Tie ins are basically a given with every popular media brand. 

Games, books, toys, movies, TV shows. If it sells, slap it on anything and everything.

It’s been that way for ages. Probably one of the most important was a windup Mickey Mouse handcar made by Lionel trains as a cheep option to keep the company afloat during the depression era, drawing on the popularity of Mickey Mouse and helping cement him into the public consciousness.

i remember when Yugioh first hit the scene. I was hooked so bad, I still have My woefully out of date deck. And of course, I had to have some video games on which to play them... which lead to me discovering the worst game I have ever played.

And that game... was “YuGiOh: Forbidden Memories” for the orignal PlayStation.

the problem with the game was simple. Imagine you’ve just bought the latest edition of Madden. You pop the disk in, it loads up, and suddenly you find yourself playing Canadian Football. You’d be confused. Wait? Three downs and I’m done? And why is the field so much longer

(for those outside North America, Canadian Football is a gridiron code that is similar to the American game, but there are only 3 downs instead of four, 12 players are on the field at any time, the field is 110 yards long and the goal post are placed above the goal line)

so anyway, this game used a prototype rules set for the card game. Fusions worked differently, trap cards and magic cards (yes, I still call them magic... sue me I went back to Pokémon before the original Yugioh anime ended) worked differently, you had to start your turn with at least 5 cards in you hand (draw until full) and you HAD to play a card during your main phase. You couldn’t do nothing.

now, I was never a real “king of games”... (though I guess these days “Queen of games” would be more appropriate), but I wasn’t exactly an idiot when it came to playing. This game was impossible for me to play because the rules were so different if it wasn’t for the Yugioh characters in the story cut scenes, you could have told me it was a Magic the Gathering game and I would have believed you (never got into MtG).

the game was made by the card game’s developers, Konami, and I know, game development takes time and things get changed. I understand that. Problem is the game came out in Japan in December of 1999, and didn’t come to North America until March of 2002 and I think that’s a fair amount of time to correct a mistake...

instead they doubled down with the second game “Dueliest of the Roses”... which transfers the action and characters to 15 century England during the War of the Roses (complete with Yugi as Henry the VII) and kept up with the bonkers “can’t stick to the TV show and card game rules to save our lives” bullshit.

i eventually got “Eternal Duelist Soul” for GBA for my fix.