Duel Masters Was Weird (Surprisingly Not a YU-Gi-Oh Clone) | Billiam

0:00 hi so I know it's really obnoxious when youtubers do this but YouTube has been kind of weird with notifying my subscribers when my new videos are out so if you want to make sure you get all of my videos click the notification bell and follow me on social media thanks here's the video if gaming culture in the 80s and 90s was plagued by licensed video games the 2000s were plagued by licensed trading card games everything had a trading card game Neopets Harry Potter Sponge Bob it was all an attempt to get little kids to buy into a proto loop box pay to win game card game oversaturation got so bad that even card games had their own card games I'm not kidding Duel Masters is to yugioh as Digimon is to Pokemon unfortunately many

0:45 people view duel masters as only a yugioh clone but that's actually not true duel masters was originally co-produced by Wizards of the coast as a manga in order to sell Magic the Gathering to a Japanese audience in fact in the early chapters of the Duel Masters manga the characters all played magic adult duel masters was created the duel masters game itself was actually built on a lot of the foundations of magic the gathering when Wizards tried to bring Duel Masters stateside it was a total failure but in 2012 they tried again and it was a total failure between a weird English dub of the anime less oversight on the rules of the game and you know magic and The Gathering already being popular it just didn't catch on in

1:32 the States which is a shame because there's so many classic characters like exploding cactus the immortal Baron Borg and geez I got a blur this one out I was never really into duel masters as a kid I saw one episode and instantly thought yeah yukio was better at one point I even challenged my friend who was into duel masters into a yugioh vers duel masters game it went well so now as a 20-something year old I'm gonna revisit a game I never played in my childhood and complain how it doesn't appeal to my sensibilities as a 20-something year old alright here I got a two-player starter set in one loyal friends so I can properly get the feeling for the most basic version of the game it really feels like Magic the

2:19 Gathering but instead of health points each player has five shields which I guess is simpler than at the beginning of the game each player draws the top five cards of the deck and places them into their shield zone and they draw another five cards in place in their hand this of course has stated in the rulebook which was totally written by a poet take five cards from your deck don't look at them put them face down on your shield zone they are your shield cards draw five cards from your deck look at them this is your hand to win the game you have to attack your opponent's shields to break them before finally attacking your opponent directly to win one of the unique things about duel masters is the multi-use cases of the cards cards can be played as either mana a spell or as a creature with an attack power as opposed to having

3:04 separate categories of cards dedicated to one of these options so it's up to you to decide when and how cards should be played action in duel monsters requires mana you play one card per turn in your mana zone and use that mana once per turn if a creature or spell requires three mana to play you have to spend at least three turns playing mana cards beforehand many games of duel masters will start off slow with each player building up their mana before finally it ending in one turn because you weren't paying attention I didn't see it coming to the immortal for Borg many cards are designed to only be good for creature V creature or attacks or from preventing the opponent from attacking your shields the only time you can attack your opponent's creatures is that they attacked in the previous turn meaning that they're tapped battling other creatures is entirely dependent on the

3:50 creatures power a creature with a higher power level will win the fight while attacking you have to decide whether or not to attack your opponent's creatures their shields or to set up defensive creatures or offensive creatures I find having to blur this card offensive attacking your opponent's creatures will prevent them from attacking your shields but also you may waste an opportunity to attack your opponent's shield and bring the game closer to an end what can I say it's essentially Magic the Gathering with simplified rules which makes it slightly easier to pick up and play but I would have loved to see where this would have went if it continued in the United States in the United States the original version of the game only lasted from 2004 to 2006 while duel masters was sold to a wide audience in Japan it was essentially Magic the Gathering for kids

4:37 in the United States it had less rules and restrictions stateside which eventually led the game to being a broken mess most competitive decks were created to end the game within three turns and overpowered cards create index which were impossible to counter against card games evolved and changed quite quickly often times for expansion sets will be released a year and can include a hundreds of new cards each therefore it's necessary to pay attention to the game and balance it with counters for strong cards and to make sure that overpowered cards don't remain playable in tournaments for whatever reason despite Wizards of the coast having tons of experience and managing card meta games duel masters didn't have that kind of oversight which meant that a limited number of decks were competitively

