Yu-Gi-Oh! - The Eternal Duelist Soul is basically the closest you could get to carrying around a full card battle in your pocket back in the GBA days. You start off with a pretty basic deck—expect a lot of early losses until you grind for better cards—but dueling feels surprisingly smooth for a handheld version. The AI isn’t pushover either; some of the later opponents pull off ridiculous combos straight out of the anime.

What’s cool is how it nails the vibe of the show. You’ll recognize characters like Kaiba and Joey throwing down with their signature decks, and pulling off a last-second Exodia feels just as ridiculous (and satisfying) as it should. The card pool isn’t massive compared to later games, but there’s enough here to keep tweaking your deck for hours. Just don’t expect a tutorial—this one assumes you already know your Spell Speed from your Trap Cards.

It’s janky in places (good luck reading some of the tiny card text), but if you ever wanted to relive early 2000s Yu-Gi-Oh! without digging out your old binder, this is the way to do it.