It featured avatars, an actual overworld to explore based on the anime which included areas like Domino City and the Duel Academy. The first one was simply Yu-Gi-Oh! Online and lasted from its original inception until 2007, where there was a complete overhaul of the game’s design which was more in line with the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX series. There were three iterations of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online. I recall using this option a few times on my Pay As You Go Nokia 5300, but not often as I got in trouble from my parents for wasting credit, but needs must at the time. This was called SMS DP and cost £1 for 15 DP and 10 MP. In the UK we had the option to gain DP via text. The USB DP Key was a USB stick which would equal to 3 Duelpasses when plugged into a PC. Overseas there was something called DP 150 which could be bought online and was the equivalent to 5 DP. People talking to strangers on the internet in these days was a friendlier experience and a lot less sinister during the days of Neopets, MSN Messenger and MySpace.Īpart from buying Duelpasses (DP), there were other ways to attain DP. With the help of my older cousins and the kindness of strangers, I would eventually own a bunch of good cards to kick-start my dueling career.Īpart from scammers, Yu-Gi-Oh! Online amounted a nice community of people who helped smaller and newer duelists get better cards, and this was a product of its time. Duelpasses were very important, not only to duel but also to collect cards.
This was the main way to earn cards other than from trading with people online, where it would be known as a free for all for scammers within the game. Luckily the markets of East London were the perfect place for them.Ī single Duelpass would give you 30 DP which was enough for 30 duels, a promotional in-game card and 10 Mileage Points (MP) which could be used to buy special cards in in-game shops.Īt the end of every duel in Yu-Gi-Oh! Online, whether you won or lost, you would be offered a card out of a pack to choose from. These were sold at independent gaming-related shops and were actually quite hard to find. This came in the form of DP or Duelpass Points which could be purchased as Duelpasses.īack around 2006 at the age of 11, every weekend I would be dragged to go shopping with my mom in exchange for one Duelpass, which cost £2.50 and on occasion older Duelpasses were £1.50. The biggest gripe I had with this game and what I think stopped players from enjoying the game as much, was the fact you had to pay real money to duel. No avatars were introduced at the time, while the game was a bare bones version of the MMO that was to eventually come. Like the anime, the game was very Egyptian themed especially in its early life. Eventually it climbed the ranks until its peak in 2007 during the game’s 3rd season and became the 102nd best Yu-Gi-Oh! Online player in the world. The Kryptor account did well through online worldwide tournaments and managed to place 419th worldwide during the game’s first ever tournament. My cousins were well-known in the game so much, that others simply knew me as Kryptor’s cousin, and on occasion and gave me free cards to play with. They had a joint account under the name Kryptor and they were veterans of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Online scene, something that I was in awe of. Soon after, I followed my cousins to the game.
I was introduced to the game by my older cousins who had been following the series of games so far, and became hooked when Yu-Gi-Oh! Online came out. These were the games that laid out the ground floor for which Yu-Gi-Oh! Online reigned supreme for many years. The final game called Joey the Passion, even had a multiplayer option available over landline. Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos: Yugi the Destiny, Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos: Kaiba the Revenge and Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos: Joey the Passion all came out between 2003 to 2004 respectively in the build up to Yu-Gi-Oh! Online and shared many assets such as menu layouts and sound effects. All in the duelling familyīefore Yu-Gi-Oh! Online, Konami experimented with non multiplayer Yu-Gi-Oh! games for the PC. These are the life and times of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online, banished to the shadow realm too soon. Over seven years I was engrossed in the game, investing hundreds of my own dollars into it, which after its discontinuation, was rendered worthless.īut the game still lives in my memory, seeped in nostalgia and a longing for simpler times with Yu-Gi-Oh. The game launched back in 2005 and it had a great following until its eventual close in 2012. This even included me, as I began as an internet duelist in 2006 towards the beginning of Yu-Gi-Oh! Online’s life. Since then, it's boomed in the West to become a duelling competition in real life, with tournaments and trading cards being held ever since. If you watched early morning television back in the mid-2000s, there's a good chance you would have caught the Yu-Gi-Oh show.