Pokemon TCG Was Accidentally Broken After 20 Years By Speedrunners 

Thanks for watching. I tried a lot of new things in this vid, tell me what you think! Resources: Technical document (Note, Down + A glitch doesn’t work on certain versions) - pastebin.com/QnYGzNey Speedrunning discord: discord.com/invite/aXc3nbC

Imagine reading a tech document, only for it to define something as "weird shit." I swear, speed runners are something else.

I pulled it off on emulator, and found out something interesting: If I turbo buttoned using B and pressed A somewhat frequently, it would actually end the battle as well. Idk why

Huh.... now I understand why people have said for years Down+A increases your chance of a Pokeball throw catches a Pokemon instantly....because of glitches like this

The OST for this game goes unnecessarily hard. I love this game.

These animated borders are fucking awesome, time to step up my own game

I love the fact that there's a technical document that's listing possible results as "weird shit" and I think science needs to adopt that instead of "miscellaneous".

Thanks for the cameo!! This was a blast to be a part of breaking open the RTA run and then verifying the TASes on console

"It contains something very important, the content of the player's deck." I feel as though there may be some ACEs in this deck.

I came to the video to check something, and I’m happy to say that I was right! Back when I was 8 or 9, I was playing against Lance, and I suddenly won, just barely starting the fight. It may have been a couple of turns in, but I’m not entirely sure; as a kid, I just thought that it was either a bug (like in many games at that time) or some winning condition that I hadn’t paid attention to. I’m happy to see that it was actually a thing and that it could be replicated😊

I love when a video about a speedrun is longer than the run itself

You were right; this was bonkers. Gotta love how speed runners break games like eggs.

1:09 why would a speed runner glitching a win through the game ruin my childhood? Bad card draw and coin flips is more ruining than any exploit I've ever seen.

Oh dang, I remember when this was discovered. The No ACE category was really fun to grind even though it got quickly forgotten. Kinda wish I had tried the ACE category at some point, but this was a fun nostalgia trip either way!

I like that there's an actual Pokémon game where pressing Down + A with good timing actually does something

It's always amazing to see how once someone determined enough to cross wires in videogames can find one random input at the right time and the right place and the time for the game comes down like you pulled the bottom brick of a Yenga tower.

Oh, yes, I love accidentally breaking the fabric of reality of a videogame.

Awesome video! Even tho I've ran the category, I had no idea how the specifics worked aside from some very basic stuff. Also I got way too much credit in this video lol, I don't even hold the WR in Glitchless or No ACE.

as a kid i found out the down A thing existed, but being not with internet communities at the time, i never realised what i found. i mostly ignored it too cause i didnt realise what i stumbled upon.

cannot believe you excluded my last place time on the leaderboard at 1:02 :'(

The Pokemon TCG video game is an underrated gem. That musicccc 🎶 🕺

Great video! Fun fact: at 0:55, I'm the CJ they're talking about. If I remember correctly, I raided TiKevin right before that clip.

This videos runtime is how long it took 000aj to run the game great work, as always! love these history videos!

I like how Hex values are displayed with the Pokédollar sign lol

Pokemon tcg is such a gem, haven’t thought about it in years but it’s super sick to now see a speed running community for it

Interesting video, Doc! It was well presented considering all the technical (and painstakingly) shenanigans behind TAS recording. These research videos are fun to watch and sometimes inspiring for potential speedrunners ✌🏼

I love this and thank you soo much for illustrating all of the steps through the processes involved. I would love to see more glitches with this game and see if there are any for the Japanese sequel and its English translation version.

When I heard that they found the part in the code that checks the player's deck I knew Arbitrary Code Execution was coming soon after.

I love how people can find these glitches out. Also I really like your music choice from The Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy X

How dare you! I was just about to subscribe when you blew up that innocent Charizard! You didn't give me enough time! You Monster.

