It’s time to d-d-d-d-duel!
At The Card Vault, we are super excited to be celebrating 25 years of Yu-Gi-Oh! The party started earlier in the year with the Legendary Collection: 25th Anniversary Edition boxes and now the next stage of the anniversary begins! So what do we have this time? Why, releases of fan favourite sets from throughout the years!
We kick things off with the reprint of the first Yu-Gi-Oh! Set Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon! Released back on March 8th 2002. To kick off the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (the proper one and not the original and questionable Bandai carddass one (yes there was a version of Yu-Gi-Oh by Bandai before Konami made the card game we know and love today!). The Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon set features a lot of the classic cards we know and love from the anime such as Dark Magician, Red Eyes Black Dragon, Exodia the Forbidden One, and, of course, the titular Blue Eyes White Dragon. If you want to relive the glory days then Blue Eyes is the way to go!
We then have the Metal Raiders set, which was released a few months after Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon on June 26th in North America and July 23rd in Europe, which was the second set to be released for the game. The roster of cards only expanded from there and Konami knew they were onto a winner. Probably because after fan out-cry, riots, and all sorts, Kuriboh FINALLY received a card (for legal reasons I must state none of those things happened, we just love Kuriboh).
We move on to Spell Ruler, the 3rd set of YGO released on September 16th. This set brought in some of my favourite cards when I was a kid, the Toon cards as wielded by the Fabulous Maximillion Pegasus. Also, a fun fact about this set, it was originally Magic Ruler but was renamed Spell Ruler (much like how the magic cards were renamed to spell cards for worldwide release) to avoid similarities with Wizards of the Coast’s Magic: The Gathering. The more you know!
The next set to release was Pharaoh’s Servant. Released back on October 20th, this set featured a large variety of Trap Cards like Chain of Destruction and also brought in our boy Jinzo! Another fun fact: Pharaoh’s Servant marked the first set to feature a Secret Rare card that was not a monster card, “Imperial Order”.
Finally, we have Invasion of Chaos, a bit of a jump from the 4th set all the way to the 10th set! This set brought in many new “Chaos” cards like Dark Magician of Chaos, and Chaos Emperor Dragon - Envoy of the End! Fun fact for this one: this set is made up of two Japanese YGO sets called “Controller of Chaos” and Invader of Darkness”.
So if you want to get your nostalgia on, there are certainly worse places to start. And remember, the year is not out yet, we still have more 25th Anniversary Yu-Gi-Oh! to come!