Remembering the Pokemon Master Trainer Board Game

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There has been a lot of Pokemon merchandise over the years. While Game Freak handles the primary games and third-parties are tapped to make spin-offs, most other facets are managed by The Pokemon Company. The anime has been running for most of the franchise’s life, and shows no signs of slowing down. The Pokemontrading card game is in the same boat, taking its own path in adapting the basics of Pokemon to a card format and continuing to expand. All the while, plenty of toys and other small merchandise pours into the global market. Taken together, Pokemon is one of the strongest media franchises in the world and shows no signs of slowing down.

Within the torrent of products with Pokemon branding, there are bound to be a few gems that got left behind. Toys like the Pokemon Battle Trainer game by Hasbro made big splashes in a few kids’ lives, while others missed out on them completely. A particularly rare piece of memorabilia was the Pokemon Master Trainer board game, produced by Tomy for Japan in 1997. The game was translated to English in 1999 by Hasbro and Milton Bradley, receiving a Johto expansion in 2000 and an altered Hoenn version in 2005. It was a fun way to experience Pokemon with friends, but some questionable design choices may produce some less than pleasant memories.

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Pokemon Master Trainer is a unique take on the first generation of Pokemon, and allows fans to bring one-to-five friends along as rivals. The game’s rules permit a single-player experience, but it’s designed to have rivals to compete with. The presence of other trainers growing in power and competing for resources is a concept the Pokemon games have not fully explored, so it’s interesting to experiment with it