Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a fantastic grouping of several iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! games from across the series’ beginnings. The games themselves largely hold up quite well and the newly added features are more than welcome. If you’ve ever wanted to play the older portable Yu-Gi-Oh! games, this is the best way to do so.

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is an incredibly robust collection that is sure to please long-time fans, but may be a bit too archaic for some newcomers.

When I was 10 years old, Yu-Gi-Oh was my life. For a brief moment in my life, I was addicted to it. I’d get a booster pack every weekend, I’d take my deck to school, I’d duel my friends during recess. The anime would air twice a day on Nickelodeon, and I wouldn’t miss a single episode. Finally, I consumed Yu-Gi-Oh videogames like a crack addict. Be it the ultra-dated but charming Dark Duel Stories to the absolutely amazing Dungeon Dice Monsters, if it had Yugi’s terrible haircut on ...

The Early Days Collection has two major appeals going for it, which also serve as the two main lenses by which it can be judged. On the one hand, there is the matter of how well it succeeds as a collection as a whole. On the other hand, there's the more obvious question of whether the games inside are any fun at all.

Yu-Gi-Oh! EARLY DAYS COLLECTION is packed with classic Yu-Gi-Oh! games from the very early days of Dueling — bursting with retro RPGs and strategic card games with beloved anime characters!

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection offers players a comprehensive journey through the formative years of one of gaming’s most enduring card battle franchises. Our Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection review explores how the collection balances nostalgic preservation with modern accessibility, examines its strengths and limitations, and evaluates whether it successfully captures an important chapter in gaming history. Bringing together 14 titles from 1998 through 2004, this compilation focuses e...

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection stays true to its sources and brings a little piece of history into the modern age. Unfortunately, dull mechanics and often unwieldy UI plague many of the games in the collection just as they did on first release, although amidst 14 titles, it would be impossible not to have a couple of winners. For us, Monster Capsule and the two World Championship Tournament titles shone through beautifully. Although the included games are certainly imperfect, we recognise the intentionality behind the collection’s curation and feel that it’s an excellent time capsule of t...

It’s clear that Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection will only appeal to a tiny, very niche audience. It just so happens that I fall into that group. Poor choice of included games, an almost disrespectful lack of multiplayer, and no effort put into modernizing mechanics doesn’t exactly make for an enjoyable, user-friendly experience. Despite all of this, I’ve still had fun with it. It’s not great, but damnit, I kinda, sorta, like it.

Yu-Gi-Oh has been a staple in many people's lives for years now, and it's back again, but this time leaning on some of those earlier years with a collection of some of the first games. For better or for worse, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection mostly leaves the games untouched. This means that you'll need to draw each card automatically to your hand in earlier entries and deal with some unattractive UI decisions that can leave some scratching their heads. For example, the Game Boy titles in this collection irritate my brain as you can't set your monsters into defense mode and have to leave t...

This collection of early Yu-Gi-Oh! games is a few cards short of a deck.