Part IV: The GBA World Championships

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With their world tournament a proven success and Yu-Gi-Oh! continuing to rise in popularity, Konami announced a sequel to Stairway to the Destined Duel, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2004 for the Game Boy Advance. This title would be the official software for the 2004 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship being held at the Anaheim Convention Center in Los Angeles, California on July 25. Stairway had sold 1.46 million copies, making it one of the highest-selling games in the franchise,^[15] and its strong sales contributed to Konami’s interest in supporting the digital division of their global tournament. WCT 2004 continued its legacy and marked the official start of a new video game series for Yu-Gi-Oh!.

Now that there was a confirmed playerbase interested in their Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament software, Konami’s US division decided to change how they made representative picks for the Video Game World Championship. Earlier in the year, Upper Deck Entertainment had launched Duelist League, a tournament series hosted in major retail stores around the country for inexperienced or casual duelists.^[16] Instead of holding another sweepstake, Konami decided to utilize Upper Deck’s competition infrastructure to transform the World Qualifiers into a test of prowess rather than luck. As Catherine Fowler, then-Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Konami of America, put it, “With the increasing popularity of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Konami is offering players of the video game series a way to show off their dueling skills through a nationwide competition to find the ultimate Yu-Gi-Oh! player.”^[17] Regional events were set up at over 600 Toys ‘R’ Us stores across the country to be played on May 22 using the World Championship Tournament 2004 video game. Each location would host a 64-person battle royale^[18] and, like the Japanese National Tournaments, provide players with 10 Star Chips that they could wager on individual duels.^[19] Points would be tallied at the end of the event, and the 15 highest-scoring first place competitors across the country would be invited to San Diego Comic-Con for US Nationals, along with the winner of a last-chance qualifier held on the first day of the convention. The next day, the finalists took part in a single-elimination tournament, where the top four duelists became the US representatives at the World Championship.^[20] 2004 would also be the only year the US Video Game National Tournament instituted an age bracket, with exclusively players 14 and younger being allowed to compete.^[21]

In Japan, each copy of World Championship Tournament 2004 came with a postcard that duelists could mail to Konami headquarters as registration for their National Tournament.^[22] The competition was an all-day battle royale held at the Tokyo Ryutsu Center on July 4. Unlike in 2003, the entire tournament took place as a single event, and the two competitors with the most Star Cards by the end of the day were crowned the Japanese representatives.^[23]

While the format of the European Qualifiers and the complete list of competing countries is unknown, their number of participants doubled. There were now six competitors, each from different countries, represented on the Worlds stage.^[24]

No Upper Deck coverage of the 2004 World Championship could be found, but other publications were in attendance to report on this event. Adam Tierney from video game website IGN wrote an article detailing the WCT 2004 tournament, which also included interviews with Konami representatives and the champion, 13-year-old US competitor Ryon Peyton. The write-up documented Ryon’s final match against 14-year-old Pere Torrellas Salietti of Spain, and named the third and fourth place finalists, Patrick Dicks from the US and Junichi Natsume from Japan, as well. While the images on the existing version of the article are low resolution, Twitter user KrvaviAbadas was able to find an archived snapshot of the original piece that includes uncompressed photos. This includes a picture of the complete tournament bracket right before the final match, as well as the Champion’s Wall which shows all competing countries.^[25] Japanese YouTuber yuikenta posted Peyton’s winning decklist, sourced from an uncredited magazine article about the event.^[26] For further reference, a later tournament report posted to Pojo would note that US competitor Matthew Mancuso had also been in attendance, having placed second at the 2004 Nationals.^[27] In addition, Italian media website e-duesse.it reported on the event, stating that the Italian representative, 30 year-old Angelo Parisi, had made it to the top 8 before losing to Ryon Peyton.^[28] Although players of all ages were breaking into the competitive scene, results from this event proved that Yu-Gi-Oh! was still, at its heart, a children’s card game. The final results for the 2004 Video Game World Championship were:

Place	Name	Country	Deck
1st	Ryon Peyton	USA	Beatdown
2nd	Pere Torrellas Salietti	Spain	Unknown
3rd	Patrick Dicks	USA	Unknown
4th	Junichi Natsume	Japan	Unknown
5th-8th	Angelo Parisi	Italy	Unknown
5th-8th	Ashley Brown	United Kingdom	Unknown
5th-8th	Didier Maille	Franch	Unknown
5th-8th	Diego Velazquez	USA	Unknown
9th-12th	Matthew Mancuso	USA	Unknown
9th-12th	Emmanuel Kronenwett	Germany	Unknown
9th-12th	Kenji Yoshino	Japan	Unknown
9th-12th	J.H. Den Daas	Netherlands	Unknown

