Yu-Gi-Oh! goes global

Konami has announced its first Yu-Gi-Oh! title for Game Boy Advance. We're not quite sure how we forgot to mention this earlier in the week, but it was probably something to do with the colossal excitement that overcame us all.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel "proves that the Japanese have the best handle on unwieldy game titles" according to Kristan, but anyway, YGO! WE: STTDD is due out in April and we have a batch of screenshots here for those of you who haven't already seen them.

After the successful launch of games on PSone and GBC, Konami is branching out to GBA with its latest title, which is said to faithfully recreate the skill and variety of the trading card version. Players are dealt three hands, containing Monster, Magic and Trap cards, and travelling across the game map they must use their pack to fend off CPU challengers. Victory results in additional Duel Points that are added to the player's score, while an additional five cards are also earned for each win. Your deck will top out at 60 cards.

What's more, there's also a link cable mode for head-to-head matches, and cards can also be traded via the link, "in a stunning recreation of the original trading card game". And even if you happen to be in another country and want some multi-player, you can choose from English, Japanese, German, French, Italian and Spanish languages and the game will translate things so that players from, say, England and Germany can battle without a prohibitive language barrier. The press release doesn't address the issue of the language barrier outside the game though, but it seems this feature is being included in preparation for a global tournament during 2003.

So, is this another cheap Pokémon knock-off or a valid alternative? We hope to get our hands on the latest Yu-Gi-Oh soon and see for ourselves, but in the meantime, Pikachu sits atop our lounge TV set, and he ain't budging.