As a lapsed Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, I never expected a comprehensive re-release of some of its older lesser known games. Digital Eclipse and Konami’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection contains 14 of some of the crucial titles that made being a fan of the television show game so much fun in the 2000s. And it adds a handful of quality-of-life features that help ease old and new players back into the Shadow Realm.I can say this upfront: Early Days Collection is an easy recommendation. Getting to relive some early gaming memories is a fun reminder that Duel Monsters can be a pretty engaging card battler. However, this collection isn’t just worth a play because each of these games is a classic worth playing for hours on end. In fact, there are a few duds in the bunch, ones which I’ll likely never boot up again. Instead, the Early Days Collection stands out because you can essentially play through the history of one of the most enduring trading card games ever made and how it evolved into what it is today.The Early Days Collection includes 14 Yu-Gi-Oh! games, each of which released on Nintendo handhelds between 1998 and 2004. Among the collection is the very first video game version of the manga card game Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, the excellent 2002 game The Eternal Duelist Soul, and some of the more experimental spinoffs like 2003’s Dungeon Dice Monsters.This collection marks the first time some of these games (like Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, and the Eternal Duelist Soul sequel Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6: Expert 2) are being released in the U.S. The nine-year-old version of me would be joyous to see that they’re finally making their way over with proper English translations to boot. In addition to the translation, there are added features, like the ability to unlock all cards upfront, and most crucially a rewind feature. You’ll often make mistakes trying to play cards in certain positions or trying to skip to the next phase. So being able to undo these errors saves you plenty of frustration.The novelty of the Early Days Collection is neat though a bit confusing. It’s hard to understand why anyone would need 14 versions of the same trading card game, rather than a really good version of what Duel Monsters was in the mid-2000s. That’s until you boot up the first few games in the collection.Some two decades after Yu-Gi-Oh! was cemented as part of pop culture, it’s easy to forget that the game of Duel Monsters wasn’t solidified with a clear rule set. In fact, until you get to the aforementioned Eternal Duelist Soul, the Duel Monsters rules you likely grew up with aren’t established. The earliest games have strange quirks, such as limited space to place trap cards and making a Monster’s type affect their attack ability during battles. Others, like Dungeon Dice Monsters and Destiny Board Traveler, totally change Duel Monsters into a strategic board game that was spun off into its own variants of the final game.There are some strange but surprisingly fun spinoff games in this collection. | KonamiIt’s not surprising that developer Digital Eclipse was involved in this collection. While it doesn’t provide the documentary-style context of games like The Making of Karateka or Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story, simply playing all 14 of these games for an hour each provides its own narrative. For players fascinated by the process of making games, the Early Days Collection is a direct portal into how the game of Duel Monsters evolved over time, what ideas were added, subtracted in later releases, refined, and so on over six years. As someone who would have stopped playing before later games in the collection dropped, it was also cool to see how Konami borrowed elements from popular Game Boy games like Pokémon to make Duel Monsters the basis for a bigger RPG-light adventure. Being able to walk around in small hub areas to talk and battle people in Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory feels like a dream game I didn't even know existed. It offers a nice break from the other titles that take place entirely on the playing field.Early Days Collection is a fantastic game. While more recent Yu-Gi-Oh! games are deeper experiences thanks to the more complex layers added over the years, Digital Eclipse’s collections from the iconic card game’s earliest days make it much more approachable. The nostalgia of these old Game Boy games holds up well and provides a cool look at how developers perfected an enduring idea. Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection releases February 27, 2025 on Switch and PC.