. Pretty cool, huh? Of course if you don’t want to scan the raw data, here’s what you actually get:
Unfortunately, without the other card (Oddish), there isn’t anything worthwhile by scanning the long bar. But scanning the short bar gets you this (raw Japanese, plus translated into English):
| ピカチュウ (HP: 50) ID: R-09-# Sample |
NO. 025 りょうほほにはでんきをためこむふくろがある。おこるとためこんだでんきをいっきにはなってくる。 |
◆「でんこうせっか」は、コイントスが 「うら」でも、相手に10ダメージを与えることができるよ。 ◆「10まんボルト」は、たねポケモンとしてはかなり大きい50ダメージを与えることができるぞ。でも、 ワザエネルギーが多く、しかも、すべてトラッシュしなければいけないから、 いざというときに使おう! |
このカードのサイドコードは eゲームminiの1/2のeコードです | |
| Pikachu (HP: 50) ID: R-09-# Sample (Translated) |
NO. 025 It has small electric sacs on both its cheeks. If threatened, it looses electric charges from the sacs. |
⬥ Quick Attack can deal 10 damage to your opponent even if the coin flip is tails. ⬥ Thunderbolt can deal 50 damage, which is quite a lot for a Basic Pokémon. However, it requires a lot of Lightning Energy, and you have to discard all of it, so use it only when you need it! |
This side Dot Code contains data for 1/2 of a mini-game. |
Ahhhh what could’ve been.
So the English version is my version of what it might have looked like if Wizards of the Coast had released a version of it themselves. Now, yes, there were English versions of these Sample cards made by Nintendo (behind Wizards’ back, which is why they had a falling out in 2003), but this Pikachu card was never part of it. I was hoping to encode a Dot Code onto my own version, but unfortunately I couldn’t find a printer that could provide a fine-enough print to do make it work.
However, this isn’t the full extent of my info on the Card-E era! I have:
- Pokémon TCG Card-E Era — full info on what the Card-E era was about and how it worked
- e-Reader Sprites — ALL unique sprites used in the Card-E Pokédex entries; some of which have never been seen or collected until now!
- e-Reader Entries — every Wizards-era card had special game hints and tricks on how to best use the card; I’ve got a lot of them but I still have a lot more to process
- e-Reader Programs — still a work in progress, but you can see what kind of apps and unique sprite artwork that existed for these cards
- e-Reader Dictionary — covers all the unique TCG definitions used at the time.
For those curious about this rarely discussed era of the TCG, this is for you!
If you want to talk more about these classic cards, check out our social media pages:
We hope to see you there!