Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 2

 At the turn of the millennium, Yu-Gi-Oh started finding its footing and established what the franchise would become moving forward.  The official card game from Konami was taking hold and just as impactful was the premier of the Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters anime.

There was no stopping the Yu-Gi-Oh hype train in Japan and that meant there was no stopping the assembly line of Yu-Gi-Oh games to feed the hungry masses that couldn’t get enough of it.  It was another year and another Yu-Gi-Oh game, this time titled Yu-Gi-Oh: Tri Holy God Advent.  In Japan, that is.

It wasn’t until a year later that Yu-Gi-Oh made its American debut when the Duel Monsters anime was dubbed into English by 4Kids Entertainment, hot off the success of the merchandise fountain that is Pokemon.  Fitting that the 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh named a god after Roger Slifer because this thing exploded like the ending to Lobo’s Paramilitary Christmas Special.

I could go on a long-winded old man monologue about how it was the hottest thing in cool and one of my first shonen anime ever that I still enjoy to this day despite its faults, but this is a game collection review so I’ll keep it short.  Yu-Gi-Oh’s anime became a monster hit, but the manga it was based on still wouldn’t be translated to English for a few more years.  If you look on the back of some of the English game boxes (they’re in the instruction manuals in the collection) they say they’re based on the hit television series, which is not technically true, and on the back of some manga releases, a bit of text tacked on says it’s the inspiration for the hit anime featuring scenes too intense for television, which actually is true in both languages.  In America, Yu-Gi-Oh was riding the coattails of the anime specifically.

This means a couple of things for what was known as Tri-Holy God Advent in Japan.  Since America was late to the Yu-Gi-Oh party, that also means the game was late and wouldn’t come out until 2002, two years after its Japanese release, where it took the name Dark Duel Stories from the second Game Boy game.  In that time there was a sequel released in Japan, but that wasn’t the one chosen for an English release for reasons I’ll get to later.  I’ll refer to this Dark Duel Stories as DDS from now on.

Dark Duel Stories (DDS)

Just call it Dark Duel Stories.  We're never translating the second one.

This being an old translation means is there are discrepancies with the names used after the previous games, which were translated for the first time in the Early Days collection.  At the time of DDS’s release, the anime hadn’t gotten to some of the characters featured in it and thus there weren’t any English names made up for them.  That means it has Pandora instead of Arkana, Isis instead of Ishizu and for some reason the character of Simon (pronounced “see-mohn” because he’s Egyptian) Muran was renamed to Paradox.  Marik’s henchmen in this game and others also name their organization the Ghouls.  In the manga, the organization is named the Ghouls and the card players who got the rare cards for them are called Rare Hunters, but the 4Kids dub would simply refer to them all as Rare Hunters.

A few cards have different names too because this was back in the days when the translators didn’t realize the name “Frog the Jam” would lead to having to print “except Frog the Jam” to every single frog archetype card.

SLIME TOAD is not invited.

Since I was there and I still have my original copy of DDS, it’s hard not be a little biased, but now that I have the context of the games that came before it, not to mention decades of tabletop game experience, I think I have a new perspective on DDS.

The Battle City rules of the manga, which are closer to the real rules, started to creep into DDS, most noticeably with tribute summoning being added and fusion monsters being unable to attack the turn they’re summoned.  The fusion monster summoning sickness was only ever a rule in the source material and a lot of characters would use a made-up card called Quick Attack to allow them to attack.  It’s a dumb rule.

Tribute summoning helps to balance the game by making it harder to bring out heavy hitters, but the way it’s done is a little weird.  In every other Yu-Gi-Oh game after the Game Boy ones, you tribute monsters by selecting to play the monster you want to summon from your hand, the game asks if you want to tribute summon it and you then select which monsters to tribute.  In this game, tributing monsters is a command for the monsters on the field that puts them in a sort of offscreen tribute resource pool that allows you to then play the tribute monster from your hand.  It’s not annoying.  It’s just weird if you’re used to any other Yu-Gi-Oh video game.

DDS is the game that finally added single-use monster effects that can be activated the turn they’re summoned, but like ritual monsters, there are so few of them that they almost aren’t even worth noting.  At least magic cards found more use, but because of their high deck capacity a lot won’t see use unless you cheat for max DP.

Yes, magic cards.  Not spell cards.  At some point some other company you’ve probably never heard of had a problem with Yu-Gi-Oh using the term magic cards and made them change it terminology to spell cards.

The most unique gimmick in DDS is the custom monsters.  Alongside the usual card after every win, players are also given a card part.  These card parts are combined to make a variety of different monsters with a variety of different stats.  There are two sets of them: one consists of a top half and bottom half and the other consists of a body and a head.

I really like the custom monster system because it reminds me of the tabletop games where clear cards with designs on them are overlaid on sleeved cards to change them up and turn them into better cards, like Custom Heroes or Mystic Vale.  It also rewards experimentation because some of the combinations result in extremely powerful monsters and all of them have a low deck capacity cost, meaning you can build up a deck of your own custom-made monsters to get an edge.  It’s an amusing thought that some of these weirder-looking combinations bring the same excitement drawing a Blue-Eyes does in the source material.

