Remember being told in the school playground that holding Down and A when you saw your Pokéball wobble meant you had a better chance of catching the creature inside?
It was all nonsense, obviously, but that didn’t stop the conspiracies from spreading. As an avid Pokémon Go player, I’ve seen similar rubbish spread via word of mouth at meetups, from players who insist you’ll have better luck if you quit battles at a certain time/spend money/stand on one leg, and so forth.
And so, with the launch of Pokémon TCG Pocket, it’s unsurprising to see the same kinds of conspiracy theories spreading once again. Here, as you’d expect from a game essentially about paying to open digital card packs, the prevailing theories are all based on how to get better cards.
First, one that seems like it has a chance of actually working. X user MetaTradingCo has suggested using your phone’s screen recording feature to capture the game’s Wonder Pick shuffle, so you can play it back in slow motion and work out where specific cards land.
Several theories spotted by ComicBook include one that X user hawaiinguy808 describes as a “pretty significant glitch”.
“If you do a Wonder Pick and skip the shuffling cutscene and immediately choose the spot that had the card you want, you will get it 90 percent of the time,” they wrote, posting footage of an Articuno EX card as proof.
Next up, “the folded crimp trick”. This involves fondling your digital card pack until it faces sideways, then looking for a specific wrinkle in its packaging.
“If you see it look a bit folded/wavy instead of perfectly straight, there’s a hit in the pack,” X user SteeloAndKri wrote. “It’s not every time,” they added. “Does seem to drastically increase hit rates though?”
While we wait for a Pokémon theory that does actually pan out, here’s a look back at how the actual Pokémon Red and Blue catching mechanics operated behind the scenes. Did you know that you didn’t actually need to lower a creature’s health down to 1HP for the best chance at capturing it? Now you do.
Pokémon TCG Pocket is already off to a good start, with more than $12m earned in four days.
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