#shueisha — Public Fediverse posts

Yu-Gi-Oh Destiny Board Traveler & World Championship Tournament 2004 with David (Anime Field Guide)

Some duels are fought with cards. Some are fought with dice. And then some… are fought with the Game Boy Advance’s eternal struggle against decent menu navigation. This week on Play Comics, we’re shuffling up and drawing into Yu-Gi-Oh! Destiny Board Traveler and World Championship Tournament 2004, two games that take everything we love about Yu-Gi-Oh!, monsters, strategy, friendship laser beams, and cram it into a tiny cartridge that smells faintly of childhood and battery corrosion.

Joining Chris for this summoning circle of digital nostalgia is David from Anime Field Guide, who brings the kind of anime expertise that makes you question whether your life points can drop below zero if you cringe too hard at English dub dialogue. Together, they’ll explore why these particular duels feel like being trapped in a friendship-branded fever dream, complete with turn-based confusion and more “draw phase” puns than anyone asked for.

So grab your duel disk, blow into that GBA cartridge like it owes you rent, and prepare to enter a world where forbidden memories and confusing mechanics go hand-in-hand. It’s the heart of the cards… but maybe also a faint cry for a player’s guide.

Learn such things as:

• Whether the heart of the cards can survive low battery warnings.
• The surprising crossover between duel monsters and chaos theory.
• Why Destiny Board Traveler isn’t just Monopoly with a Yu-Gi-Oh skin.
• And so much more!

You can find David on BlueSky @anifieldguide.bsky.social, Threads @anifieldguide, and of course hear him over at Anime Field Guide.

If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads, @playcomics on YouTube, or the Play Comics website.

If you want to hear Chris talk with Karrington Martin about the lessons we learned from children’s media and how crazy it is that we’re supposed to just forget about that now that we’re adults, then Sugar, Spite, and Everything is Fine is probably something you should check out.

A big thanks to The Monsters that Made Us and Worst Collection Ever for the promos today.

Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who is just sitting there waiting for me to spring the traps.

Naruto Ultimate Ninja with Cory Byrd (Byrds Eye View Comics)

Grab your custom jutsu hand seals and prepare to feel a crushing sense of inadequacy when comparing your reaction time to a ninja’s because we’re diving shadow clone deep into the first Naruto Ultimate Ninja game on PlayStation 2! This week we’re channeling our inner shinobi to explore how Bandai Namco took Masashi Kishimoto’s legendary manga about a determined orange-suited underdog and transformed it into a frantic button-mashing tournament fighter that somehow convinced an entire generation of fans that they could recreate iconic Naruto moments if they just hit the attack button fast enough and screamed at their TV harder than Naruto himself.

Released during the golden age of anime-to-console adaptations, the Naruto Ultimate Ninja games became the de facto way fans could live out their ninja fantasies—assuming your ninja fantasy involves janky camera angles, occasionally unresponsive inputs, and the kind of special effect visual soup that makes you wonder if you’re actually watching a jutsu or if your PS2 is just having a mild aneurysm. With fighters pulled straight from the Hidden Leaf Village and beyond, these games proved that sometimes the best way to honor a beloved manga is to give players the chance to make Naruto fight characters he had absolutely no reason to fight (looking at you, random filler villains).

This episode, we’re absolutely stoked to welcome Cory Byrd from Byrds Eye View Comics—a fellow enthusiast of all things sequential art and gaming who can probably explain why Naruto’s popularity transcended manga, anime, AND video games with the kind of clarity that makes marketing departments weep with envy. Together, we’ll investigate whether these games managed to capture the heart, humor, and hyperkinetic energy of Kishimoto’s creation, or if they just left us face-first in the dirt like Naruto at the beginning of the series.

So synchronize your chakra, practice your most devastating combo, and prepare for an episode that’s guaranteed to be more chaotic than a Sand Village invasion and infinitely more entertaining than watching filler arcs about onigiri eating contests.

Learn such things as:

• Can a game truly capture the experience of having ninjas solve political problems through friendship when there’s no friendship stat on the screen?
• How many ninja village headbands would it take to actually run an economy, or is that question unanswerable because the series never bothered explaining it?
• Is it more important for characters in a fighter to be balanced or accurate?
• And so much more!

You can find Cory on Instagram @ByrdsEyeOfficial, the Byrds Eye View Comics Facebook page, and of course his website Byrds Eyes View Comics.

If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicspodcast on Threads,  @playcomics on YouTube or the Play Comics website.

A big thanks to Gender Pop and the Glitterjaw Queer Podcast Collective for the promos today.

Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who did something really cool but nobody saw it. You know, because of the whole being a ninja thing.

Yu-Gi-Oh The Duelists of the Roses with Michael Bivens (Quest for 5, Alcove)

Welcome to another episode of Play Comics, where we shuffle the deck of video game adaptations and draw a card from the past! This week we’re diving into the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses, a game that takes the historical British War of the Roses and gives it a fantastical twist through the lens of the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga. Imagine Richard III and Henry Tudor not as mere historical figures, but as duelists with decks full of monsters and magic!

Joining us for this epic clash of history and fantasy is the illustrious Michael Bivens from Quest for 5 and Alcove. Michael brings his unique perspective and a flair for the dramatic as we explore how this PlayStation 2 classic blends card battles with royal intrigue. Whether you’re a fan of history, card games, or just love a good mash-up, this episode is sure to entertain and enlighten.

So grab your Millennium Puzzle and prepare for a duel of epic proportions! Will the Yorkists or the Lancastrians claim victory in this card-based battlefield? Tune in to find out, and maybe you’ll learn a trick or two to use in your next duel.

Learn such things as:

• What happens when Chris jokingly asks if the obvious connection is really what’s going on here?
• How much gameplay can you get when you’re playing both sides of a war?
• Isn’t it nice when British people are fighting amongst themselves rather than colonizing the rest of the world?
• And so much more!

You can find Michael on Alcove where he has his general creative outlet, Quest for 5 where his fiance and he take a fan look at the Disney trading card game Lorcana, or his personal website MS Bivens where you can find basically all things that trace back to him on the internet.

If you want to be a guest on the show please check out the Be a A Guest on the Show page and let me know what you’re interested in.

If you want to help support the show check out the Play Comics Patreon page or head over to the Support page if you want to go another route. You can also check out the Play Comics Merch Store.

Play Comics is part of the Gonna Geek Network, which is a wonderful collection of geeky podcasts. Be sure to check out the other shows on Gonna Geek if you need more of a nerd fix.

You can find Play Comics @playcomics.bsky.social on Bluesky, @playcomicscaston Twitter and in the Play Comics Podcast Fan Groupon Facebook.

A big thanks to Too Young For This Trek and TroytlePower Presents: The Power Play-Throughs Podcast with TroytlePower for the promos today.

Intro/Outro Music by Backing Track, who came storming in and demanded that I get new music.