History of Yugioh

Video Games
Konami sold 7 million card-based games for PlayStation and GameBoy, generating $300 million.

Cards
The cards are very, very big in Japan! An event in Tokyo offering rare trading cards, was shut down for crowd control after 55,000 people showed up. (Click here for more on that) Popular? Oh yes. Card sales are said to have produced $1 billion.

Comics/TV Show
Yu-Gi-Oh! debuted in 1996 as a comic book series about a game player with mystical powers. An early TV version was canceled in six months, then in 1998 the writer, Kazuku Takahashi, introduced a plot twist that enthralled the nation. The scary monsters, mildly erotic female characters and decidedly uncute art were a hit first with 10- to 14- year old boys before catching on with older audiences.

US media giants, almost certainly including Disney and Warner, are bidding furiously for North American rights. Will it catch on in the US? It might. But don't tell the bidders about the display case at TV Tokyo headquarters, filled with relics of game ventures that flopped...

Finally, in April 2001, 4Kids, the same company that made Pokemon a phenomenon in the US and other places, licensed the Yu-Gi-Oh anime. It immediately the most popular show of that time period for kids/teenagers of many ages.

Later on, in January 2002, Upperdeck got the right to translate and sell the Yu-Gi-Oh card game in US and elsewhere. The anime also was expanded to showing 6 times per week as from April 2002.