Sports The Unofficial History of the Yu-Gi-Oh! Video Game World Championships

[Krvavi Abadas]

not a video series (beyond that intro video), but a full long form article hosted on it's own URL.
here's a few interesting highlights, though i'd highly reccomend reading the whole thing.

Stairway to the Destined Duel’s success would make way for the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship series, a new yearly franchise that, through name alone, tied itself directly to Worlds. Konami had created an advertisement ouroboros: the allure of an Advanced Format digital simulator with an implicit invitation to the world tournament would sell itself. Players who wanted a lower barrier to entry for competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! could purchase the video game for a one-time fee and, with enough time and effort, build a deck capable of taking them to the World Championships. The success of each subsequent game would then provide the incentive to make the next installment, beginning the cycle again.

Eduard Alvarez noted that one of his games in the round-robin portion was like “something from the anime”. His opponent set one Monster and one Trap on his field and passed the turn to Alvarez, who had what he felt was the perfect hand. He set one Monster and four Traps, prepared to slowly accrue advantage by keeping his opponent from making any plays. However, as Alvarez put it, “at this moment I lost the game.” His opponent activated their Trap, Crush Card Virus, which destroyed the last card in Alvarez’s hand, Light and Darkness Dragon. When Light and Darkness Dragon is destroyed, it also destroys everything else on its owner’s field, so Alvarez passed back to his opponent with “zero cards in my hand, zero cards on the field, and nothing at that moment to do.”

Alvarez said that there had been a minor disaster after the tournament concluded. At the end of the Worlds award ceremony, all of the other competitors immediately sold their prize card at the event. However, one of the top 4 finalists shattered their copy of Queen Nereia the Silvercrown while trying to take it out of its protective case, meaning there were now only five total copies of this card instead of six. The other four were sold to private collectors and have since disappeared from the public eye, leaving Alvarez with the only traceable copy in the world. He said that he would never part with it, however, because “it’s an important memory.”

was debating if this should go on Off-Topic (since it's a card game) or Warp Zone (since it's a video game adaption of said card game) and figured it'd make more sense here due to it's nature as a secondary option that runs parallel to the main TCG tournament.

 

[VorpalNonsense]

I've got some missing info about the first VG championship that I'm gonna send in. I know someone who competed and have some relevant printed material that I've kept ever since 2003.
I've seen this topic come up several times across the net very recently, I wonder what's got it on peoples' minds. Is there a competition going on right now, or just funny timing?

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

I've got some missing info about the first VG championship that I'm gonna send in. I know someone who competed and have some relevant printed material that I've kept ever since 2003.

this got added fairly quickly.


i've also worked with the author to recover high res images of IGN's 2004 coverage from the Internet Archive.