The Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) is a collectible card game where players build decks using Pokémon, Trainer, and Energy cards.

Players battle by taking turns, using attacks and abilities to knock out opponents' Pokémon.

Strategy, deck building, and luck determine victory. It's popular worldwide in both casual and competitive play.

The first Pokémon Trading Card Game booster packs and boxes were released in Japan on October 20, 1996, as part of the "1st Starter & Expansion Pack/Base Set". The corresponding English release of the Base Set occurred in the United States on January 9, 1999, and included the 1st Edition Base Set.

The rules of the game are within the medium range of complexity. To start off, your deck must have 60 total cards including at least 1 basic Pokemon as seen on the right. You are allowed to have 4 copies of the same card with the exception of energy cards. Energy cards are used to give your Pokemon the energy to do an attack. A water energy card can be used to fill the water energy requirement. An exception is the normal type (the gray star) which can be filled in with any other energy card.

Only 1 Pokemon can be played at a time but 3 more can be put on the put used for replacements and occasionally special abilities. Next to the name of the attack you can see the little energy icons that correspond with what you need to actually be able to do the attack, and on the right is the amount of damage the actual attack does. The amount of HP (health points) a Pokemon has is shown on the top right of the card followed by the type the Pokemon is. In this case Arctibax (the Pokemon used for the example) is a water type. Type matters a lot in this game because all of the types have a weakness against a certain type, and every type also has a strength against another type. The player also has the ability to retreat his Pokemon at a certain cost (different for each card), shown as the bottom right of the card. Finally the last analysis of a card is the stages. These are useful to know if your Pokemon card does not have basic written at the top left. This means that this cards needs to have the previous counter part placed at the round prior to then be able to evolve it.