5:22 viable none of which included the immortal Borgo elorg of war well the lack of rules and oversight in the game may have contributed to its failure I also believe that it may have failed to capture its target demographic this is all speculation but the Duel Masters anime originally aired on the Toonami programming block Toonami was aimed at older kids and teenagers but duel masters is for a much younger audience teenagers are old enough to get into magic they don't need the stepping stone the Duel Masters anime or at least the English dub is also really bad at introducing the game I watched the first episode before I learned the game and I had no idea what was going on but I do know who the kid with the spiky hair is Shou Bou

6:10 okay let's take a step back and look at the first episode of the yugioh anime yes it's cheesy and it hasn't aged well but it holds your hand throughout the car game itself every card effect every power attack and every move is explained even if the explanations are overdramatic or slow down the drama of the scene it makes the game easier to follow even when the characters break the rules ukyo spends its first episode introducing the audience to the card game the first episode of ukyo establishes a dramatic reason for two characters to play a game of ukyo and then they play the game establishing the card game is necessary because it's the central mechanism to which the show solves its conflicts but the first episode of duel masters never slows down to explain the game it goes through

6:56 three separate games of Kaijudo which is the in universe name of duel masters which is another weird trend of card game based anime having a different name in the anime than the actual card game itself in yu-gi-oh the card game is not called yugioh it's called duel monsters which is just oddly close to duel masters and into a masters it's called Kaijudo the first half of the episode is in a tournament setting and show boo the main character played by ty from digimon himself joshua seth which just brings home the Digimon comparison wins the tournament despite some jerk cheating then the second half teases a supernatural element to the show in the most unexpected to if this was split

7:44 into two episodes you could better show off the supernatural elements more than just the characters hands glowing and slowed down the pace of the show to show off of the card game its pacing is hyper energetic in a frantic way the English dubs audio's mixing makes it hard to hear the characters at times and I'm just not into it even something like chaotic sold its concept better I know this is just the first episode but it would have been an introductory point for a lot of people if it doesn't sell the game or even the rest of the show that's a canoe Nicoll failure but the theme song takes the time to explain who the kid with the spiky hair is Shou Bou

8:29 finally just for fun let's look at the PlayStation 2 adaptation of duel masters duel masters for the PlayStation 2 it's essentially duel masters with a horrible user interface why not just lay it out like the card game it took me forever to learn how to navigate and access my cards view their effects etc but after that it's just the card game but on the PlayStation 2 what makes it worthwhile for me are these little flash animated cutscenes it reminds me so much of Sailor Moon fan animations on YouTube like from a decade ago you picked from one to five characters who represent the five tribes and duel masters and then you play duel masters it was one of several duel masters games released in the West and once again if this was your introduction it doesn't sell the game well which I don't know if you know this

9:15 is important duel masters American run lasted from 2004 to 2006 in 2012 there was an attempt to rebrand it as Kaijudo rise of the Duel Masters with an all-new american-produced cartoon but it just didn't catch on Kaijudo ended in 2014 and maybe that's a video for another day however in Japan Duel Masters is still massively popular with multiple anime series and going online I see many sources state that duel masters is the second most played trading card game in the country right behind you vo Duel Masters eventually grew and evolved into its own unique game separate from Magic the Gathering but unfortunately in the States it never had an opportunity to

10:00 differentiate itself duel masters isn't really bad it just had a hard time selling itself and I bet Wizards had a hard time marketing it because it was so similar to its flagship product which already had established itself in the United States so what I'm trying to say is duel masters is really dumb it's just a yugioh clone special thanks to verb for sponsoring this video head out to VR video slash Billiam to receive a 30-day free trial of a verb premium first Premium offers a wide variety of different content from roosterteeth crunchyroll and recently they've added NYX splat to their lineup NYX flat has a great selection of classic Nickelodeon shows which have kind of become my go-to

10:46 de-stresser shows I've been watching episodes of ah real monsters The Wild Thornberrys an even choc zone and the more I watch of choc zone the more I'm convinced I have to do a video on it Verve is available on a wide variety of streaming devices and it's offline sync feature allows you to watch content while you're not connected to the internet which is great if you're traveling or just don't want to use up cell phone data Verve is genuinely one of my favorite platforms so help out the show go check it out and go to vo vo slash phillium to get a 30-day free trial of Verve premium thank you again to verb for sponsoring at this video thanks for watching this video if you want to help this video get as many views as possible please share it like and comment do you want to make sure

11:32 you're staying up-to-date with me and when I'm posting new stuff hit the notification bell subscribe and follow me on social media the links are in the description down below thank you again for watching it I will see you next week