When the document describes things as "weird shit" you KNOW you're going to see it doing something amazing likely involving random bytes executed in weird and wonderful ways. This kind of stuff is why I love TAS and ACE, and this video is a great showcase of one of those.

I play this game occasionally from a new file just for fun, and this glitch has been a godsend to skip that awful tutorial. LOL

I used to play this game quite a bit back in the day. I even recreated the theme decks from the real world sets that were in it card for card.

I wasn't aware of this glitch before and just pulled it off multiple times, surprisingly easy to do, and super useful for farming packs. I was finally able to get those two missing Super Energy Removals I needed in under 3 minutes. Thanks for posting this!

I see you using Legend of Dragoon music at 6:49 👀. Excellent choice

I remember using that "glitch" but I always thought it was there on propose to speed the game up. I remember using it a lot.

It always surprises me Digimon isn't more well known than it is, considering how long it has been around for, and i literally grew up with it alongside pokemon. It's probably due to a lack of strong media presence in the early 90's, outside of the sub par digimon the movie, the digimon world games, and the tv series were all we had, but still a shame none the less.

really great and concise video, interesting to see progress through "failure". Happily subbed and waiting more interesting content

Holy shit Halo Wars music, I was NOT expecting that on a Speedrun Examination video on a spin-off of a spin-off of pokemon.

Dude, is that mystic quest music?!? Along with FFX music? Yo. That's sick.

However the Pokemon card game DID get a sequel to it on the GBC BUT IT never actually left Japan.

the editing on this video is really good! love all the custom graphics and animations.

6:04 Man I'd do the glitch at home just to skip the horrible tutorial, not even for speedrunning reasons

Nice music selection. I knew I could make out some familiar tunes there. Bonus points for using Dragoon and Lufia tracks

i still have some of this games music in my head having not heard any of it or played the game in probably 20 years...

9:05 "ok, is everyone with me?" no

This is pretty much why I say the words "never" and "impossible" have a poor record.

Can we appreciate the fact this video is 1337

Bro I still play this game on my laptop... This video made me so happy

I just got back into this game oddly enough.. farmed four imposter prof oak and then realized they shuffle their hand back into their deck and it's not a mill card. QQ

Here I am thinking how endlessly complex it is to code a (relatively) simplistic game from almost 30 years ago, and wondering how that complexity has grown exponentially since then. @_@

I appreciate the effort put into the video, but not your best video imo. I know it can be hard to explain technical stuff, but I feel like too many thing were just glossed over. Basically the video boils down to: 1. Here's how the down + A glitch works 2. There's some bank switching that happens in code 3. Whirlwind does something to mess up with return codes. 4. You can setup your deck to execute a ACE using this glitch. To be honest, the first part is the only one I felt like I really understood how things worked, the rest I just had to accept. Looking forward to more videos tho.

I highly respect the Halo Wars background music

I just tried and it was surprisingly easy. Then I tried it in the Japanese version and all it did was crash the game.

"Subscribe or I'll make Charizard explode" Bruh, you're only giving me an incentive to *not* subscribe

Your editing skills improved a lot! Great video!

I tested the glitch to exit Battles myself with a 3DSVC and emulator Version of the Game as a europe Version and it seems the glitch doesnt work on this. On a american Version it works fine. It always stuck in the Party Screen and Music stopped. I also tried up+a above the opponent an had some glitchy results The glitch to exit battles also works on the 2nd TGC Game. But often it crashes like the europe Version. Maybe the american version is a earlier Version and europe and tgc2 are like updated Versions.

I heard that "correct choice" sound from Stadium 2! Such a satisfying soundbite.

I can't imagine this category holds interest for long. The only optimization is a shortest-route calculator, and most of the value of a speedrun of a TCG game is optimizing luck and strategy.

I would love a short vid on what the "weird sh*t" is lmaoo

One of the easiest off-by-one ACEs I've ever seen

5:12 Explode away, my good fellow.

I have great memories of Pokemon TCG, thank you very much for the vid!

