Why Duel Disks are Important for Yu-Gi-Oh!

Went back home a couple of months ago and dug out my OG duel disk from my parents attic. My wife was not impressed 😂

fun fact - in the original manga, Duelist Kingdom featured the duel box rather than the gigantic stadiums in the anime. The Duel Disk was a way for Kaiba to challenge Pegasus because it required duelists to stand farther apart rather than sit across the table, something which Kaiba thought would be a solution to Pegasus' Millennium Eye.

My parents refused to buy me a duel disk as a kid, but later i found the OG duel disk at a flea market for like 2€ and bought it with my pocket money. I can't describe my happiness playing with it. It was great.

The GX toy duel disk was my favorite. It could accomadate sleeved cards and the spell/trap slots were behind the monster zones whereas all the others were in front. This was the most screen accurate

The weirdest thing about duel disk in the anime at least battle city, was that you could see the freaking holographic projectors fly out the duel disk and set themselves perfectly to the sides

I love how the duel disks and solid vision are at the core of the original series plot, with Kaibe inventing solid vision at the start of the series as a form of revenge against Yugi's yami no game (season 0 times), then Pegasus wanting to acquire that tech to see his wife again, which started the whole Duelist Kingdom arc. Then Kaiba put the solid vision tech on the duel disk as a way to fight against Pegasus without him seeing his hand (or so Kaiba thought), and then the Duel Disk was the perfect excuse to launch the new master rule and Battle City.

A real fan made it out of cardboard

As the Pokemon guy in my high school friend group of card game nerds, I saw one of them with a Duel Disk once and thought "Man, that looks so stupid. I wish Pokemon had something like that." XD

As a kid I had the Orichalcos Duel Disk. Loved it so much and played with it often. Though, I guess at some point the batteries leaked and were left inside for so long, it shot the electronics and it no longer lit up or made noises. I cannot recall what happened to it by this point now. It's only been like. 15 years or something lol

Unfortunately they kinda mess up your cards.

Never thought about it too much whenever I was watching the anime--which probably just goes to show how seamlessly it adds to the immersion without drawing too much attention to itself. Gx's use of the design to align with the personalities of characters was a fantastic point that I think helps make the anime feel that much better to watch.

Let's not forget that in the manga, before the arenas, they played on a table. Crazy stuff

I remembered having one when I was younger and got confused as why the slots for the trap/spell cards were on the outside instead of the inside like in the show but still enjoyed it very much. I even remember after watching Zexal and seeing so many different designed duel discs that I made some fan made ones, like one to resemble a shark as I had a duelist that was a surfer, one that was glassy looking and covered with jewels and so many more. Those were the days 😊 I need to do that again as I felt like that was a lot of freedom and really opened my creativity

What other card game could you play on your arm!? I always loved duel disks...especially in GX where all the antagonist duelists had a unique one (like the jeweled ocean used by the sea captain). My favorite are the professor's duel coats! Where the deck is on the chest and auto draws each turn, and its like a guitar on them instead of on their arm! Great video! Thank you for the nostalgia!

I remember having the original and the GX duel disk when I was younger, and I remember when season 4 of GX came out I had spray painted the gx duel disk red to match the new anime variant because we didn't get the colored version products released in the US/Canada.

I got the Oricalcos Duel Disk off Ebay due to there being no Battle City or 5D version at the time but I really do love the style they put into them that honestly helped make feel like if you could you would walk out and just have a match (to plug in Team APS this would also be really good for when quarentine years kicked in and distance was in place and the distance skit they did really nails the fact you can play physically without the worry.) but I would like to just add one more thing, during the Japanese airing of Yu-Gi-Oh Sevens there was a live-action skit that did simple teaching for how to play (card types, effects, positions and the like) but during a couple of these they actually had him show you how to make a Rush Duel Disk out of cardboard so you could play too. not sure if it would have fit into the video but its worth mentioning as you do have an option to have a nice basic Duel Disk so long as you had glue, cardboard and a reliable way to cut the exact pieces

My friends and i as kids made our own (rather flimsy) duel disks out of cardboard and stuff. They were too flimsy to actually wear and play the game so we still sat down and just used them as playmats. I made one based on Crowler's duel disk in GX. Fun memories.

I had an original Duel disk growing up , I would end up accidentally breaking it over the years but it certainly was a great deal more durable than the rerelease version. In fact the locking mechanism was strong enough that you could lock it half way so it was cocked diagonally forward a bit from the full rest position which I found to be really cool.

I had the original duel disk and the chaos duel disk, but for some reason I gave the original to a friend when he moved away, only to have him tell me a few years later that it broke. Still have the chaos duel disk, though. I hope to get a new original one some day, and maybe a GX one as well since that one has always been my favourite.

I had the gx duel disk. But my favorite one has gotta be the Supreme King's one. the way it just spins and becomes active just amazing.