kza love

Hey Nerd,

I saw on TV the other day a commercial for something called Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie. Isn’t that based on a card game, or something? Or is this the new Miyazaki I’ve heard about?

Really Interested in Nerdy Games, Except “RIFTS”

Dear RINGER,

To explain the phenomenon of Yu-Gi-Oh!, I’ll have to approach the subject laterally.

Pokémon is a cartoon about a boy named Ash and his sidekick Pikachu, a yellow mouse-like creature. In the world of Pokémon, people train the Pokémon (short for “Pocket Monsters”) to fight each other in friendly, non-deadly duels. In the cartoon, Ash travels around, fighting duels with other trainers, and in general, learning, living, and loving. Most episodes are built around these duels between the various Pokémon.

Developed more-or-less simultaneously with the cartoon, the Pokémon Collectible Card Game is a game where two players take the roles of trainers and use cards representing Pokémon to fight duels. Each player races to play the correct combo of cards that will allow their Pokémon card to attack and deal damage to the other player’s Pokémon. When one player loses three Pokémon, the other player wins.

Now, the Pokémon Card Game needs to be placed in a historical context with the first collectible card game, Magic: The Gathering. In this game, each player is a wizard, and is trying to place “land” cards on the table, which are used to power “spell” cards , which are used to attack the opposing player and his summoned army. When one player loses all his life points, the other wins. Although Magic can get very complicated very quickly, Pokémon, which is in essence a slimmed-down version of Magic, remains simple enough for kids.

Then there’s the Yu-Gi-Oh! Collectible Card Game. Although I’ve never played it, from what I can tell it also is a simplified version of Magic, but without any of the charm that separates Pokémon from the Magic clones. Players use cards to summon monsters to attack the other player. It’s unclear to me whether the players are supposed to be wizards, or just a pair of dorks playing cards.

Which leads us finally to the Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon. Because of the Pokémon cartoon’s immense populaity, the creators of the Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon opted to use the same premise: a guy (and his friends) travel around a made-up world, fighting duels, and in general, learning, living and loving. However, there’s a small, yet key, difference between the two. Where in Pokémon, the creatures and the battles are real, in Yu-Gi-Oh! the battles are simply holographic representations of the card game they’re playing. The creatures in Pokémon are friends with their trainers, and are genuinely characters; in Yu-Gi-Oh!, there’s no possible emotional response to the fighting monsters, since they are literally just illustrations. Essentially, Yu-Gi-Oh! is about watching people play a Magic rip-off.

Or, in other words, RINGER, Yu-Gi-Oh! is quite possibly the stupidest cartoon to ever grace our airwaves. And I say that having watched the Tweety & Sylvester Mysteries, or whatever the fuck that is. Avoid the movie.

Where we saw it: tv | We deign to rate it: outta 100
Posted by kza at 09:03 AM | Comments (4)