Top 5 Things You Didn't Know About Yu-Gi-Oh!

Perhaps one of the most iconic moments in the Yu-Gi-Oh anime series was the duel between Yugi and his best friend Joey, in the Duelist kingdom arc. Who could forget the monsters, the traps, the spells, and that goddamn power ballad…

Well, for those of you who didn’t know, Yu-Gi-Oh began as a manga series, which was serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine.

Well, things unraveled a little differently in the original. Sure the two make it to the finals to see who can face Pegasus…but they just decide to not bother. That’s right, Joey simply relinquishes his right to face Pegasus and lets Yugi take the spotlight. It kinda makes sense, but its oh-so-anticlimactic…

And no their battle city duel doesn’t count.

Seto Kaiba, the arrogant President of the Kaiba Corporation, was based on someone Yu-Gi-Oh creator Kazuki Takahashi actually knew. The story goes that one of Takahashi’s friends introduced him to a fellow gamer in the hopes that he would teach him how to play.

However, upon meeting him the guy refused to have anything to do with The mangaka until he collected ten thousand cards. It may have ticked him off, but Takahashi soon realized that he liked the idea of a character who was so stuck up he’d refuse to play against someone whom he deemed a lesser opponent. And so, our favourite blue-eyes-fetishist was born!

4Kids Entertainment was the company responsible for dubbing Yu-Gi-Oh TV shows in English, thus helping to establish a fan base in many English-speaking countries. While much of what they did was ultimately censored because of cross-border copyright laws, they still did a bang up job to keep the show entertaining for kids. However, they eventually got in some hot water when on March 29th, 2011 TV Tokyo sued them. The basis of their lawsuit was simple; 4Kids Entertainment had been making illegal deals with other companies for Yu-Gi-Oh’s licensing rights and then misreporting royalties and falsifying invoices. Less than a month later 4Kids filed Chapter 11. They’d eventually restructure as 4K Media Entertainment, but the burn was definitely felt…

Chances are that the Yu-Gi-Oh cards you’ve been collecting and battling with for years are made by Konami. After all, their cards have been circulating since the late 90’s. However, you may be surprised to learn that they weren’t the first company to capitalize on the growing popularity of Kazuki Takahashi’s manga series. In 1998 Bandai scored the licensing rights from Toei Animation to start producing Yu-Gi-Oh merchandise. They’d ultimately release 3 generations of cards before Konami officially took over as the sole producers of Yu-Gi-Oh products. In 2009 Konami’s version would become the best selling trading card game of all-time, as at that point they’d sold 22 billion cards.

In the original “Yu-Gi-Oh!” series protagonist Yugi wasn’t immune to making the occasional illegal-maneuver. In fact, he did it quite often.

There’s a whole load to choose from, whether its repeatedly summoning revival jam to deck the mime EVEN THOUGH possession goes back to the original holder when it hits the graveyard,

or that absolutely BONKERS thing with the Giant Soldier of Stone and the moon. For shame, Yugi.

Yeah, Yeah, we realize we sound like total geeks right now… And you can probably blame this on Kazuchika and Konami still trying to iron-out the rules of the game while the series was ongoing -

But still, those genius mid-duel breakthroughs suddenly don’t seem cool any more… King of games, my ass.