Aside from Junichi Natsume and Didier Maille, who had participated in the 2003 TCG World Championship, all of the known players at the 2004 Video Game World Championship were newcomers to competitive Yu-Gi-Oh!, but many of them would continue to see tournament success. Patrick Dicks, Matthew Mancuso, and Junichi Natsume would all reappear at the 2005 Video Game World Championship, with Natsume taking second place and Dicks taking fourth.

Some of the participating players would even go on to find success in the physical card game as well. In a 2005 interview with Shonen Jump magazine, Patrick Dicks stated that he wanted to focus his efforts on the TCG,^[29] and would later appear at the top tables of SJC Columbus in 2007, receiving a feature match write-up from Upper Deck’s official Yu-Gi-Oh! coverage website, metagame.com.^[30] Emmanuel Kronenwett would reach top 8 at Pharaoh Tour Olten, part of a European tournament circuit that ran from 2004 to 2007.^[31] Pere Torrellas Sallieti would enter into the TCG competitive scene by 2006 and achieve top 8 finishes at both the 2006 and 2007 Spanish Pharaoh Tour Finals.^[32][33] Afterwards, from 2008 to 2010, Salietti would top the Spanish TCG Nationals, securing his invite to the European Championship each of those years.^[34][35][36]

Ryon Peyton, Angelo Parisi, Ashley Brown, Diego Velazquez, Kenji Yoshino, and J.H. Den Daas were not documented as participating in any later Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments.

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Although the Nintendo DS launched in Japan at the end of 2004, the timing of its release left Konami little space to develop new software for the 2005 World Championship title. Additionally, tying their flagship tournament series to a brand new console would limit their player base, alienating fans who could not immediately purchase a DS. The company ultimately released Yu-Gi-Oh! 7 Trials to Glory: World Championship Tournament 2005 on the Game Boy Advance. Konami also announced that the 2005 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship would take place in Tokyo, Japan at Differ Ariake on August 6-7, making it the first Worlds to take place outside the US.

The format for selecting US representatives changed again for the 2005 National Tournament. While the previous year’s battle royale provided a much needed change that required duelists to display their skill at the game, it had consequently restricted the number of players allowed to compete. To avoid arbitrarily limiting registrants again, Konami US developed a modified format for the Qualifiers. One of the finalists, who went by Twinsen21, documented the new process in his Nationals tournament report on TCG website Pojo: interested duelists would register online to take a timed quiz that tested their knowledge of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, card game, and anime. The 100 entrants who scored the highest would take a follow-up quiz at a later date. Then, the top 14 players from this round were flown out to Konami’s US headquarters in Redwood City, California on July 24 for a single-elimination tournament. Patrick Dicks and Matthew Mancuso, the first and second place duelists from the 2004 Nationals, were also invited back to participate in this event. The top five competitors would go on to become the US representatives at the 2005 World Championship.^[37] An IGN article detailing the event provides the names of each finalist in order of placement: Patrick Dicks, Raymond Lantz III, Matthew Mancuso, Jason Lee, and Brian Dunlap.^[38]

Japan’s Nationals format was the same as 2004, with their champions decided via an all-day battle royale tournament at the Tokyo Ryutsu Center on July 10. Participants would wager Star Cards on their duels throughout the event and the two competitors with the most Cards at the end of the day would become the national representatives for Japan.^[39]

Seven European countries were now represented at the World Championship: Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, UK, and Sweden.^[40] While most information about EU Nationals is unknown, what is available shows the diversity of the Video Game Nationals event formats. 

Similar to the 2004 US Nationals, Konami UK held a series of tournaments in Virgin Megastores throughout the country as part of their qualification process. Four stores would each host an event on a June weekend, and the top two players from each store would be invited to the Oxford Street Virgin Megastore in July to take part in a final tournament to decide their national representative.^[41][42] 

French fansite Finalyugi reposted a press release stating that French Nationals would be held at the Centre Commercial Saint Sever in Rouen, France on June 25. Pre-registration would be handled via email to the event organizers at Abysscorp, and attendance was capped at 100 entrants.^[43] A competitor at the tournament, Yohann Descamps, recalled that during one of his rounds, his opponent forced their 7 Trials to Glory game to crash by rapidly hitting the buttons on their Game Boy Advance. Despite performing this action in front of the rest of the tournament-goers, Descamps’ opponent was not disqualified and the two were forced to replay their match.

