“Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Eternal Duelist Soul” for the Game Boy Advance is a complete electronic conversion of the official Yu-Gi-Oh card game. It features all the rules and almost all the cards from the game. You start the game by choosing a deck, one out of three, and there is no way to tell what’s inside (unless you play multiple times and record the results). From there, you battle opponents from the TV series, starting with easy people like Joey, Yugi (the younger one), and Tristan, to people like Rex Raptor and Weevil Underwood, to big-shots like Seto Kaiba. Every time you win a duel, you can pick a booster pack to add to your deck. The packs usually have their most valuable card on the front, like the Dark Magician pack, which may give you the Dark Magician. As you progress and fight, the range of booster packs may increase. In the same way (battling a lot) you get harder opponents. There is also a calendar, even though there are only two types of events: Yu-Gi-Oh Magazines (which give you more cards) and Weekend Duels (which face you against a random opponent for a “best-of-three” battle). You progress in the duels, basically forever. There are win/lose/tie counters for each opposing duelist, and they say things depending on the record. The main goal is just to get a whole lot of cards. However, it is a fun diversion if you can’t play with anyone real.

The rules in the game are of the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game’s latest version, 4.0. People who learned from the TV series will be slightly confused, but luckily the manual gives you all the rules that you need to play. The main difference between the card game and the TV series is that, instead of the TV shows 2000 “Life Points”, there are now 8000. Of course, that was so the duels didn’t last for about five million years (it takes episodes for a duel the way it is!).

The art in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game was why I always really collected the cards. However, it is reduced quite a bit in this game, since it is after all a Game Boy Advance game. Even so, the other graphics are okay. The pictures of the duelists are done pretty well, and the game area, where the duels take place, is not bad. The sound is, again, just okay. There’s nothing extraordinary about this game. It’s fun, though. 7/10.

Buy "Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Eternal Duelist Soul" on Amazon!

Read the Anime site review of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV Show