>>54252014YGO began as the game of "pick the strongest generic cards", since normal monsters had no differentiating features beyond battle points and spells and traps were either pitiful or amazing because the good ones were super disruptive for no cost. Hence the jokes of going through the trouble of summoning Blue-Eyes only to lost it to a Trap Hole or that the first few sets produced the most banned cards. Obviously Konami had their work cut out for them of course, Kazuki Takahashi had not designed Duel Monsters as real collectable game.
>>54252133Oh, absolutely, the actual playing of the game was always secondary. The YGO video games can act as either a supplement or a proxy for the real thing; for someone who does not play the real game at all or a real player that wants to playtest cards they may never physically own. For the Pokemon TCG that is basically a needless third step. The two Game Boy games seem like very happy accidents from the "license everything to everyone" phase of the franchise. But much the endless battles of the Stadium games, that doesn't mean some of us can't enjoy them anyway.