Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Sanseisenjin Kōrin

Description

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Sanseisenjin Kōrin (Try Holy God Advent) is the third Duel Monsters handheld card game and the first in the line made specifically for Game Boy Color. The game expands the previous handheld entries with around 800 cards and a campaign that includes characters from Domino City and ancient Egypt, reflecting material from Yu-Gi-Oh! Shin Duel Monsters: Fūin Sareshi Kioku. It introduces several major rule changes for the Game Boy line, including tribute summoning, effect monsters, face-down defence, one-card-per-turn drawing, three-copy deck limits, limited cards, random first turn order, and CPU opponents that can use magic cards.

Its most distinctive feature is the construction system, where the player combines upper and lower body parts to create original construction monsters. There is around 9,800 possible construction monster patterns, with stats, level, cost, type, and summon attribute changing depending on the parts used. This gives the game a very specific identity within the series, since later Yu-Gi-Oh! games generally moved toward more standard card-game simulation rather than letting players create large numbers of original monsters. Compared with Duel Monsters II, this entry is a clear step forward. The card list is larger, the interface and battle speed are improved, CPU decks are more fixed and character-specific, and the added tribute, effect, construction, and restriction systems make deck-building less crude than in the first two games. However, it is still not a faithful modern Yu-Gi-Oh! simulator, since fusion, ritual summoning, monster effects, summon attributes, and card balance still follow early Game Boy rules, but it is much closer to a proper card game than the first two entries.

Retail copies included three random cards from an eight-card pool, including cards such as Killer Snake, Widespread Ruin, Garma Sword, Alpha the Magnet Warrior, Beta the Magnet Warrior, and Cyber-Tech Alligator, while other related cards were distributed through reservation, first-print, or guidebook promotions. The game’s three god-like figures God Cards are not actually usable in the real card game, only represented through ending material.