How Pokémon Studio’s most unusual mashup, Pocket Card Jockey, came about

Pocket card jockey, an unlikely hybrid of horse racing and solitaire from Pokémon developer Game Freak that became a cult favorite on Nintendo 3DS, is back. The one that just came out Pocket Card Jockey: Keep going! brings this inexplicably hilarious combo to iOS via the Apple Arcade subscription service. I’ve had the game for the past few days and it’s been a delight to re-acquaint himself with his chibi racehorses (check them out, they’re trying so hard), quick card clearing, flippant sense of humor and unexpected tactical depth.

Playing the game also made me want to know the answer to two burning questions. Who on earth came up with this bizarre idea for a video game? And why?

Enter Masao Taya, a programmer at Game Freak who worked on most of the mainline Pokémon titles from 2002 ruby and sapphire until 2016 Sun and moon. He is the director of the original Pocket card jockey and Drive on!, a horseracing obsessive who dreamed of somehow combining his passion with a deck of cards. But, Taya tells me over email, it was a friend and horse lover at Game Freak who had the final moment of inspiration.

“I was already a fan of horse racing and developed horse racing simulators and similar programs. I had suggested ideas within the company that combined horse racing with card games. But even I don’t think those ideas were very good,” Taya admits.

Image: Game Freak/Apple

“Then one day my colleague Go Ichinose, composer of the Pokemon series and also a horse racing fan, recommended that I try a certain solitaire mobile game. He knew about my idea and suggested that I use solitaire instead of my card game.” The key to Ichinose’s suggestion was the specific solitaire app he recommended. Solitaire is usually a relaxing and thoughtful game, however Pocket card jockey lets the player quickly clear tableaus against a time limit in the middle of a race to see how well the jockey is balancing the horse’s energy and stamina. It’s weirdly exciting stuff.

“The solitaire app […] also had a leaderboard where you could compare your completion times to players around the world,” says Taya. “I was so addicted to getting a high ranking in this ranking that one day I even finished second in the world rankings.

“To achieve that, I had to both ‘think about efficient plays’ and ‘move cards quickly and precisely without wasting a single second’. I found my mind to be in a state of pleasant excitement as I did this. So I imagined that a jockey on a fast Thoroughbred, constantly analyzing the situation and making decisions to win, would probably be under a similar amount of stress and experience the same kind of excitement when things are going well.”

Taya and Ichinose teamed up with programmer Toshihiro Obata to develop a prototype. “Neither [Ichinose nor I] wanted to develop a horse racing simulator,” he says; Instead, they planned to smuggle an intricate and authentic horse racing game into something that looked completely different, in order to attract unknown players to their hobby while satisfying fans of the sport. The design they finally settled on has a surprising depth.

Image: Game Freak/Apple

A Pocket card jockey Race has several phases. Solitaire hands determine how well your horse starts off the gate, how much energy you build, and how strong the bond is between horse and rider. Between these rounds, you must tactically position your horse on the track, balancing many factors: the horse’s comfort zone, which determines the difficulty of the solitaire tableaus (and how much energy it earns); the stamina it takes to change positions; the horse’s preferred positioning in relation to other horses; the distance from the inside of the curve; and the location of power-up cards that litter the track. Finally, there’s a sprint down the stretch when the jockey’s riding crop must be used with sparing, careful timing to goad your steed.

It’s pretty complicated stuff. I asked how intensely Taya and Ichinose had studied the sport to prepare for the game. “When you’re deeply engrossed in something, it might seem to others like you’re working hard, studying, or exercising, but sometimes the engrossed person is just enjoying themselves,” Taya says wryly. “I believe, it was like that. Looking back on it now, I remember we both spent quite a bit of money on our ‘college’, but I’d really prefer not to remember that part.”

Drive on! is not the first time Pocket card jockey has appeared on the iPhone. After the game’s original 3DS release in Japan in 2013, there was a free iPhone release in the country, but it didn’t work. “We couldn’t adapt the game well to the F2P model, so it didn’t work from a business perspective,” says Taya. “Since then, I’ve been thinking in the back of my mind how to make Pocket Card Jockey a successful mobile game, but I’ve also had my hands full with a lot of other (fun) work, so I haven’t been able to put my ideas into it to do the deed.

“As this was happening, Apple Arcade was starting to catch on in Japan. Since Apple Arcade doesn’t have any in-app purchases other than subscription fees, I felt there wasn’t a need to force an F2P model for the game. Instead, we could just offer the core experience of fun Pocket card jockey. We decided to give it a try.”

Image: Game Freak/Apple

Drive on! is indeed very close to the 3DS original, with just a few additions. Racing scenes are now rendered in 3D, making it easier to keep track of the relative positions of the horses and power-up cards, while the balance between stamina and energy is more clearly delineated with the addition of stamina regeneration cards to the solitaire tableaux. Taya says there is a plan to add entirely new elements to the game via updates as well. Asked about the possibility of a Nintendo Switch version, Taya says his focus for now is getting feedback from Apple Arcade users and providing updates, 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 Drive on!‘s audience will be limited to Apple Arcade subscribers, Taya’s story demonstrates 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 didn’t allow for it. Apple Arcade creates a space where developers don’t have to whack their ideas out of shape to make them suitable for the mobile market – and where a wonderfully weird and fun idea for a game can find a home.