An interview with the German National Champion Marco Krist on fan forum eTCG provides the details for their National Tournament. Duelists would be separated into groups of four individuals and play a round-robin tournament between themselves. The two highest scoring players then moved into a new group of four and continued to play until there were sixteen competitors left. The tournament would then be completed with a single-elimination bracket, where the final duelist would become the German representative.^[44]

Coverage of the 2005 tournament was limited, but a tournament report from Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimania gives a brief overview of the final match between Ryuzo Ikuta and Junichi Natsume. The match went long, with the first game ending in a draw due to Ring of Destruction, and the second requiring a restart due to an error in the game software. Ikuta then won the next two games back-to-back and became the Video Game World Champion.^[45] Additionally, a news roundup from KidzWorld, a children’s social media website, includes a photo of the top 8 bracket right before the last match.^[46] Shonen Jump Magazine ran a four-part series covering the event in their November 2005 to February 2006 issues, which included interviews with finalists Ryuzo Ikuta and Patrick Dicks, as well as Ikuta’s winning decklist. This feature also provided the name of another participant via a questionnaire with Spanish representative Sergi Saludes.^{[47][48][49][50]} Italian newspaper La Provincia Pavese wrote a short profile on the Italian competitor, Omar Prazzoli.^[51] Finally, a TCG competitor from this year, Italian representative Namer Merli, provided a photo of the profile wall for the Video Game World Championship competitors. While this gives a full list of representatives, the quality of the picture makes it difficult to make out the names of the remaining unknown players. The final results for the 2005 Yu-Gi-Oh! Video Game World Championship were:

Place	Name	Country	Deck
1st	Ryuzo Ikuta	Japan	Burn
2nd	Junichi Natsume	Japan	Unknown
3rd	Marco Krist	Germany	Unknown
4th	Patrick Dicks	USA	Unknown
5th-8th	Sébastien Choukroun	France	Unknown
5th-8th	Brian Dunlap	USA	Unknown
5th-8th	Raymond Lantz III	USA	Unknown
5th-8th	Tin-Tsun Wong	United Kingdom	Unknown
9th-14th	Matthew Mancuso	USA	Unknown
9th-14th	Jason Lee	USA	Unknown
9th-14th	Sergi Saludes	Spain	Unknown
9th-14th	Omar Prazzoli	Italy	Unknown
9th-14th	Unknown	The Netherlands	Unknown
9th-14th	Unknown	Sweden	Unknown

Many of the new competitors from 2005 would not be documented as playing at other competitive Yu-Gi-Oh! events, including Ryuzo Ikuta, Sébastien Choukroun, Brian Dunlap, and Tin-Tsun Wong. However, Wong joined the Yu-Gi-Oh! Judge program by 2006, according to a quote from a Pojo forum post.^[52] 

The other participants would continue to take part in the competitive scene, particularly in the Video Game Division. Patrick Dicks and Raymond Lantz III received free invites back to US Video Game Nationals the following year, but did not place well enough to return to Worlds. Meanwhile, Jason Lee would return to the Video Game World Championships in 2006 and 2007, and finish in the top 8 for 2006. Lee’s three Video Game Worlds invites constituted both the longest consecutive and most total appearances for any player in the event’s history.  Sergi Saludes, who had come fourth place at the 2005 Spanish TCG National Tournament,^[53] would be the first competitor at this event to have seen previous TCG tournament success. Alongside Jason Lee, Saludes would reach the top 8 at the 2006 Video Game World Championship, and would also receive invites to the TCG European Championship in 2008 and 2009.^[54][55] Marco Krist would also return to the Video Game World Championship in 2006, where he would once again place in the top 4. Krist was active on German fansite eTCG as SoulBandit, where he frequently signed up for regional tournaments and later announced his qualification for the 2013 European Championship.^[56]

While he did not reappear at the Video Game World Championships, Omar Prazzoli had also qualified for the Italian TCG Nationals in 2005,^[57] and his profile in La Provincia Pavese noted that he intended to enter the 2009 Italian Fortune Cup, the European tournament series succeeding the Pharaoh Tour.^[58]

