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History
of Yugioh
Video
Games
Konami sold 7 million card-based
games for PlayStation and GameBoy,
generating $300 million.
Cards
The cards are very, very big in
Japan! An event in Tokyo offering rare
trading cards, was shut down for crowd
control after 55,000 people showed up.
(Click
here for more on that) Popular? Oh yes. Card sales are said
to have produced $1 billion.
Comics/TV
Show
Yu-Gi-Oh!
debuted in 1996 as a comic book series
about a game player with mystical
powers. An early TV version was
canceled in six months, then in 1998
the writer, Kazuku Takahashi, introduced
a plot twist that enthralled the
nation. The scary monsters, mildly
erotic female characters and decidedly
uncute art were a hit first with 10-
to 14- year old boys before catching on
with older audiences.
US
media giants, almost certainly
including Disney and Warner, are
bidding furiously for North American
rights. Will it catch on in the
US? It might. But don't tell the
bidders about the display case at TV
Tokyo headquarters, filled with relics
of game ventures that flopped...
Finally, in April
2001, 4Kids, the same company that made Pokemon a phenomenon in the
US and other places, licensed the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. It immediately the
most popular show of that time period for kids/teenagers of many
ages. Later
on, in January 2002, Upperdeck got the right to translate and sell
the Yu-Gi-Oh card game in US and elsewhere. The anime also was
expanded to showing 6 times per week as from April 2002.
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