Pokémon TCG Pocket’s success proves this Switch Online game needs a sequel

Pokémon TCG Pocket has taken the world by storm, as any shiny new Pokémon app tends to do, but it’s not without reason. TCG Pocket is a great addition to the trading card game roster, and with tens of millions of downloads, it’s easy to see where its success lies. It’s easy to use and understand and it’s a great way to introduce Poké-players to the TCG arena, with a slightly toned-down, far more palatable version of the classic gameplay in comparison to its predecessors.

But we wouldn’t have Pokémon TCG Pocket without the original Game Boy game that Nintendo released in Japan way back in 1998, which then made its way to North America and Europe in the year 2000. This original iteration has appeared on several Nintendo consoles over the years, with a port to the 3DS back in 2014, and then during the 2023 Nintendo Direct it was announced that the game would be available from the Nintendo Switch Online library.

So, with the Pokémon TCG Pocket app garnering such a huge following, we think it’s worth giving the original game a tip of the hat and maybe even a sequel on the Nintendo Switch. It makes perfect sense, considering how widely loved the new Pocket app has become, and we’d love to see Nintendo give the OG a bit of love. It’s easy to forget, with a massive anime, several films, and a hundred and one different games, that the world of Pokémon lives in the real-world in the form of physical cards as much as it carved a spot in the video game industry back in the mid-90s.

Understandably, mixing the two media in the form of an online trading card game was always going to be a winning combination. Pokémon TCG Pocket’s success proves that this is still the case even two and a half decades later, but with the imminent release of the Switch 2, we’d love to see the classic Game Boy title get an updated sequel on an updated console. Granted, we did already see a second game back in the day, but Nintendo only released Pokémon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR! in Japan.

Even if we don’t get a full sequel, we’d love to see Pokémon TCG Pocket make its way to the Nintendo Switch Online store. With millions of downloads on mobile, we’re positive that Pocket would become even bigger and better if it appeared on the Switch 2, but we’ll take what we can get. If you’re after some ‘mon-based mobile game freebies, we have all the new Pokémon TCG Pocket codes and Pokémon Go codes, plus we’ve got all the info you need on a new Pokémon game.