Neo Genesis

Neo Genesis, released in October 2000, is the 8th set of 111 cards in the Pokémon Trading Card Game. Its symbol is a pair of stars, one in front of the other. Neo is Greek for "new", and Genesis is Greek for "birth" or "beginning". Neo Genesis features second-generation Pokémon that come from the region of Johto and is the first set to do so. With it comes two new Pokémon types: Darkness and Metal, each with their own Energy cards.

The design on the cards have also changed, now looking closer to the Japanese version. The hit points displayed on the upper-right is now smaller, and its color has changed from red to black. The statistics on the bottom of the card now have dune-shaped indentations in the background immediately behind each stat. The text reading "Basic Pokémon" is now directly under the HP (Hit Points) instead of the upper-left corner. The information about the Pokémon directly below the illustration is now in a parallelogram instead of a rectangle.

Two cards from this set were banned from tournament play: Sneasel and Slowking.

It was at this point the 2 different play formats were realized: Unlimited (allowing all cards to be played), and Limited where only the Neo Genesis cards could be played (this limited format would go through a few changes where as more sets were released where the rules were changed to "Neo Genesis and newer cards are allowed to be played in official tournaments" this would later be changed to be "only the 8 most recent sets are legal for tournament play"). At this point the idea of "proxy" cards became frequent at tournaments where an older card could be used as a placeholder for a card a player only had a single print of.