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Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, the sequel to Duel Monsters, began airing worldwide at the end of 2005. GX was more light-hearted than its predecessor, and the change in tone helped garner a new, younger fanbase. In order to encourage this same audience to engage with all aspects of the franchise, Konami began branding subsequent video games with the new series. When the company released Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters: World Championship Tournament 2006, GX protagonist Jaden Yuki replaced Yami Yugi on the box cover. Ultimate Masters would also mark the franchise’s final release on the Game Boy Advance, tying their tournament series to established hardware once more before moving on to newer consoles. Konami paired this release with the announcement of the next Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship event, which would take place at Akiba Square in Tokyo, Japan on August 5-6.

The 2006 US Qualifiers followed the same format as the previous year. According to a report on Pojo from competitor Jason Bunch, the 14 highest-scoring participants after two rounds of online quizzes took part in a single-elimination tournament hosted at San Diego Comic-Con on July 20-23. The two finalists from last year’s US Nationals, Patrick Dicks and Raymond Lantz III, were invited back to compete as well. Bunch notes in his report that competitors who won their first two rounds were guaranteed a spot at Worlds. While not explicitly stated, with 16 duelists participating in the tournament, this meant that there were four US representatives in 2006. Bunch details both of his rounds in the write-up, including a crucial misplay that cost him his quarterfinal match with only one turn remaining before he won with the effect of Final Countdown.^[59] A report on the event by video game website Gamespot names all of the US Nationals finalists: Jason Lee, Patrick Lewis, Michael Haught, and Brandon Sherman.^[60]

Unfortunately, the format and details on Japanese tournaments past 2005 have been lost. Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimania, which provided primary and prolific coverage on the previous Video Game Nationals, either stopped attending these events after 2005, or documented them on pages that were not archived. However, Nationals footage from this year’s Konami TVch World Championship video appears to show a similar tournament format as previous years. Players faced off in a battle royale exhibition while wagering Star Cards on their matches, with the two highest-scoring players becoming the Japanese representatives.^[61]

Konami UK hosted a first-come, first-served registration process for Nationals on their official Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimate Masters webpage. The first 32 entrants took part in a tournament at the Britannia Hotel in Birmingham, England alongside the TCG National Tournament. The winner would become the UK representative at the World Championship.^[62] Christopher Kirkham stated that he faced off against 2005 UK TCG National Champion Adam Kruszynski in the finals, playing a Doomcaliber Gadgets mirror match. Despite losing to him in the swiss rounds of the tournament, Kirkham was able to beat Kruszynski and secure his second trip to the World Championships.

An article from Italian fansite Duelist.it covers the general proceedings of the Italian National Tournament, which took place at the Hotel Le Conchiglie in Riccione, Italy. The event began with 26 duelists playing four rounds of a Swiss-system tournament, after which the top eight competitors faced off in a single-elimination bracket. Christian Gilberti, the runner-up from last year’s Video Game Nationals, would take first place at the event.^[63]

Although the details of the event were not provided, Worlds representative Yohann Descamps stated that he almost lost the final round of the French National Tournament due to a strange impromptu ruling. With 25 minutes left in the match, a referee told him and his opponent that they had to hurry up and that finals would instead conclude in 10 minutes. His opponent, seeing an opportunity, took the first game with an aggressive push and then planned to stall the remainder of the match in order to win the tournament. Descamps contacted a Konami representative in order to rectify this situation, since it went against the official event rules, and was able to get the ruling reversed. With the full match timer restored, Descamps was able to win his next two games without issue and take first place.

Other European countries hosted in-person Qualifiers to decide their representatives as well, but the exact event format is unknown. The only other information available comes from the Dutch Konami website, which states that Nationals would be held in Apeldoorn, Netherlands on May 21.^[64]

US representative Brandon Sherman stated that the first rounds of the Video Game World Championship were held in an unmarked building in Tokyo, in a room adjacent to the TCG Division. The initial Swiss-system tournament rounds were played out in single games, and staff would collect each duelist’s Ultimate Masters cartridge between rounds to prevent them from changing their decks. Once the top 8 competitors were decided, the tournament moved to Akiba Square, the main tournament location, where the rounds were played with three-game matches in a single-elimination bracket. The top two competitors would receive original artwork drawn and signed by Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi, and the top four would receive one of two exclusive World Championship prize cards based on their placement. Sherman also said that a minor disaster had almost occurred during the initial rounds of the event. He had brought a Game Boy Micro to the event, which has a different link port than a standard Game Boy Advance, and the staff was not prepared to provide a compatible link cable for him. Thankfully, he had brought his own on the trip and was still able to compete in the tournament.

