Duel Monsters (Gameboy)

Duel Monsters (デュエル モンスターズ, Dyueru Monsutāzu) is the card game played in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters series for the Gameboy.

It is based on the Duel Monsters game from the manga. In the manga, the game was called Magic & Wizards at the time. The game was renamed to Duel Monsters to avoid trademark issues with Magic: The Gathering. Despite this, there is one instance of the game being called Magic (マジック Majikku) in the video games.

The game standardizes elements of the manga game to make it playable outside of fiction. It predates the Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game and differs greatly from it, compared to other video games.

Video games

The game is played in the following video games:

• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark duel Stories
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Avdent, known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories in English
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4: Battle of Great Duelist
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 7: The Duelcity Legend, known as Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards in English
• Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 8: Reshef of Destruction, known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction in English

Other games in the series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 5: Expert 1 and Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6: Expert 2 use the "Expert" rules, which more closely resemble the real-world Yu-Gi-Oh! Official Card Game.

Rules

Duel Monsters 1

Setup

• A player's Deck must contain exactly 40 cards.
• A Deck can have any number of copies of the same card.
• Each player starts with 8000 LP and five cards in their hand.

Playing cards

• Except for the first turn, the player draws one card at the beginning of their turn.
• A player may play one card per turn.
• A player can Summon a monster into one of the five available zones or activate a Magic Card.
• If a player attempts to Summon a monster into a zone occupied by another monster, the game will attempt to fuse the monsters. If the Fusion is valid, a new monster will be Summoned into the zone. If the Fusion is invalid, the second monster will replace the first.

Modifying ATK/DEF

• Certain Magic Cards will modify the ATK and DEF of a chosen monster by boosting or reducing its level. Each level increases a monster's ATK and DEF by 60%.
  • A monster has a level of 0 by default, which can be changed to a minimum of -1 and a maximum of 2.
  • At level -1, a monster will have 60% of its original ATK and DEF.
  • At level 1, a monster will have 160% of its original ATK and DEF.
  • At level 2, a monster will have 256% of its original ATK and DEF (160% of its ATK and DEF at level 1).
• Field Magic Cards affect all monsters on the field of specified Types. A Field Card may increase a monster's ATK and DEF by 30%, decrease them by 30%, or have no effect. This increase/decrease does not count towards the number of levels.
  • The cards #278: "Petit Moth", #074: "Giant Rock Soldier", #027: "Beaver Warrior", #047: "Torike" and PaniK's monsters are don't experience modifications consistent with their Typing.
• Due to a glitch, ATK and DEF values of over 9999 do not work correctly. Effectively any digits other than the last four are ignored; e.g. an ATK of 11648 becomes 1648.

Battling

• Each turn, the player must decide if each of their monsters is going to attack or defend.
  • If "attack" is selected, the monster is put in Attack Position and must attack a monster on the opponent's side of the field. If there are none, it will attack the opponent directly. A monster cannot be left in Attack Position at the end of a turn, without declaring an attack, unless it is the first turn or another card is preventing it from attacking.
    • When a monster attacks a player directly, the monster's ATK is deducted from the LP of the attacked player.
    • When a monster attacks an Attack Position monster, the monster with lower ATK is destroyed and the difference is deducted from the LP of the controller of the destroyed monster. If both monsters have the same ATK, they are both destroyed.
    • When a monster attacks a Defense Position monster, if the attacking monster's ATK is higher than the defending monster's DEF, the defending monster is destroyed. If the attacking monster's ATK is equal to or lower than the DEF of the defending monster, the difference is deducted from the LP of the controller of the attacking monster, and neither monster is destroyed.
  • If "defend" is selected, the monster is put in Defense Position.
• The turn ends after the player has chosen an action for all of their monsters.

Winning

• When a player's LP are reduced to 0, the other player is the winner.
• If a player's hand is empty, the Duelist with the higher LP wins
• If a player has all five "Exodia" pieces in their hand, they win.