If the core gameplay were still slow like in the previous Duel Monsters game, none of the improvements would matter, but, to my satisfaction, the speed isn’t a problem anymore.  It’s still not as fast as the first Game Boy game, but the computer doesn’t take 2 seconds to do anything anymore and only every once in a while is there a half second delay.  It all flows smoothly enough.

“Enough” is a word to describe DDS.  The game is fast enough, the graphics are good enough for a Game Boy color game, the music, following the quality of Capsule Monster GB, is pretty good and the custom monsters do enough to make it unique among the Yu-Gi-Oh games by adding a fun layer to deck building.  If the deck capacity becomes a problem, you can cheat that away.  Overall it’s a serviceable game and the best one across the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.  If you’re going to sink your time into just one of them, make it this one.  This or…

Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelists

I think this game requires some greater context to explain why it is the way it is.  See, in Japan the Duel Monsters games on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color apparently had a competitive scene, to the point that there were some cards you could only get in them through special means as prizes.  From the beginning there was some dialogue in the games encouraging playing against others.  Battle of Great Duelists leans into that competitive play and player interaction harder than any other game up to this point.

As such, it tries to prevent some cards from being too powerful.  Levels are now determined by monster attack strength, there is no more extremely powerful custom card crafting and there is now a limited list, where certain cards are restricted to how many you can have in your deck.

Obviously the biggest incentive to get players to bust out their link cables is that this time there are three different versions of the game, Pokemon-style.  Each one represents one of the big 3 duelists and the Egyptian God Card associated with them, or at least for Yugi and Kaiba.  I don’t know why the Joey one has Ra on it.  He never even touched that card.
Each version has a different starter deck, to prevent all the players from using the same decks against each other, but, more importantly, there are some cards that can only be used in certain versions, which is an especially big incentive to trade cards with other players, particularly when it comes to the flagship monsters.

The following is one of the wackest ideas I’ve ever heard.  The Egyptian God on the cover of each version is the card that can be USED in that version, not the card you actually GET in it.  Once they beat the right endgame opponent to get one of the god cards, players were expected to trade that god card they couldn’t use with another player who had their own god card they couldn’t use.  This means if you didn’t know anyone with a copy (which, given the Japanese sales of this, isn’t as likely as you’d think), your ultimate reward was useless.  I get wanting to encourage trading, but that’s such a dick move.  Thankfully the Early Days Collection has a cheat that lets any version use any card.

With how much Battle of Great Duelists doubles down on dueling others, it makes sense that this is the one among the Game Boy/Game Boy Color games that is available for online play in the Early Days Collection.  The multiple versions in the collection can also be used as a form of save slots.  For me, I have one version I’ll play totally legit with no cheats and another version with all cards enabled and max deck capacity.

With so much put into the multiplayer aspect and less than a year of development time since DDS, not a lot was done to make the single player experience any different.  Most of the characters use the exact same character portraits from DDS.  The biggest improvement Battle of Great Duelists makes to single player is that the duel music is character-based instead of stage-based and the soundtrack is still pretty great.

For me, the card crafting and some of the characters not from the manga found in DDS makes it superior, but I can see someone enjoying Battle of Great Duelists more for its tweaks and online multiplayer (for the PC version).  Like DDS, it’s serviceable.

I can see a myriad of reasons as to why Battle of Great Duelists wasn’t translated to English, despite the Yu-Gi-Oh hype in America at the time.
 

1. DDS wasn’t that well received when it came out.  It had its fans (like me), but it didn’t catch on like the Game Boy Color games did in Japan.  That means a game that puts emphasis on everyone owning a copy and restricts you for not connecting with other players was not going to go over well.
2. The English anime hadn’t even gotten to Slifer the Sky Dragon’s first summoning, let alone all 3 gods.  It wasn’t time to hype them up yet.
3. 3 different versions needing translation was probably a lot of work.
4. By the time DDS was out in America there had already been Game Boy Advance games out in Japan that were more worth translating.
5. There are some Japanese quirks that just wouldn’t make sense for American players, like some of the passwords.  After beating Pegasus as a sort of final boss again, players unlock the “dark stage”.  In the previous game, the dark stage let players fight some post-game duelists, but there would only be one of those duelists in it at a time and it could change by random chance after a certain number of duels.  In this game, players manually have to change the dark stage with a password.  I like me a good secret password, but I think the only way to get them was if you got it from a Japanese magazine Americans had no access to.  In the Early Days Collection you simply select these things off a cheat menu without needing to type a long password in.
6. Building on the previous point, there are two characters that can be unlocked with a password that no American would recognize, those being Kaiser Umiuma and Yugi Gonbutori.  I first saw Kaiser in one of the later DS games.

From my understanding, these characters are models or cosplayers that appeared in the magazine V-Jump to promote Yu-Gi-Oh and caught on as a sort of “we have X at home” joke.  They’re like guys you would see on a silver bordered MTG card.  American players wouldn’t know who these guys are supposed to be, even if they’re inherently amusing to look at.

