Disney Illusion Island

One of my mistakes in 2025 was that I bought too many games. The only solution is to keep clearing the backlog, by going through the quicker ones first. Gotta start somewhere!

Disney Illusion Island, developed by Dlala Studios, was first released on the Nintendo Switch on July 28th, 2023. It was then released to other platforms (PS5, PC, Xbox) on May 30th, 2025. I found the Switch version in the wild, it looked fun, and there I was, with one more game. I’m incorrigible. But hey, it’s Disney and it’s got a cool art style, so why not. The game’s name is a reference to Mickey Mouse’s Castle of Illusion on SEGA systems and its follow-ups. But this time, we can play as Mickey, Minnie, Donald or Goofy – or up to all four at once!

Heroes Wanted

Our game begins as Mickey makes his way to a picnic destination on an island, indicated by a map sent by Minnie. Or so he thinks. After he’s found the spot, he’s joined by Minnie, who says HE sent her a map to this spot. Donald and Goofy, who were also sent maps, show up. All four are puzzled, so they investigate a twinkling sound coming from a nearby area.

Someone wanted all four of them there, but why?
(Thanks to Gamer's Little Playground for the playthrough,
which I am picking my screenshots from.)

Ah yes! Toku, the benevolent quest giver! Disregard the
eye twitch, totally normal benevolent response to annoyance.

They trace the sound to a red bush, and after crossing it they find a large library with an open bookcase. They are greeted by furred creatures known as the Hokuns and their leader, Toku, who welcomes them to the magical world of Monoth. Toku is the one who sent the maps, as he needs their help. Donald is enraged to find out there won’t be a picnic, but the team stays and listens. Toku explains that the three magical tomes of their bookcase have gone missing, stolen by three thieves inhabiting the three biomes of Monoth, and this could endanger their world. The Hokun doesn’t seem to know that the Mickey cartoons are in-universe fictions, in which the group only pretends to be heroes – but Mickey and his friends agree to try and be real heroes for once.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Destiny Board Traveler

Final Yu-Gi-Oh! review for this year! Yet again, we’re moving away from the card game as it usually works to delve into a different type of gameplay – this time, a proper board game that involves dice and spaces and Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters- wait, again? Yep. Can’t escape those.

Destiny Board Traveler was first released in Japan under the name Sugoroku’s Sugoroku on March 18th, 2004; and then made its way to North American markets on October 26th of the same year. That original title is a reference to Yugi’s grandpa; Solomon Muto’s original name is Sugoroku, also the name of two ancient board games that have some similarities to modern Snakes & Ladders and Backgammon, respectively.

But of course, there needs to be a twist that involves the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game. The characters of the manga/anime appear as playable, there are several boards to choose from (if you unlock them), and the cards themselves will be integral parts of the strategy and gameplay.

Maybe this time I can keep it short.

’Round the Board

Makes sense to pick Yugi. ow I just have to hope his
legendary lucks rubs off on me. (Hint: It didn't.)

Four players move around one or more 5X5 square-shaped boards. Each player has a hand of monsters drawn from their Deck (this game doesn’t use Spells or Traps, and all monsters are treated as Normal and don’t have their effects). On their turn, each player creates their own die from cards in their hand by setting them onto its faces. They do not need to set monsters onto every face of the die, however. The value of each side of that die is equal to the level of the monster on it. The die has one side known as the Star Face, while the other five remain regular faces.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Dungeon Dice Monsters

Most Yu-Gi-Oh! games are all about the franchise’s card game. Those began appearing early in the manga’s pages, and it only took a few books before the story shifted to focus on tournaments. However, before those, the manga had several tomes in which Yugi’s alter ego played various games, against many opponents. The early days were DARK; Yugi’s first Shadow Game had someone almost stab themselves for a game about picking up bills with a knife. In another, he burned a criminal to death.

As far as game tables go, I think those in the manga (for
Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters) make more
sense than the giant arenas from the anime.

Then, there was Duel Kingdom. Shortly afterwards, there was Battle City, which ended up with rules much closer to the real card game. However, between the two, a short arc introduced another game of Kazuki Takahashi’s making: Dungeon Dice Monsters (shortened DDM). Created by Duke Devlin (Ryuji Otogi in the original Japanese), an aspiring game maker whose family sets up shop near Yugi’s home, the game features monsters appearing when dice are deployed on a field. I will explain much more in due time.

These odds are looking good!

There was also a whole thing about a disfigured man in a clown mask, an intense desire for revenge, and arson, but that’s because the manga has always been ballsier than the anime.

Dungeon Dice Monsters was eventually adapted into a physical board game. It never quite caught on, probably due to the complexity of the system that demanded a full board to play as well as the associated dice – not quite as simple as just playing with cards! It also got an adaptation on the Game Boy Advance, released in North America on February 11th, 2003 (though it came out two years earlier in Japan), and a rerelease in the Early Days Collection.

What IS Dungeon Dice Monsters Anyway?

