Initially introduced in Kazuki Takahashi's iconic manga as a parody of Magic the Gathering during the manga's "variety tabletop horror" era as Magic & Wizards, the fictional game eventually evolved into Duel Monsters, which appears in portions of the manga franchise and is the central plot device throughout its various anime adaptations and spinoff series after it's introduction.

[2] From there, after streamlining Takahashi's otherwise hyper-dramatized fictional ruleset, Duel Monsters was treated as a basis for the real life Yu-Gi-Oh!

The trading card game was launched by Konami in 1999 in Japan and March 2002 in North America.

[4] As of March 31, 2011, Konami Digital Entertainment Co., Ltd. Japan sold 25.2 billion cards globally since 1999.

Speed Duel, a faster and simplified version of the game, was launched worldwide in January 2019.

Each player starts with 8,000 "life points" (LP) (Though the players can decide to start with more or less in casual games), with the main aim of the game to use monster attacks (and sometimes card effects) to reduce the opponent's life points.

Traps are cards that are set on the field in advance and activated in later turns when certain conditions are met, such as when an opponent targets a player's monster.

With some exceptions, a typical monster card possesses ATK and DEF points that determine its attack and defense power in battles, a level represented by stars, with more powerful monsters typically being of higher levels, an attribute that certain effects may react to, and a description listing the monster's types and any effects or summoning conditions they may have.

(ask for a Response) The player plays Raigeki (a normal spell destroying all of the opponent's monsters) (Starting Chain link 1).

The player then plays Solemn Judgement (a counter trap that negates a monster summon and/or the activation of a spell or trap, but at the cost of half of the player's LP) (as chain link 3 to negate Destruction Jammer's effect).

Summoning or tributing a monster, changing position or paying a cost do not represent valid effects.

These sets change each time there is a different tournament and have fewer cards than a typical booster pack.

Some cards in the TCG have been released by other means, such as inclusion in video games, movies, and Shonen Jump Magazine issues.

Occasionally, cards like Elemental Hero Stratos and Chimeratech Fortress Dragon have been re-released as revisions.

These tournaments attract hundreds of players to compete for prizes such as rare promotional cards.

This format follows all the normal rules of the game, but also places a complete ban on certain cards that are deemed too powerful or are unsuitable for tournament play.

Rush Duel (遊戯王ラッシュデュエル, Yū-Gi-Ō Rasshu Dueru) is a variation of the Yu-Gi-Oh!

Trading Card Game which launched in Japan in April 2020 alongside the release of the Yu-Gi-Oh!

manga series, Duel Monsters, originally known as Magic & Wizards, had a rather basic structure, not featuring many of the restricting rules introduced later on and often featuring peculiar exceptions to the rulings in the interest of providing a more engrossing story.

Dark Synchro cards were featured in the PlayStation Portable video game, Yu-Gi-Oh!

In the anime, characters can activate unique Skills depending on the situation (for example, the protagonist Yusaku can draw a random monster when his life points are below 1000) once per duel.

[citation needed] With the exception of the films Pyramid of Light and The Dark Side of Dimensions, which base the card's appearance on the English version of the real-life card game, all Western releases of the Yu-Gi-Oh!

Duel Monsters anime and its subsequent spin-off series, produced by 4Kids Entertainment and later Konami Cross Media NY, edit the appearance of cards to differentiate them from their real-life counterparts in accordance with U.S. Federal Communications Commission regulations in concerning program-length commercials, as well as to make the show more marketable across non-English speaking countries.

On August 1999 Konami held an invite only tournament in Tokyo Dome, where participants could buy packs containing limited edition cards.

[24] From March 2002[25] to December 2008, Konami's trading cards were distributed in territories outside of Asia by The Upper Deck Company.

In December 2008, Konami filed a lawsuit against Upper Deck alleging that it had distributed inauthentic Yu-Gi-Oh!

[26] Upper Deck also sued Konami alleging breach of contract and slander.

A few months later, a federal court in Los Angeles issued an injunction preventing Upper Deck from acting as the authorized distributor and requiring it to remove the Yu-Gi-Oh!

[27] In December 2009, the court decided that Upper Deck was liable for counterfeiting Yu-Gi-Oh!