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eschapunkThis entry covers a couple volumes, but doesn't cover quite as many games as the last. Part of that is because I went in depth on the first appearance of the card game, but mainly it's because there's a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh at this point that isn't really about the games. Right now, my criteria for covering a non-game here is just whether I have anything interesting to say about it, and for the ones I didn't cover I don't.
Chapter: 8
Rules: A scorpion and 10 coins are placed into a shoe. Players take turns grabbing coins from the shoe. The person who takes the most coins wins. Anyone stung by the scorpion loses by default.
Cheating: The store owner stabs the shoe to kill the scorpion, fails, and gets stung by the scorpion while trying to grab too many coins.
Commentary: Volume 2 starts with a nice simple game, reminiscent of the first chapter. Dark Yugi didn't even put his finger on the scale here, the store owner completely self-sabotaged. This is actually the first chapter of Yu-Gi-Oh I read, since volume 1 was checked out from the library at the time. I think it worked pretty well as an introduction to the series, even if it is missing a penalty game.
Penalty Game: None, but the store owner is stung by his own scorpion. There's no indication of how lethal that would be if he wasn't taken to the hospital after the game. As it stands, Dark Yugi's body count is still pretty low. He's got a limited time to rack up some kills before Duelist Kingdom, but this Gruesome Fate is still going in the right direction. 5/5
Okay, so in the version on the Shonen Jump app it's called Duel Monsters, but I remember the earlier printing I read where it was called Magic and Wizards, so that's what I'll call it for its first appearance. I'm also assuming that the rules of the card game change between its appearances, so I'm going to do a new entry for each arc featuring the card game.
Chapters: 9-10
Rules: So the first thing to understand about Magic and Wizards is that it's a pastiche of early Magic the Gathering, complete with an ante rule.
The deck size is exactly 40 cards (no indication of how many copies of a given card can be included). Monster card and Spell cards are both mentioned, but no other types are.
Each player starts with 2000 life points, and when a player's life points reach zero, they lose the game.
Players draw a card from their deck each turn, and play a monster each turn in attack or defense position. There's no indication of a starting hand (not just no starting hand size, it appears that both players start with an empty hand and play their topdecks). Any power monster can be played on a player's turn with no requirements. Monster cards must be played when drawn, and Spell cards must be set face down if not used immediately.
When two card in attack position battle, the difference in attack is subtracted from the loser's life points. When a card in attack position battles a card in defense position, if the defender loses it goes to the graveyard with no effect on its owner's life points, and if the attacker loses the difference is subtracted from its owner's life points. A single monster can attack any number of other monsters, but there appears to be no concept of direct attacks.
Also, cards have stars on them. These mean nothing except a general indication of strength.
Cheating: Kaiba "draws" the Blue-Eyes White Dragon that he stole earlier from his pocket, and in return Dark Yugi makes it unable to attack. Considering that both players played with their decks right out in front of them, I'm not sure how Kaiba expected to get away with cheating there.
Commentary: While the first appearance of "Duel Monsters" is clearly based heavily on Magic the Gathering, the actual rules in its first appearance are a lot weirder. It seems to be essentially a version of War with both players having constructed decks. I'll also point out that in the glossed-over turns the player that was winning appears to have not drawn any cards. I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh was serialized weekly, on a schedule that's very difficult to do coherent plotting under, much less coherent game design. I suspect that the rules of the game were changed a bit in the middle of the first chapter, in order to make the game more easily readable in the constrained space available for a villain of the week. When the game is first played, between Yugi and Jonouchi, both players have hands of cards, unlike when Dark Yugi plays against Kaiba. I also suspect that the stars were originally going to relate to some sort of mana system, which was dropped in order to speed up the game and gloss over any decisions the players might make.
The text of the chapter talks a lot about how the rarity of cards isn't important compared to... something unclear, the heart of the cards or something. However, it's clear that in this version of the card game, only a monster's numbers really matter. Even spell cards don't help that much if your monster can't survive long enough, and there's no indication that any removal spells exist. Even if they did, drawing a spell still means you lose your ability to play a monster for the turn (although since direct attacks don't seem to exist that might not be too much of a problem). Ultimately, Kaiba's analysis of the game is correct here: the quality of a player's cards is all that matters, everything else is useless.