Try not to get yourself cornered.

I’ll open by explaining the game, its rules, and its mechanics. As the name indicates, this game trades cards for dice. The board is made of 13X19 squares, with players on opposite sides. Each player has a pool of 15 dice, which will be the ones they roll. Each player has a figurine named the Die Master in front of them; this figurine starts with three hit points.

Dice sides are called Crests. There are six different  types: Summon, Movement, Attack, Defense, Spell and Trap. Every die has a different selection of these Crests – as an example, a die may have one or two Attack Crests, or maybe none! The only Crest guaranteed to be on every die is the Summon type. Dice have levels ranging from 1 to 4, and the lower the level is, the more Summon Crests it will have.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories

The first Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling simulator was a bit of a mess, but some of that could be excused from the game releasing while the manga’s first tournament arc wasn’t over, the mechanics weren’t set in stone and the card game as we know it now did not exist yet, and being on Game Boy meant much smaller data storage space.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (not to be confused with the next Yu-Gi-Oh! game, also titled Dark Duel Stories) was released on July 8th, 1999 in Japanese only. We get to play it freely and in English thanks to the Early Days Collection released in February 2025. With more space in the cartridge and a stronger system, surely this new installment improves on the first game, right?

...Hey, that box art is just reusing the
Volume 10 cover art!

The New Tournament

Ahhhh! Color!

Just like Duel Monsters I, this game is a dueling simulator split into stages containing multiple duelists. You must defeat every opponent in a stage 5 times to unlock the next. This makes some sense, since you are drip-fed cards to improve your deck; you only receive one card at each victory against a CPU opponent, dropped from that opponent’s pool of rewards. This justifies having to beat every opponent repeatedly, since you wouldn’t otherwise gather enough cards to stand a chance against better opponents.

The plot? Just a different tournament beyond Duelist Kingdom, again helmed by Pegasus. Who cares, really.

The Stage 1 opponents (Yugi, Joey, Bakura and Tristan) are laughable; I went through those 20 duels without editing my deck once. They’re basically a tutorial. None of them ever use monsters with ATK higher than 500. Enemy decks are once again randomized out of their personal card pools, with some cards having higher chances to appear than others. Opponents cannot fuse their own monsters, nor use Magic or Trap cards.

However, they can still destroy your monsters
if they get lucky with Alignments.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters I

Back with another themed month, and I return to the well of Yu-Gi-Oh! Except, this time, I’ll be focusing on older games. In February 2025, Konami released the Early Days Collection, which contains 14 (technically 16) games from the earliest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I already covered one of these, The Sacred Cards, in the first year of Planned All Along, which leaves 13 games to cover (technically 15; you’ll understand why I say that, but not until next year).

This volume had the duel against PaniK,
also known as the Player Killer of
Darkness in the original Japanese,
because the manga was edgy like that.

I figured that I would start with the shortest games (according to How Long To Beat); but the four I’m planning to cover this month, I’ll do in chronological order. I’m opening today with the first game in the entire collection, the original Duel Monsters, released for the Game Boy on December 16th, 1998. Several of these classics had never been officially released in languages other than Japanese before, so it’s a chance to discover them and experience the start of a legacy.

Technically, it isn’t the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game ever released (the actual first was based on a lesser game from the manga’s history, Monster Capsule), but it is the first to feature the card game that would then take over the anime and be the sole focus of every following series. When it came out, the manga itself was at its tenth volume, in the middle of the Dueling Kingdom tournament arc. Barely halfway in, not even in the finals. The duel against Pegasus is still far. The timeframe in which this game was made explains a lot about it. For starters, the characters we meet and duel are only the ones we have seen in the manga pages up to that point.

However, it’s most notable in gameplay, with duels obeying the, um… elastic rules of Duelist Kingdom. I’ll get there soon enough.

The OG Duel Simulator

Choose your fighter Duelist!

Before the game starts, Yami Yugi tells the player to input their duelist name. It’s not important in the Story Mode, but it is a screen name for dueling and trading with other players using a Link Cable (remember, this was the Game Boy era).

Story? What’s that? When the game begins, your first screen shows the mugs of Yugi Muto, Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor and Bakura Ryo. We can surmise, based on the background showing a large boat, that we’re on the ship taking our characters to Duelist Kingdom. Each of these four will say the same thing: If you want to proceed, you’ll have to beat them all five times. Why five? Shouldn’t one be enough? Nah, not here.

Okay, back to that pin about gameplay. The card game as we know it didn’t even exist yet. The cards at the time were the Bandai OCG, a short-lived version that ended in 1999, when the actual Konami card game began and overtook the former in popularity. As a result, early Duel Monsters video games had the bare minimum to base themselves on, gameplay-wise. All they had was the Duelist Kingdom rules (which would later be streamlined for the second tournament arc, Battle City). Also, take into account the hardware limitations: A Game Boy cartridge could only contain a maximum of 4 megabits of data, and the game had to be designed to account for the tiny screen.