Sweet! I'm playing through this at the moment and had been wondering what the speedrun times were like.

video goin hard with these edits

I remember doing this glitch 20 years ago spamming buttons on the gameboy around the end of the game during a duel and winning. I was confused at what happened lol and this vid explains it.

Love that your yt is popping off doc!

I love how you dove right into the content of the video. subscribed.

If i ever make a Gameboy game, I'll make the game pure spaghetti code on purpose just so stuff like this can end up happening

Love that FF X background music.

Unrelated, I know, but for years I pined for generational updates to the TCG and Pinball video games. There could at least be as many pokemon games as there are Mario games.

down Plus A glitch is what made people believe that in the original games would help capture Pokemon.... I did this tactic and it worked about 80% which made me believe in the tactic hehehe 😞

I bet some kid on the playground told people if you held Down+A you could beat the elite 4 but no one believed him. The one time Kid on the Playground was right.

Great analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

It wasn't four minutes fast, but I beat a playthrough of it glitchless inside of about ... 4 hours, which isn't anywhere near a speedrun. All I did was use normal card game search engine shenanigans. The game can't fuckin' handle it when you Professor Oak three times in a match to get a Charizard on turn 3.

this was my favorite game from back then and still is, I feel this game deserved more attention

I did this as a kid back in 2006 on emulator and just assumed it was a debug cheat like so many others. Never thought to look it up before. Neat that it's a glitch that happens to function very similarly to a debug cheat.

3:29 DDR arrows!

Nice music choices! It's always nice to see (or hear) The Legend of Dragoon out in the wild.

Nice Halo Wars music haha 😄

No required battles? Not really a game anymore at that point.

normally im all for glitches in speedruns, but this in particular I can see as a major issue. This glitch alone removed all actual mechanics of the game from the run. when you loose so much of the game that it doesnt mater which game your actually playing anymore, its not fun for the runner or the people watching I feel. massive breakthroughs like this undoubtedly push the limits of achievable times, but it also sets these games communities up to die as the challenge becomes less and less enjoyable. "how fast can I mash out frame perfect inputs" is the only question, what happens on screen no longer maters and all other objectives are skipped. The most famous case of this is obviously OOT, and the resulting solution was splitting the boards into a glitchless and any%, or even just specify that this particular glitch cannot be used as a category (no major glitches or no down A glitch or something like that) but overall, while its an impressive discovery and the way it was found is super cool, I consider it worse for the game overall/ consider if this glitch was known about 20 years ago at launch, would that make it a good speed game? would anyone have ever ran that for more than a year or two before quickly hitting the lower limit of how fast you can do the glitches and get bored? this isn't a development of the route, but a circumnavigation of it.

i loved the explanation on bankswitching and interupts

Great video man

I loved this game as a kid.

I love the TCG game, and I love watching speedrunners break things. Great video!

Down + A to instant Win is possible on the version added to the Nintendo Online. It saves me a ton of time collecting cards to build certain decks and complete the collection. (Haymaker took a lot of tries at certain packs to obtain, because all three mons are rares)

Define "a few sessions" because I never came close to finishing this game as a kid.

3:28 No Patrick, this isn't Friday Night Funkin'.

Praise Arceus that they discovered this glitch! There was a lass NPC in the Fighting Club that I could never get pass until now.

Maybe this glitch is why I had 17 player character is K.O on the bank once

A 13:36 record before finding the super glitch? That's exactly the same length of this video, and it threw me off for a moment after I came back from a pause.

I was literally thinking about getting into speedrunning this game then this appears

The graphics and editing was super effective.

Castlevania SOTN music and FFX music in the same video... ily dude

great video. pokemon speedruns is a really cool community and definitely deserves more attention.

Great work!

my one question, Is this possible on the 3DS virtaul console version, or only the original games? I have both versions.

Nice Lufia 2 music at 9:40!

Funny how the video length of this video is not only the exact same as one of the important speedrunning times made after finding the quick battle exploit, but also a second away from 1337 aka Leet