What the American players wanted at the time was a Yu-Gi-Oh game that followed the real rules of the card game, something that had already been made in Japan.  After much anticipation, we got exactly that.  Too bad I’m going this review in Japanese release order.

Dungeon Dice Monsters

In Japan, the game based on Dungeon Dice Monsters was the first to release on the Game Boy Advance, but Konami delayed its release in America for a few years, instead translating the first simulator of the proper card game.  Like I said, what American players were wanting was the real card game on a portable cartridge so they made the right call.  America wouldn’t get DDM until the real life American version of the game (which I own) was released.

Dungeon Dice Monsters, like Capsule Monster GB, forgoes cards, this time to play with a lot of dice.  You roll dice to build up resources to allow for movement, attacking, defending and special abilities, but more importantly they can be used for summoning monsters.  Summoning a monster builds a pathway to the piece that represents the opponent and it’s all about getting to that opponent with your own monster while defending yourself against theirs.

I like moving my creatures around the battlefield, strategically building said battlefield against my opponent doing the same and I like having the monsters clash with each other.  I like rolling dice too.  I’m Ameritrash all the way!

The monsters clashing is my favorite part.  When one monster attacks another, it shows the attacking monster using its attack on the other, which may or may not be guarding.  Every single monster in the game has its own combat model, sometimes a multisegmented one, and attack animation, all taking place on that flat 3D plane the GBA could render in games like the port of Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance.  That flat 3D plane is also different depending on the arena the game is played on.  If you’ve ever wanted to see what monsters like Three Legged Zombie or Fiend’s Hand Mirror look like when they attack, Dungeon Dice Monsters answers.

Dark Eyes Illusionist has an interesting one.

It also answers the question of what kinds of names the pre-Duelist Kingdom characters would have in English.  Some are generic names like Jeremy Harrison, Kreiger and Lint Greendale.  Some are inherently cool names like Diesel Kane and Demitrius.  The best ones are the names that refer to something related to the character, like the dragon cards player being named Damien Draco or the loud, obnoxious bully with the bad voice being named Fender Shrill.  Names like that can be a little too on the nose though.
 
My favorite name change by far is what they named the Bruce Lee-obsessed fighting game player who beat up Yugi after constantly losing to him.  In Japanese he’s not given a name and is only known as “street fighter”.  This game names him Feng Long.

He’s a fighting game-playing Bruce Lee fan named street fighter so they gave him a name one step away from Street Fighter’s Bruce Lee character and also one step away from the infamous “sheng long” of the original Street Fighter 2.  Whoever came up with that name should give themselves a pat on the back.

The old translations weren't always the best.

I like the presentation and the gameplay of DDM, but it has a bad reputation among players, and for good reasons, but the Early Days Collection’s features address some of the biggest problems.  If it weren’t for the Early Days Collection I have no doubt I would get sick of Dungeon Dice Monsters.

The grind is a problem.  There are over 100 different dice monsters to get, but you only get one per match and it’s usually the same handful of crappy ones you’ll get sick of using.  You can get others at grandpa’s shop, but not only does he usually have a weak selection of crap you already have, but they can be so expensive that you’ll never get them, especially not the crazy overpriced Exodia pieces.  The time spent getting anything new is never worth the end result.  Turn on the cheat that gives you every dice.  Think of it like playing a tabletop game with all the expansions included.  This is not the game to play for the collection aspect.

The other problem is the single player content, or lack thereof.  All you can do is enter tournaments where you battle against a series of opponents.  There are a ton of characters to play against, but all they really are is manga panels, some introductory text and a set of opposing dungeon dice that correspond to their character with whatever is included in the game.  The tournaments themselves were a big problem on the Game Boy Advance because the game doesn’t save until you’re done with one.  You have to beat at least 3 opponents in a row and the individual matches can potentially get lengthy, which the Game Boy Advance’s battery couldn’t hold out for.  Obviously the Early Days Collection has save states to make that a non-issue.

The single player content is also notorious for being piss easy to the point of opposition sometimes being non-existent.  It ramps up after the first set of tournaments, but even then the AI doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing most of the time.  I still get a kick out of experimenting with the many different dice monsters, even if my opponent is a punching bag, and besides, DDM is one of the games in the collection that was given online multiplayer.  Human opponents are much more interesting to play against and let the strategic gameplay shine so at least there’s that for anyone wanting more of a challenge.

I really enjoy Dungeon Dice Monsters for what it is.  It’s a game I like to pick up and play when I want a hit of some tabletop monster fighting.  You’re probably not buying the collection for it unless you want to play online, but as a bonus game I’m happy it’s included.

With 3 more games assessed, I’ve found the Early Days Collection has 2 more decent games and one fun side activity.  I know that starting with the next game there’s going to be a lot more straightforwardly positive feedback for the games in the collection.  Any old-school Yu-Gi-Oh fan probably knows why.