Note that while Kaiba might be characterized as a rich kid here in some way that wasn't translated or I didn't pick up on, ultimately he seems to be an ordinary student that's a bit too obsessed with a card game. There's no indication here of Kaibacorp or anything like it, he's a villain of the week in the same way most of the bullies in the last entry were. His primary difference from them is that he actually seems to like a particular game.
Penalty Game: Kaiba is turned into a card and eaten by monsters in the world of the cards. A fitting end for a villain of the week that we'll never see again. 5/5
Chapters: 11-12
Rules: (more of a puzzle than a game, but I'll allow it) Dark Yugi challenges a gang to find a time bomb at their feet. The gang think that the switch is attacking Dark Yugi with their stun guns, causing them all to get electrocuted, but actually it's the stun gun of one of the gang members that is knocked out on the floor. Dark Yugi has propped his arm up with a piece of metal, and placed the Milennium Puzzle above him to cause water to drip down and wake him up.
Cheating: There's not exactly rules here, so no opportunity for cheating.
Commentary: This one doesn't quite fit within the project, but it's important to point out that within the series so far, this is much more important than the previous two-parter. This is the first look into Jonouchi's backstory, and is focused on helping him move past his delinquent past with the help of his friends. It also sets up further conflicts to be addressed later in the series (in a way that makes it clear that the series is going to come back to them, unlike the previous villain of the week). The game is basically just a way to resolve the plot in the last four pages, and it does its job perfectly well.
Penalty Game: The whole gang gets electrocuted by their stun guns. I know this gang comes back eventually, but Dark Yugi's still on a strong streak here. 5/5
After this, there's the long Trial of the Mind arc, which has a lot of lore, and some interesting non-revelations about what's going on with Dark Yugi, but very few games. The first few rounds with Shadi are basically just riddles, so I'm skipping them.
Chapter: 19
Rules: Both players stand on an island above a bottomless pit, with the island divided into a grid. Players take turns throwing the Millennium Puzzle, then their opponent walks two spaces in the direction indicated. The first player to fall to their death loses.
Cheating: No cheating, the power of friendship stops fake Jonouchi from making his final move.
Commentary: There's probably an interesting 2-player game you could make from this premise. As-is, it's a gimmick to get to the friendship speech, but it's got potential. My inclination is to throw a boomerang, or something else with a 90-degree angle. Each tip is then the direction indicator for one of the players. This way even assuming players can get the direction they want 100% of the time, they still need to pay attention to their own position to avoid falling off.
Penalty Game: None here, but Shadi's penalty game with the museum owner at the start of the arc was good enough that I'll still give it 5/5
There's a one-parter and two-parter following this arc that aren't interesting for me to analyze, for different reasons. The digital pet chapter is a quick breather chapter without any real game to speak of, similar to the ending of last entry (without even a penalty game this time), and the Zombire two-parter ends with another "game" that's basically just a trap by Dark Yugi. At this point, there's been enough time for the response from the first card game two-parter to come in, and for Takahashi to really try to cash in on it.
I'll leave it here for now, since next entry starts with the first attempt to recapture the popularity of the card game two-parter, Capsule Monster Chess.
I'm planning to do this for future versions of Duel Monsters as well, to get an idea of how the card pool is evolving.
Monsters
Hell-Bound ATK 500 DEF 200
??? ATK 600 DEF 600
Summoned Skull ATK 2200 DEF 1200
Giant Sol???
Mystic Lamp: ATK 400 DEF 200
Blue-Eyes White Dragon: ATK 3000 DEF 2500(Attack and defense for this card are only shown clearly at the very end)
Blackland Fire Dragon: ATK 1500 DEF 800
Ryu-Kishin: ATK 1000 DEF 500
Battle Ox: ATK 1700 DEF 1000
Mystical Elf: ATK 800 DEF 2000
Skull Servant: ATK 300 DEF 200
Mushroom Man: ATK 800 DEF 800
Seto Kaiba: ATK???
Spells
Giant's Might: Raises the attack and defense of any one monster by 20% (This is where the game tries to get complicated?)
