Duel Disk System Makes It Possible to Play Yu-Gi-Oh! on a Virtual Field

Trading card deck-building games, like Pokémon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh!, are quite popular, but it can still be difficult to find people to play with. Your only real options as an adult are to go to a game shop or join some sort of meetup group, and both of those can be hard to find if you don’t live in a big city. Even if you do, your schedule might not be conducive to finding games. One solution is to play online, and Augusto Masetti’s Duel Disk System helps to facilitate that for Yu-Gi-Oh! games.

There are online versions of Yu-Gi-Oh! out there, including Dueling Nexus and YGOPRO, but they are purely virtual. That means that you don’t get the tactile experience of physically playing cards, and the deck you’ve spent so much time and money building is irrelevant. The Duel Disk System combines the best of both worlds. Once Masetti has completed development, it will let players use their actual decks to compete against other players online. Players place their cards on a special device that detects both the card’s position and its information. The card will then appear on the virtual playfield on a computer, where the opponent can view it and then respond with their own card.

Duel Disk System works using inexpensive NFC stickers. The intention is for players to stick those onto the inside of a card sleeve, so the card itself remains pristine. To play a card, users simply need to scan the card and then place it in the appropriate position. Scanning is handled by an NFC module connected to an Arduino Uno, and the card’s unique identifier is sent to a computer, such as a Raspberry Pi, where it is looked up in the YGOProDeck API database. Light sensors are placed at each possible card position in order for Duel Disk System to detect where the card has been put. Masetti only has a basic prototype working at this time, but it seems like a more polished version should be coming soon.