How Pokémon studio’s unlikeliest mashup, Pocket Card Jockey, came about

Pocket Card Jockey, an unlikely mashup of horse racing and solitaire from Pokémon developer Game Freak that became a cult favorite on Nintendo 3DS, is back. Newly released Get your Pocket Card Jockey on the Move!Apple Arcade is a subscription service that brings this amazing combination of iOS and Mac to iOS. I’ve had the game for the past few days, and it’s been a delight to be reacquainted with its chibi racehorses (look at them, they’re trying so hardThis is fast-paced, high-stakes card-clearing that has a flippant sense humor and surprising tactical depth.

I was also inspired by the game to find out the answers to my two most pressing questions. This videogame idea is so bizarre! And… why?

Enter Masao Taya, a programmer at Game Freak who worked on most mainline Pokémon titles from 2002’s RubyAnd Sapphire to 2016’s Sun Moon. He’s the director of the original Pocket Card JockeyAnd Keep going!A horse racing enthusiast who dreamed of combining his love for horses with the joys of playing card games. Taya tells us via email that Game Freak friend, and horse fancier, was the one who gave him his final inspiration.

“I was already a horse racing fan and had been making horse racing simulators and similar programs. I’d been suggesting ideas to combine horse racing and cards games in the company. However, even I don’t think those ideas were very good,” Taya confesses.

Image: Apple/Game Freak

“Then one day, my colleague — Pokémon series composer and fellow horse racing fan Go Ichinose — recommended that I try out a certain solitaire mobile game. He knew of my idea and suggested that I use solitaire instead of my card game.” Key to Ichinose’s suggestion was the particular solitaire app he’d recommended. It is a very relaxing, thoughtful and enjoyable game. Pocket Card Jockey has the player clearing tableaux quickly against a time limit in the middle of a race to determine how well the jockey is balancing the horse’s levels of energy and stamina. It’s strangely exciting stuff.

“The solitaire app […] also had a leaderboard where you would compare your completion times to players across the world,” Taya says. “I was hooked on getting a high ranking on that leaderboard, to the extent that I even got second place in the world on the rankings one day.

“To achieve that, I needed to both ‘think of efficient plays’ and ‘rapidly, accurately move cards without wasting a single second.’ I found my mind was in a state of comfortable excitement as I did this. So I imagined that a jockey riding a fast thoroughbred, who is constantly analyzing the situation and making decisions in order to win, is likely under a similar sort of stress and experiences the same kind of excitement when things go well.”

To develop a prototype of the system, Taya met Ichinose and Toshihiro Obata. “Neither [Ichinose nor I] wanted to create a horse racing simulator,” he says; instead, they planned to smuggle an involved and authentic horse racing game into something that appeared quite different, so they could win unfamiliar players over to their hobby while still satisfying fans of the sport. Their final design has an amazing depth.

Image by Game Freak/Apple

Pocket Card Jockey Race has many phases. Solitaire hands determine how your horse will start out from the gate. They also affect how much energy you accumulate and how strong the relationship between rider and horse. Between these rounds, you need to position your horse tactically on the track, balancing many factors: the horse’s comfort zone, which determines the difficulty of the solitaire tableaux (and how much energy they earn); the stamina it will cost to move position; the horse’s preferred positioning relative to other horses; the distance from the inside of turns; and the location of power-up cards that litter the track. Finally, there’s a sprint down the home stretch, when the jockey’s riding crop needs to be used with sparing, careful timing to egg your steed on.

It’s pretty involved stuff. Ichinose and Taya both had deep knowledge of the sport, which I wanted to know. “When you’re deeply engrossed in something, it may seem to others like you’re working hard, or studying, or training, but sometimes the person who’s engrossed is simply enjoying themselves,” Taya says, drily. “I think that’s how it was. Looking back on it now, I seem to remember that we both spent quite a bit of money on our ‘studies,’ but I’d really prefer not to remember that part.”

Keep going! isn’t the first time Pocket Card JockeyIt has been featured on iPhone. Following the game’s original 3DS release in Japan in 2013, there was a free-to-play iPhone release in the country, but it didn’t work. “We couldn’t adapt the game to the F2P model well, so it didn’t work out from a business perspective,” Taya says. “Since then, I’ve been thinking in the corner of my mind of ways to make Pocket Card Jockey a successful mobile game, but I’ve also had my hands full with lots of other (fun) work, so I wasn’t able to put my ideas into action.

“While this was happening, Apple Arcade began to catch on in Japan. I felt that since Apple Arcade doesn’t have any in-app purchase except subscription fees, there would be no need to force an F2P model on the game. Instead we can offer only the fun core experience. Pocket Card Jockey. We decided to give it a shot.”

Image: Apple/Game Freak

Keep going! The 3DS Original is actually very similar, although there are a few tweaks. 3D renders of races are possible now, making it easy to see how the horses move relative to each other and to use power-up cards. The addition of stamina recovery card to the solitaire tableaux makes the distinction between energy and stamina more clear. Taya says there’s a plan to add all-new elements to the game via updates, too. Asked about the possibility of a Nintendo Switch version, Taya says he’s focused on getting feedback from Apple Arcade users and delivering updates for the time being, but he doesn’t rule it out. “We want to see the reaction we get and then we’ll think about the next step.”

While it’s a shame that Keep going!’s audience will be restricted to Apple Arcade subscribers, Taya’s story does show the value of Apple’s oasis in the freemium desert of mobile gaming. Pocket Card Jockey always made perfect sense as a mobile game, but the prevailing business model wouldn’t allow it. Apple Arcade creates a space where developers don’t have to twist their ideas out of shape to make them fit the mobile market — and where a beautifully strange and funny idea for a game can find a home.