Monster Reborn: Select one Monster Card from either your opponent's or your own Graveyard and place it on the field under your control in Attack or Defense position (face-up). This is considered a Special Summon. (I don't think this is what the card said in the original printing, this is probably an attempt to retcon this version into resembling the later card game. Giant's might isn't formatted this way)
Chapter: 8
Rules: A scorpion and 10 coins are placed into a shoe. Players take turns grabbing coins from the shoe. The person who takes the most coins wins. Anyone stung by the scorpion loses by default.
Cheating: The store owner stabs the shoe to kill the scorpion, fails, and gets stung by the scorpion while trying to grab too many coins.
Commentary: Volume 2 starts with a nice simple game, reminiscent of the first chapter. Dark Yugi didn't even put his finger on the scale here, the store owner completely self-sabotaged. This is actually the first chapter of Yu-Gi-Oh I read, since volume 1 was checked out from the library at the time. I think it worked pretty well as an introduction to the series, even if it is missing a penalty game.
Penalty Game: None, but the store owner is stung by his own scorpion. There's no indication of how lethal that would be if he wasn't taken to the hospital after the game. As it stands, Dark Yugi's body count is still pretty low. He's got a limited time to rack up some kills before Duelist Kingdom, but this Gruesome Fate is still going in the right direction. 5/5
Okay, so in the version on the Shonen Jump app it's called Duel Monsters, but I remember the earlier printing I read where it was called Magic and Wizards, so that's what I'll call it for its first appearance. I'm also assuming that the rules of the card game change between its appearances, so I'm going to do a new entry for each arc featuring the card game.
Chapters: 9-10
Rules: So the first thing to understand about Magic and Wizards is that it's a pastiche of early Magic the Gathering, complete with an ante rule.
The deck size is exactly 40 cards (no indication of how many copies of a given card can be included). Monster card and Spell cards are both mentioned, but no other types are.
Each player starts with 2000 life points, and when a player's life points reach zero, they lose the game.
Players draw a card from their deck each turn, and play a monster each turn in attack or defense position. There's no indication of a starting hand (not just no starting hand size, it appears that both players start with an empty hand and play their topdecks). Any power monster can be played on a player's turn with no requirements. Monster cards must be played when drawn, and Spell cards must be set face down if not used immediately.
When two card in attack position battle, the difference in attack is subtracted from the loser's life points. When a card in attack position battles a card in defense position, if the defender loses it goes to the graveyard with no effect on its owner's life points, and if the attacker loses the difference is subtracted from its owner's life points. A single monster can attack any number of other monsters, but there appears to be no concept of direct attacks.
Also, cards have stars on them. These mean nothing except a general indication of strength.
Cheating: Kaiba "draws" the Blue-Eyes White Dragon that he stole earlier from his pocket, and in return Dark Yugi makes it unable to attack. Considering that both players played with their decks right out in front of them, I'm not sure how Kaiba expected to get away with cheating there.
Commentary: While the first appearance of "Duel Monsters" is clearly based heavily on Magic the Gathering, the actual rules in its first appearance are a lot weirder. It seems to be essentially a version of War with both players having constructed decks. I'll also point out that in the glossed-over turns the player that was winning appears to have not drawn any cards. I think a lot of this comes down to the fact that Yu-Gi-Oh was serialized weekly, on a schedule that's very difficult to do coherent plotting under, much less coherent game design. I suspect that the rules of the game were changed a bit in the middle of the first chapter, in order to make the game more easily readable in the constrained space available for a villain of the week. When the game is first played, between Yugi and Jonouchi, both players have hands of cards, unlike when Dark Yugi plays against Kaiba. I also suspect that the stars were originally going to relate to some sort of mana system, which was dropped in order to speed up the game and gloss over any decisions the players might make.
The text of the chapter talks a lot about how the rarity of cards isn't important compared to... something unclear, the heart of the cards or something. However, it's clear that in this version of the card game, only a monster's numbers really matter. Even spell cards don't help that much if your monster can't survive long enough, and there's no indication that any removal spells exist. Even if they did, drawing a spell still means you lose your ability to play a monster for the turn (although since direct attacks don't seem to exist that might not be too much of a problem). Ultimately, Kaiba's analysis of the game is correct here: the quality of a player's cards is all that matters, everything else is useless.
