Pokemon Fans Are Already Playing Pokemon TCG Pocket Early Ahead of Its Release

Pokemon TCG Pocket isn't out till October, but people are already playing it early.

By Tanner Dedmon

Pokemon TCG Pocket is sort of out right now since it's already gotten a very soft launch in New Zealand, but that region-locked release hasn't stopped plenty more people from playing the mobile Pokemon game anyway. Just as we usually see with new releases on Xbox and PlayStation platforms where people change their regions to play games early, Pokemon TCG Pocket seems to have many more players than just those in New Zealand with players all over social media showing off their pulls from Pokemon card pack while the rest of the world waits for the game to come out in October.

It's not uncommon for mobile games to soft launch in certain areas like Japan, New Zealand, or sometimes the United States, but this Pokemon TCG Pocket was a surprise of sorts because even the soft launch happened sooner than expected. That early launch was met with periods of maintenance and downtime while the developers worked to smooth out the release and perhaps to accommodate extra players from around the world, but things seem to have calmed down now.

For those outside of New Zealand, it seems players are finding ways to play through a combination of emulators, APK files floating around the Internet, and sometimes VPNs so that they can spoof their location and make it seem as though they're playing from New Zealand. Those kinds of workarounds are typically frowned upon by the creators of the games and can sometimes yield uncertain results since they involve downloading files others say are legit, so we won't be linking to any resources related to that, but if you've used emulators before to play games like Pokemon Go and the like in other regions, it seems the same is very much possible with Pokemon TCG Pocket.

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For those who don't want to mess with all of that, you'll have to wait until later in October when the game gets its worldwide release. It's scheduled to launch on October 30th for the rest of the world barring any gradual rollout The Pokemon Company might have planned that'd bring the game to other regions a few at a time.

If you're just now catching up on news about Pokemon TCG Pocket and are wondering what it is in the first place and how it fits into the larger Pokemon series, it's basically just a way for people who play the Pokemon Trading Card Game in a mobile format. It's of course got some of the typical mobile game hurdles like "Pack Stamina" that limits how frequently you can open packs without spending real money, and then there's of course the mystery of pulling worthwhile cards from a pack that isn't unlike the real-world Pokemon TCG. It's also got a unique kind of card called "Immersive Cards" which are already wowing people, so consider yourself fortunate if you manage to pull some of those when the game releases late next month.

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