The Creator of Yu-Gi-Oh! Kazuki Takahashi Dies at 60

 It has been reported this morning that the creator of Yu-Gi-Oh!, Kazuki Takahashi, has died at the age of sixty. Yu-Gi-Oh! had been a pretty big hobby interest of mine. It was one of the first animes I've ever seen along with Pokemon, Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball Z. Back when the anime first aired in the US in 2000 it had a spurge of popularity. It wasn't quite on the level of Pokemon, but it still had a substantial popularity. While I liked the anime back then which I doubt holds up today, I was more entranced with the trading card game that the brand is most well known for.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is a combative card game consisting of a forty-sixty card deck where players use spells, traps, and monsters to reduce the opposing player's life points to zero. What enamored me about this game is the strategy and collecting of all these monster cards that pull from various mythologies. I was collecting a lot of cards for a while, but stopped around the time of high school due to lack of money and people to play with.

My interest resurged after graduating high school and starting college. I found a card shop down from my house and watched people play there as my deck was outdated and I didn't have enough money to get new cards. That shop eventually closed and I found a couple of online communities I could connect with: Dueling Network and the other I'm terribly sorry I can't remember the name of. Dueling Network was a website where people can play Yu-Gi-Oh! online with other people across the world for free. This was one of the many times where I learned how much the game has changed over the years and where I learned the extent of the competitive community.

The main deck I played with over a decade centered around this card.

I played countless hours of Yu-Gi-Oh! online and learned about all the deck types, complicated rules, and ban lists. From the other website I frequented it had a very large scene for custom created cards.  The site had its own card maker for fans to utilize, but some went the extra step by using Photoshop to make theirs look even more extravagant. These were cards made by fans that was mostly just for fun and not for play, but I loved these creations so much that I formed my own online community to play with these custom cards. Dueling Network wasn't the only method that people could use to play across the internet. There was also YVD which I forgot up until now was another online community that I was a member of I think even prior to Dueling Network. YVD had a program where players had to download that allowed for online play. What was good about this is that sense it was a program you can alter the code to add or change cards.

One of many Final Fantasy cards I created over the years.

I took advantage of this and started my own online community where players submitted custom cards for review and then I would add them to the database for play. It was so fun and addicting to see how these cards would work with the current meta. They were scoffed at by purists, but I loved it and I had the largest custom card game or CCG on the net at the time as far as I know.

Since then I've been on off of Yu-Gi-Oh! playing it when I remember and when I really start to miss it. I can't recall if I ever heard of Mr. Kazuki Takahashi before today, but his contribution to my geekdom is appreciated and I send my condolensces out to his family. If you want to learn more about him and his contributions to Yu-Gi-Oh! check out this article here from GameInformer.