This series was not licensed in North America by 4 Kids Entertainment because they thought it was too violent.
The series was released on 7 VHS tapes in Japan.
One of the few Yu-Gi-Oh titles to only be released on VHS, even in Japan.
The character Miho Nosaka is only shown in this series and in the 1999 film. She was a minor character in the manga who was rewritten to be a main character for this anime.
The first adaptation of Kazuki Takahashi's popular manga, and covers most plots featured in the first 7 volumes of the manga, with slight rewrites so that they can take up an episode's worth of time. Unlike the second adaptation of the manga, Yu-Gi-Oh! (2000), this anime doesn't prominently feature the Duel Monsters card game, as Yugi simply challenges opponents to shadow games and inflicts a penalty game on them should they lose or cheat.