Note that while Kaiba might be characterized as a rich kid here in some way that wasn't translated or I didn't pick up on, ultimately he seems to be an ordinary student that's a bit too obsessed with a card game. There's no indication here of Kaibacorp or anything like it, he's a villain of the week in the same way most of the bullies in the last entry were. His primary difference from them is that he actually seems to like a particular game.
Penalty Game: Kaiba is turned into a card and eaten by monsters in the world of the cards. A fitting end for a villain of the week that we'll never see again. 5/5
Chapters: 11-12
Rules: (more of a puzzle than a game, but I'll allow it) Dark Yugi challenges a gang to find a time bomb at their feet. The gang think that the switch is attacking Dark Yugi with their stun guns, causing them all to get electrocuted, but actually it's the stun gun of one of the gang members that is knocked out on the floor. Dark Yugi has propped his arm up with a piece of metal, and placed the Milennium Puzzle above him to cause water to drip down and wake him up.
Cheating: There's not exactly rules here, so no opportunity for cheating.
Commentary: This one doesn't quite fit within the project, but it's important to point out that within the series so far, this is much more important than the previous two-parter. This is the first look into Jonouchi's backstory, and is focused on helping him move past his delinquent past with the help of his friends. It also sets up further conflicts to be addressed later in the series (in a way that makes it clear that the series is going to come back to them, unlike the previous villain of the week). The game is basically just a way to resolve the plot in the last four pages, and it does its job perfectly well.
Penalty Game: The whole gang gets electrocuted by their stun guns. I know this gang comes back eventually, but Dark Yugi's still on a strong streak here. 5/5
After this, there's the long Trial of the Mind arc, which has a lot of lore, and some interesting non-revelations about what's going on with Dark Yugi, but very few games. The first few rounds with Shadi are basically just riddles, so I'm skipping them.
Chapter: 19
Rules: Both players stand on an island above a bottomless pit, with the island divided into a grid. Players take turns throwing the Millennium Puzzle, then their opponent walks two spaces in the direction indicated. The first player to fall to their death loses.
Cheating: No cheating, the power of friendship stops fake Jonouchi from making his final move.
Commentary: There's probably an interesting 2-player game you could make from this premise. As-is, it's a gimmick to get to the friendship speech, but it's got potential. My inclination is to throw a boomerang, or something else with a 90-degree angle. Each tip is then the direction indicator for one of the players. This way even assuming players can get the direction they want 100% of the time, they still need to pay attention to their own position to avoid falling off.
Penalty Game: None here, but Shadi's penalty game with the museum owner at the start of the arc was good enough that I'll still give it 5/5
There's a one-parter and two-parter following this arc that aren't interesting for me to analyze, for different reasons. The digital pet chapter is a quick breather chapter without any real game to speak of, similar to the ending of last entry (without even a penalty game this time), and the Zombire two-parter ends with another "game" that's basically just a trap by Dark Yugi. At this point, there's been enough time for the response from the first card game two-parter to come in, and for Takahashi to really try to cash in on it.
I'll leave it here for now, since next entry starts with the first attempt to recapture the popularity of the card game two-parter, Capsule Monster Chess.
I'm planning to do this for future versions of Duel Monsters as well, to get an idea of how the card pool is evolving.
Monsters
Hell-Bound ATK 500 DEF 200
??? ATK 600 DEF 600
Summoned Skull ATK 2200 DEF 1200
Giant Sol???
Mystic Lamp: ATK 400 DEF 200
Blue-Eyes White Dragon: ATK 3000 DEF 2500(Attack and defense for this card are only shown clearly at the very end)
Blackland Fire Dragon: ATK 1500 DEF 800
Ryu-Kishin: ATK 1000 DEF 500
Battle Ox: ATK 1700 DEF 1000
Mystical Elf: ATK 800 DEF 2000
Skull Servant: ATK 300 DEF 200
Mushroom Man: ATK 800 DEF 800
Seto Kaiba: ATK???
Spells
Giant's Might: Raises the attack and defense of any one monster by 20% (This is where the game tries to get complicated?)
Monster Reborn: Select one Monster Card from either your opponent's or your own Graveyard and place it on the field under your control in Attack or Defense position (face-up). This is considered a Special Summon. (I don't think this is what the card said in the original printing, this is probably an attempt to retcon this version into resembling the later card game. Giant's might isn't formatted this way)
