Konami Is Bringing Some Classic Yu-Gi-Oh Games To Switch

Oliver Brandt
·2 min read

YGO Yugi Dark Magician Girl

The Yu-Gi-Oh franchise is no stranger to video games, having some fantastic (and some not so fantastic) games over the last 25 years or so. Since the earliest days of the anime and trading card game, Konami has been publishing tie-in games for its cornerstone TCG, and now, some of those early games are coming back.

During a 25th anniversary event for Yu-Gi-Oh in Japan, Konami announced the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, a collection of classic games in the series that is said to be coming to Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam. The stream announced two games, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelists for the Game Boy Color, and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6 Expert 2 for the Game Boy Advance.

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In a press release, Konami confirmed that at least the first game would be localized as part of the collection, which is coming to countries other than Japan for the first time. Curiously, the press release doesn’t mention the GBA game, but at this stage it’s hard to tell if that was an oversight or if it isn't coming at all.

Konami says in its press release that more details will be announced in the future, suggesting there could be even more titles included in the collection. If we had to guess, we’d say that given the Switch console exclusivity, most of these games will be from the Game Boy family of systems. One title in particular fans are probably hoping for is Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, known as Duel Monsters 7 in Japan, since it’s got a lot of story based on the anime’s Battle City arc.

Fans have also been hoping for a re-release of Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters, a spinoff based on a small arc of the anime that was very well received, as well as Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Duel Academy, based on the GX anime series. The latter is less likely, given the name of the collection and its focus on earlier games, but it’s not entirely out of the picture.

Personally, I’m hoping for some of the more experimental games that came just a little bit later, like the PS2’s The Duelists of the Roses, the GameCube’s The Falsebound Kingdom, and the PS1’s Forbidden Memories, which has become somewhat of a cult classic among fans of the series.

No release date has been revealed for the collection yet, but we’d expect it to be released sometime later this year.

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