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.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 1

As I already stated in my review of Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links, I’ve been a fan of the original Yu-Gi-Oh ever since it arrived in America through the anime from Studio Gallop.  When Kazuki Takahashi wrote his manga about a kid gaining Egyptian magic and playing games, he couldn’t have predicted the phenomena that it would become, let alone that his little one-off Magic: The Gathering knock-off would be at the center of it all.  When Shonen Jump gets a hit manga on their hands you’d better believe they’re going to merchandise that sonbitch.

Inevitably that meant games across all manner of consoles, in particular Nintendo’s handhelds.  The Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection puts the first 13 (the marketing says 14, but I’ll get to that) Nintendo handheld Yu-Gi-Oh games into one package and I was hyped to get to both replay games I used to love and play games I never got to before.  The enhancements and new translations made it all a big deal, but I swear you wouldn’t know just how big a deal it was if you read the reviews.

I was going to get the collection anyway, but I’m disappointed by the reviews of it I’ve read thus far.  Regardless of whether I agree with them or not, most give a general overview of the collection and come across as though they only played each game for a little while before writing them off.  Understandable, since there’s 13 games and they only have so much time, but I’m of the mind that even if one were to recommend the game, readers might want to know which games are more worth their time, how many are any good, what to expect from each game in more detail and what the cheats included in the collection can do to enhance their enjoyment.

The other sentiment I see is that it’s a collection made only for the old-school Yu-Gi-Oh players and that the only people who will enjoy the games are the ones nostalgic for them.  I think that’s both a reductive way of thinking and not true.  There are games in the collection that, even today, are a fun time, outdated cards or not.  I would love for younger people who weren’t around for them to experience some of these games and maybe get invested into the card game’s simpler times.

I’m going to review the Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days collection more thoroughly, less at the package as a collective whole and more the parts that make it up so that readers can make a more informed purchase.  I’ll look at every game in the collection, give some context of where the source material was at the time of each game’s release and some context of where I was at the release of some of these games.  I am writing this as a fan, but I’ll try to keep the nostalgia goggles off.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1996 & 1997

Like I said in the first King of Arcades competition, 3D gaming was in full swing in the latter half of the 1990s thanks to the Playstation and Nintendo 64’s polygon rendering abilities.  As evidenced by last time, Namco was already on that by this point, but for Midway, though they did dabble in 3D polygons in the past, the usual pre-rendered visuals were their reliable aesthetic, though even that started to change.

Both Namco and Midway were taking advantage of the new capabilities offered by Sony and Nintendo’s consoles in the homes.  I credited The King of Fighters 98 as being the first “Dream Match” game, because it’s where that moniker came from, but arguably Midway had already done the concept with Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a console-exclusive game that took everyone from previous games in the franchise and put them all in one PS1 disc or N64 cartridge.
 
Not only did Midway have Mortal Kombat Trilogy to maintain Mortal Kombt mania, but they also released the sequel to their hit 1995 Mortal Kombat movie.  People didn’t like it.  Personally I think it's a hoot.

Namco was also chugging along in the console space with PS1 ports of their arcade games, most notably Tekken and their new Namco Museum compilations.

Since home consoles were catching up to the technical capabilities of arcade games, they started taking the attention and arcade game development started slowing down, resulting in this competition having fewer games in both competitor’s arsenals and thus another double year round.  I might’ve skipped 1996 altogether, but I was able to find one game from that year and it’s a pretty important one.

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 20

In this episode, Joe and the Jadow trio wake up on a mysterious train full of toys, run by an enigmatic kitty conductor.  It's an episode that focuses squarely on Joe and the Jadow trio with all of their allies excluded from the plot.  This one is a favorite among fans for its underlying theme of childhood innocence and feelgood nature of the whole thing in a time where so much anime is blood and violence like Bleach, Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer.

There's a lot to like about this episode and for me one of those things is Bob Papenbrook.  I've talked him up before, but for a lot of the Viewtiful Joe anime up to this point he's been doing his Almighty Leader voice and hasn't played Captain Blue since the first few episodes.  Blue's Japanese voice sounds like he's going through the motions, but every line delivered by Papenbrook really feels like an old-school hero.  Big ups to a voice acting legend.  If he were still around he would be the Great Old One of the West instead of Peter Beckman.

 

The movies this episode is based on are Toy Story and the Polar Express... Or is it?  Joe references the Polar Express by name in the English dub, but on closer inspection, the train setting might be a wild coincidence.  The Viewtiful Joe anime started right at the beginning of October of 2004 in Japan and Robert Zemeckis' hit movie The Polar Express didn't make its debut until partway into October of the same year.  There was no time for the movie to be a classic like the other movies referenced in this anime.  The popular children's book the movie is based on was almost 2 decades old by then, but so far Movieland has had places based on movies and only movies.

Toy Story is definitely an inspiration here though without a doubt and if you don't see it by the end, you're blind. 

Considering this is an episode with toys, children and rules against violence, you can't expect a lot to be edited out for inappropriate content.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1995

1995. The peak of Mortal Kombat mania.  Last year may not have had a Mortal Kombat game in arcades, but those home versions of the games were selling like hotcakes and the franchise was getting merchandised to hell and back.  There was the movie, which is widely regarded as one of the best video game to movie adaptations to this day, there was the promotional VHS of the movie and there was the live tour.

Mortal Kombat got so much attention that other companies were trying to get in on the digitized actors and violence, usually to poor results.

Oh yeah, Namco is in this.  They released games mostly in Japan and not in America so they got left in the dust, although Tekken was shaping up to be their heaviest hitter in arcades.  1995 was also the debut of the first Time Crisis, but I have never in my life seen that game.  I've only ever played the sequels.  Here in this competition, popularity, public recognition and hype means nothing.  All that matters is who made the best games.  The current score has Midway in the lead, 7 to 5.  Namco isn’t far behind and still has a few years left to take the lead.