No Mutants Allowed

Probably. It was pretty stupid but the trading card game is pretty long lasting. I saw a Harry Potter trading card game played in my highschool and it lasted only ONE DAY. The same thing for the WoW trading card game. Magic the Gathering is still going strong.

The card game is fun, but this anime was just hilariously lacking in self awareness, or at least the dub was.

Season 1 ran on bullshit. I do imagine Mana Burn used as a secret lose condition in theoretical MtG anime. Mana Burn was removed because it rarely comes to play and it confuses people because the distinction between Lands and Mana.

Yu-Gi-Oh was horrible... Oh no, these evil guys kidnapped my friend, what should I do? Call the police? Nah, I will just go into this dark warehouse and play cards against the kidnappers and if I win I can rescue my friend!
Oh no, there are people brainwashing kids and using them to commit crimes and stuff. Should I tell the police? Nah, I will just play cards against them and if I win the kids will be saved... etc.

In season 1 cards just had random effects and they couldn't decide wether they were just holograms of cards with rules or creatures that could attack the card sleeves if they felt like it. Season 2 is super edgy while the characters stop often to monologue about friendship and recap shit every 10 minutes.

Season 1 basically treats the whole thing like a video game with poorly defined mechanics despite showing that the game can be played without the stupid holograph projector that can make tangible creatures. This reminds me of "No Game, No Life." I hate that show.

Season 2 when they started using the real life rules (or when the real life game was actually released?) also has some instances of that, like when Joey plays with the fisher guy and his Umi card forces one of his monsters to rise to the surface to get air, I mean, Umi doesn't have any effect about negating trap cards so that's kinda stupid, and that's without the God cards that just do whatever the fuck they want.

How many animators does Kaiba Corp have on paycheck? Did Kaiba commission Character sheets for the God cards? Do the cards have some form of digital id printed on them or how do they make sure people don't just print cards on cardboard and use them? Then again Marik and his group seemingly use lots of counterfeit cards.

Pokemon was better ......

The anime? Nah, Yu-gi-oh might be dumb but the Pokemon anime is pure shit.
If you mean the games, they are too different to compare them as one better than the other.

I meant it in a generic statement because I can remeber at school there is seemed be some argument what was better Pokemon or yu-gi-oh dunno why though