Game Review - Yu-Gi-Oh!, Worldwide edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel (GBA 2003)

 Yu-Gi-Oh!, Worldwide edition: Stairway to the destined duel is a 2003 game that was released exclusively for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance.

Based on the popular CCG (that's Collectable Card Game for the uninitiated), which is in turn based on the popular manga/anime series of the same name, the game is basically a way of playing the card game without having to go to the trouble of purchasing packs of random cards and spending time building decks to play with.
This is not the first game based on the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, as previous games were released on the playstation and gameboy colour, however, this game is what I would consider the first game to accurately replicate the dynamic of the CCG, albeit without the bad losers, cheating and other such occurances that can ruin gaming for most folk (myself included, lol).

The gameplay is simple, provided you are familiar with the original card game, if not, its fairly easy to be able to pick up the rules as you go along, enabling you to decide which strategies work best for you and allowing you to select cards for your deck accordingly.

There are two play modes:-

Story mode

Taking place during the "Battle City" story arc from the anime (series 2) you begin the game by selecting a starter deck from a random selection, and then you move around a map of the city challenging other duellists, who are all characters from the anime, to duels.
Each time you win, you earn points and are allowed to choose a prize from a variety of booster packs.
As you win more duels and aquire more cards for your collection, more duellists and special "side events" become available, eventually culminating in you battling the character Marik Ishtar and his minions who have a dastardly plot to rule the world using the dark magic of the milennium items and the egyptian god cards.
There are numerous achievements to beat over the course of story mode, all of which can be completed with varying degrees of difficulty depending on your play style.

Multiplayer

Using a link cable to connect your Gameboy to someone elses, you can then battle them directly, gaining duellist points and enabling you to trade cards from your personal collections.


Oddly enough, this game was released before the Japanese version, but, at the time of release, it made heavy use of cards which had not yet been made available in the west.
In addition, some cards featured in the game had different names to their "official" western releases, which caused some confusion amongst players.
Also, the western release of the game came packaged with three promo cards in the form of "Sinister Serpent", "Harpies Feather Duster" and "Valkyrion the Magna Warrior", whereas its Japanese counterpart came packaged with one each of the "Egyptian God Cards", which left many fans of the series feeling cheated, but also it allowed people who had managed to get a hold of these powerful cards via other avenues to sell them on for ridiculous amounts of money.

All in all though, the game itself is still good to this day, with its simple to use interface and heavy use of characters from the anime, but it is let down by its rather lackluster storyline which seems to end very quickly.

This game is reall ymore for fans of the anime and players of the card game than for general gamers.