While the event was a momentous one, Sherman recalled that the final match between Christian Gilberti and Kenji Watanabe was anticlimactic. Christopher Kirkham stated that many of the competitors, including himself, were playing Gadgets, a deck that planned to gain advantage over a longer game. But Watanabe played a First Turn Kill deck that abused a glitch in Ultimate Masters’ coding, allowing him to arbitrarily pay Life Points with The Agent of Creation – Venus, despite having no valid targets for its effect. Once his Life Points were low enough, Watanabe would end the game by using Reversal Quiz to send all of his cards to the Graveyard and swap his Life Points with Gilberti’s, before dealing fatal damage with the effect of an Equip Spell like Black Pendant or Fuhma Shuriken. The deck was extremely consistent, with Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimania noting that Watanabe performed this combo two games in a row on his first turn to secure a swift victory.^[65]

Official information about the 2006 Video Game World Championship is limited. Both Yu-Gi-Oh! Ultimania and Konami TVch covered the results of the final match, but nothing else was documented.^[66][67] However, Christian Gilberti posted a photo of the competition bracket from the end of semi-finals online,^[68] providing the top 8 standings for the event. A photo by Brandon Sherman shows the complete set of player profiles for the Video Game World Championships, but the framing covers the name of the last unknown competitor, the Dutch representative. Additionally, a Japanese blogger by the name of Manjoume Thunder GX posted Kenji Watanabe’s deck list, which had been published in an issue of the V-Jump magazine.^[69] The final results of the 2006 Yu-Gi-Oh! Video Game World Championship were:

Place	Name	Country	Deck
1st	Kenji Watanabe	Japan	Reversal Quiz FTK
2nd	Christian Gilberti	Italy	Unknown
3rd	Yoshimitsu Odaka	Japan	Unknown
4th	Marco Krist	Germany	Unknown
5th-8th	Jason Lee	USA	Unknown
5th-8th	Yohann Descamps	France	Unknown
5th-8th	Sergi Saludes	Spain	Unknown
5th-8th	Christopher Kirkham	United Kingdom	Doomcaliber Gadgets
9th	Brandon Sherman	USA	Unknown
9th-12th	Michael Haught	USA	Unknown
9th-12th	Patrick Lewis	USA	Unknown
9th-12th	Unknown	The Netherlands	Unknown

Before taking first place in the Video Game Division, Kenji Watanabe had competed at the 2005 TCG World Championship and finished in the top 8,^[70] making him the third duelist after Junichi Natsume and Didier Maille to make an appearance in both Worlds formats. Although there is no documentation of him participating in later competitive events, YouTube videos from local tournaments show Watanabe actively playing the game as late as 2019.^[71] 

Meanwhile, several new competitors from 2006 would continue to find further success in both video game and TCG tournaments. Christian Gilberti would receive his invitation to the Italian TCG National Championship in 2007.^[72] Although he appears to no longer play Yu-Gi-Oh! competitively, he currently works as the manager of Wonderland, a game store located in Pavia, Italy.^[73] A tournament report on the 2007 US Video Game Nationals by Gamersinfo noted that Michael Haught was a returning competitor at the event, but ultimately did not become a Worlds representative.^[74] Yohann Descamps would return to the Video Game World Championship in 2007 and take second place. He would later find himself in the top cuts of many high-level TCG events, including top 4 at the 2009 Irish Open,^[75] top 8 at the 2010 European Championship,^[76] and top 16 at YCS Paris 2011.^[77] Descamps currently streams on Twitch as clad0r, where he occasionally plays Yu-Gi-Oh! and other trading card games.^[78]

The remaining known competitors, Yoshimitsu Odaka; Chris Kirkham; Patrick Lewis; and Brandon Sherman, would not be documented as taking part in any other Yu-Gi-Oh! tournaments. However, Sherman would receive a write-up and interview from the Randolph Reporter, a local newspaper, before he went to compete at Nationals. It notes that he had also taken part in the 2005 US Video Game Nationals, but had lost in the first round.^[79] In addition, Christopher Kirkham had also competed at the 2003 Video Game World Championships and eventually joined the Yu-Gi-Oh! Judge program.^[80]