Pokemon Tretta: How to game the game

My kid loves to play Pokemon Tretta. It is rather expensive to play that game though. The great thing about this game is the type of players you meet when you play. It is very much like how it works in Pokemon anime. You make friends with fellow trainers, and they help you to catch Pokemon by lending you some Legendary ones to get you started. Received lots of love from players who gave me free Tretta (pretty decent ones). It has helped me to bond with my child as well. He is excited to be a button masher, and likes to decide the Pokemon and moves to execute.

Being the curious kind, I was tempted to understand how the machines worked to scan different Tretta for the respective Pokemon, as it was difficult to scan if you try to protect the Tretta by using plastic sleeves. It can be purchased from here.

First, the hammer to see what is inside. If you want to be entertained, you can see how much of a struggle is can be (I did not make this video, link to video). No Pokemon Tretta were harmed in the process of my exploratory work. Saw an interesting Youtube video by a kid about the Tretta chip, but lost the link. Think it gave some clues for me to investigate the technology behind Pokemon Tretta chips. If you observe the Youtube video, you will see that there is a metal disc inside every chip.

To understand  you will need some equipment to get started. Find a webcam, or buy a cheap one, because you will have to remove some parts. I used a cheap Logitech Webcam to do this. Remove the IR cut filter from the camera. You need a screwdriver and perhaps a tweezer. Go to this link and follow instructions. There is no need to add the photofilm for this project. Next, proceed to buy an Infrared LED (those used in remote controls). Also, resistors and battery holder with batteries, plus a breadboard. To save time, you can try using a remote control from you air conditioner, but I cannot guarantee that the results are reproducible. I used a 220 Ohm resistor connected in series with a 5VDC supply. These parts are easy to get if you go to Sim Lim Tower. If you are not keen on spending time to build the equipment, you can get an IP camera with built in infrared LEDs to do the same too. The cost of doing that is much higher.

Here are the photos of the front and back of a typical low level Tretta chip, without shining the infrared LED on it. Nothing interesting here.

Now, switch on the infrared LED, and shine it on the Tretta Chip. You can see something like the following:

Note that nothing was detected from the front of the chip. On the back, you can see an interesting pattern. See the circular ring in the centre. It is probably for a scanner on the machine to align an image before reading the patterned dots. The machine should have an infrared camera with LEDs to scan the chips, and the use of plastic sleeves may reduce the image contrast somewhat, which explains why the machine does not detect chips inside sleeves sometimes.

Here comes the fun part: scanning the chips of powerful Pokemon. You can see them below:

Observe that all the chips have a larger circular ring that is off centre. I presume that is used for rotational alignment to read the dots. To produce Tretta chips that are Legendary to game the game, you will need to do a few things. First, have a normal office printer available to print the respective pattern on paper, at the correct scale. Then, use a special pen/coating to create the respective pattern that the machine can recognise manually. Then stick that paper onto a Tretta chip that you don't need. Have yet to try that, so it may not work. Would be interesting to see if that works.