by Jonathan Albin

Created on: November 09, 2008

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game, created in response to the great success of Magic:the Gathering, is the basis for not a single controversy, but several different ones that intertwine and cross over one another on a continuing basis.

The initial controversy, the one that has been somewhat lost in the annals of time, was the inconsistencies between the text of cards in the manga and anime, and the actual effects of cards created for the OCG (original card game) and the TCG (trading card game). While certain card effects made duels in the animated stories very exciting and challenging, the cards created necessarily had to be far less sweeping and game-ending. While this seems unfortunate (for the player who watched/read the animated stories) It was a necessity of game play overall. The animated versions of the cards, if created with the same game-ending power, would simply be in every Deck played by anyone who wanted to win the game, and actual played duels would become simply a race to determine which player was fortunate enough to get to the game-ending cards first.

So, though the purists would desire for the cards to exist, they simply were too powerful. This controversy, therefore, ends in a victory for the players (the cards' effects stiffly limited to keep them playable) and a victory for the viewer/collectors (The card in the series actually came to be available despite their overpowering nature.

A second controversy arises between the OCG and the TCG. Distribution to the world beyond Japan did not begin immediately, and was licensed to Upper Deck Entertainment, inc. for US and Europe(and Latin America). Because of this, the card selection available to players in these markets were not the same, which created issues. OCG Players wanted to compete using all the cards in their arsenal, emulating an effect seen in the animated series, wherein certain players were sole holders of powerful cards in the entire world,while the TCG players felt a more competitive means would to be limit the card pool for world competition to the TCG list, because the field of play would be more even, and thus the skills of the competitors would be in question, not their access to cards.

In the end, this controversy was resolved on two different levels. Firstly, the card list that was chosen to be accessible, as well as limits and restrictions on which of those lists could be used competitively was a subset of cards from the TCG list, which not only leveled the playing field, it also

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