Your move!
No matter how many series Konami makes about Yu-Gi-Oh, there’ll never be a more popular series than the very first. It’s the one nearest to everyone’s hearts and the one that found it’s way onto the most channels in syndication.
But Duel Monsters was also a time where the rules of Yu-Gi-Oh weren’t nearly as codified, and more often than not, they were made up by Kazuki Takahashi, the guy writing the manga at the time. This meant rules changed frequently, and sometimes even worse than that. Yugi changed the way cards worked so many times, it’s a wonder any of us ever learned how to play the game! Here’s some of the King of Games’ worst offenders.
10 I ATTACK THE MOON
Pegasus probably should’ve been sued for even staging the Duelist Kingdom. He completely changed the rules of how the game worked, and then when you dueled him, he had the ability to read your mind. But speaking of those rule changes, there was some pretty weird stuff going on with terrains.
Monsters in the Sky couldn’t be attacked by those who couldn’t fly, monsters in the sea couldn’t be attacked by ones on land. With Yugi trapped by this rule against legendary ocean duelist Mako Tsunami, he instead chose to attack the moon. This weakened the sea around Mako’s monsters, leaving them stranded. This win was so over-the-top, they actually made “Attack the Moon” into a spell.
9 BURNING LAND
After Yugi managed to strand all of Mako’s monsters on land thanks to destroying the moon and altering the effect of the tides on the duel stage, he played the spell card, Burning Land. Burning Land destroyed all of Mako’s monsters, permitting Yugi to attack and win the game.
Trouble is, in the anime, Burning Land says it burns the enemy’s land, making them all Defenseless. Unless Curse of Dragon was a piercer, none of those monsters should’ve been destroyed and Yugi couldn’t have won that turn.
8 CATAPULT TURTLE
Catapult Turtle is a monster that works entirely differently on the show than it does in the game. On the show, it’s an effect monster that can ‘‘launch a monster into a wall or fortress,’’ which is an effect so specific Yugi only used it twice in the entire series. To make it even more specific, the launched monster gains attack if the wall is part of a monster.
It destroys the wall and the launched monster, and the owner of the launched monster takes damage equal to half its attack. In real life, this is a vanilla card, because this effect doesn’t even make sense and couldn’t apply to the actual game.
7 DARK MAGIC CURTAIN
Sometimes Yugi just decided how a card worked. During the three-parter “The Master of Magicians,” Yugi faced off against Arkana, a Rare Hunter who had his own version of the Dark Magician. Late game, Arkana activated Dark Magic Curtain to pay half his life points and summon a Dark Magician, but then Yugi used that same Dark Magic Curtain to special summon Dark Magician Girl to swing the duel back in his favor.
But Dark Magic Curtain is a one-time normal spell (meaning only the person who played it can use it) and it only special summons Dark Magician.
6 MONSTER HACKS
This isn’t really Yugi cheating per se, but this was some cheating that happened during a duel Yugi participated in. While Yugi was in the Duelist Kingdom, he ran into a fake version of Kaiba in the episode “Everything’s Relative.”
To prove he was Kaiba, he used Blue-Eyes White Dragon, a card only Kaiba had access to. Though Yugi’s deck was able to get rid of one Blue-Eyes, the second was weakened when Kaiba hacked into the system and lowered the monster’s attack. Some might ask, is it really cheating if his opponent was cheating too? Yes, yes it is.
5 INFINITE BRAIN CONTROL
One of the coolest duels in Battle City was Yugi vs. Strings, a mind-controlled Rare Hunter. This battle with Yugi saw Marik come up with a combo that was rock solid, though incredibly specific. It was a five-card combo which involved the Egyptian god card Slifer the Sky Dragon and a mix of other monsters, spells, and traps to make Slifer invincible and Yugi unable to attack Strings’ life points.
Yugi gets out of it by using Brain Control to take control of one of Strings’ infinitely reviving monsters, forcing an infinite loop that causes Strings to lose by deck out. It’s a creative win...but how’d Brain Control take control of Strings’ monster right after it came back to life? It’s a Normal Spell, not a Continuous Spell.
4 SUMMONED SKULL
Summoned Skull was the MVP of Yugi’s deck many times when he couldn’t get to Dark Magician. During the Duelist Kingdom arc, he was capable of Normal Summoning a Level Six (which usually requires a tribute) that had 2500 ATK out the gate.
That’s difficult to deal with for most decks, especially when combined with Yugi’s special version of Makiu, the Magical Mist. When Yugi goes up against Weevil once, he uses Makiu, but instead of it boosting Summoned Skull’s attack by just 30 percent (which is 750 ATK), it boosts it to a full 1000 so it can get over Weevil’s boss.
That is not even counting the time Summoned Skull was able to do long-range attacks against the Paradox Brothers.
3 MAKIU, THE MAGICAL MIST
There was a time when Yu-Gi-Oh was a much more mathematically oriented game, with certain cards boosting monsters stats by a certain percentage rather than a specific number. Take Makiu, the Magical Mist, a card that boosts an electric-based ATK by 30 percent.
Yugi’s used it multiple times to increase the attack of Summoned Skull to get over larger monsters. But then when Yugi was facing off against Joey, Makiu again came into play...but this time it was able to negate attacks, which saved Yugi and allowed him to get the win versus Joey. None of these effects sound right.
2 MULTIPLY
The first time the quick play spell Multiply appeared in Yu-Gi-Oh was in the three-part episode called “Face Off.” This happened during the tail end of the first half of the Duelist Kingdom saga before everyone went to fight Pegasus.
Kaiba successfully summons Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, one of the strongest monsters we’d seen up to that point, with 4500 ATK. With the Duelist Kingdom rules leaving players with only 2000, that should have been more than enough to finish things.
However, Yugi activated Multiply, which not only gave him a bunch of other Kuriboh monsters, but they were somehow able to regenerate after each time Kaiba attacked. How would a player ever lose if they had this combination?
1 MAKING UP FUSIONS
“Face Off” is the one time Kaiba earns a win over Yugi, although he had to cheat to win. However, looking back at some of Yugi’s moves in that duel, he probably deserved to lose. To get over Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, he used Polymerization and the spell card Living Arrow to fuse his Mammoth Graveyard with Blue-Eyes.
Living Arrow supposedly gives the effect of a spell to an opponent’s monster, while Mammoth Graveyard weakened Kaiba’s Blue-Eyes because it was an undead monster. Okay, for starters? Living Arrow isn’t a real card. But also? Fusing an undead monster with a living monster doesn’t weaken them, it would just change their attribute. Also, you can't create a fusion that doesn't exist.