The popular Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) came to the United States at the beginning of 1999, a few months after the original Game Boy games and simultaneous with the anime show. One year later, on April 10, 2000, the first digital implementation of the game arrived in the form of a Game Boy Color game. Although it features only the first three sets–just over 200 cards–and a low-resolution interface, it is a complete and faithful reproduction of the card game. I've played Magic: The Gathering, the world's first (and best) TCG, since 1994 but only got into the Pokémon TCG a couple years ago thanks to the free digital version. As a teenager I dismissed Pokémon as too simple, but the game is a lot of fun. I no longer see the simplicity as a drawback. There is plenty of strategy, and tournament-quality decks can do crazy things thanks to powerful deck-searching cards. A skippable tutorial teaches you how to play the Pokémon TCG. Players use their card collection to build decks of...
Just in time for its 30th anniversary, Nintendo added the Game Boy game, Mario's Picross, to its Switch Online Expansion Pack. The portmanteau "picross" refers to the fact that each puzzle is solved by cross -referencing both vertical and horizontal numeric clues on a grid, creating a picture . The game is barely known in the States, though it led to several Japanese sequels. Each puzzle is made up of columns and rows of boxes, somewhat like Sudoku, either 5x5, 10x10, or 15x15. Each row and each column is labeled with one or more numbers. These show how many consecutive boxes in that column or row must be filled in. When all the right boxes have been filled in, a simple picture, like a cactus or frog, will have been formed. Before you fill any boxes, you can accept a "hint," meaning one column and one row are filled in for you—a significant headstart, which I enjoy. To solve these puzzles, you have to use logic to deduce which boxes are the targets. For example...