Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection

The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection stays true to its sources and brings a little piece of history into the modern age. Unfortunately, dull mechanics and often unwieldy UI plague many of the games in the collection just as they did on first release, although amidst 14 titles, it would be impossible not to have a couple of winners.For us, Monster Capsule and the two World Championship Tournament titles shone through beautifully. Although the included games are certainly imperfect, we recognise the intentionality behind the collection's curation and feel that it's an excellent time capsule of the origins of the iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! Series.

There isn't a lot of heart in the cards with the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is an incredible work of game preservation, but some of the titles included remain a little rough around the edges.

Bringing back classic handheld entries into one convenient bundle, the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection enhances each game with new modification options, fresh translations for many, and online play for one title in particular. Some of the selection feels like more of a historical novelty than solid games in their own right, and a lack of proper tutorials in any of them make that barrier of entry somewhat prohibitive, but new players willing to persevere will find a robust group of titles waiting for them.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a solid collection of games that will appeal to long-time fans of the iconic franchise. Though this will hardly bring in new fans, half the titles in the collection offer incredibly engaging and varied gameplay and stories within the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collections was a good attempt at preserving the past, but even with 14 games it’s filled with fluff and very little substance.

Thankfully, the games do the talking here, and I find some of these games are absolutely worth everyone’s time. If you happen to click with one of the GBA simulators and want more of that action? Well, there’s only around several more games mandating you win a hundred duels each to go through, so you’ll be kept well busy for a long, long time.

At the end of the day, Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a love letter to the franchise’s past, but not a carefully crafted one. It feels like a rushed compilation rather than a polished, definitive collection, and while the nostalgia factor is high, the gameplay experience itself is uneven. For hardcore fans of old-school Yu-Gi-Oh!, there’s enough here to justify a purchase, plus if you buy the physical versions you get one of two Quarter Century Rare "Harpie Feathers Duster." For most players, this collection will feel more like an incomplete relic of the past rather than a gratifying experience.

At the end of the day, Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a love letter to classic Yu-Gi-Oh!fans. It offers an incredible amount of content, preserves some of the most beloved (and rare) games in the franchise, and introduces just enough quality-of-life improvements to make revisiting them enjoyable.

Konami brings back some of the oldest Yu-Gi-Oh! games, and does so by adding some much appreciated QoL features and focusing on creating a sort of digital museum, but the positives end here: this collection does not add anything of value to games that deserved to be modernised instead, allowing them to become more accessible to newer fans. Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection does the bare minimum, while asking a premium price for it.