🪄 The patch

😈 The opponent

actually moves. In the base game, some opponents do not move their monsters. More still would just barely move. This has been fixed.

favors rolling dice appropriate for the stage of the game. Favors. It runs off of a probability distribution. The distribution varies based on the board state and (preexisting) internal knobs like "recklessness" and whether they have a "favorite".

is somewhat biased towards dice with Mov faces. This is a bit of a simplification: it can under the right conditions instead favor Atk. It also won't summon away its last die that can roll for either of those two faces unless it has a huge glut of them.

places territory in a way that protects its Die Master.

meaningfully attempts to reach your Die Master. Opponents still have their dispositions, but they're tweaked to be at least compatible with winning. In the case of the "places its tiles at random" disposition, it had to be taught to be just a bit erratic but largely still goal-oriented.

places territory offensively, if they're "strong" and not a "turtler".

meaningfully defends its Die Master. Basically it is able to prioritize threats "somewhat" rather than "not at all". It no longer does the "huddling" thing.

picks good-ish fights. It will make you actually spend your guard crests rather than limply giving up. It will occasionally misplay when choosing whether to guard. To be clear this misplaying is intentional. See if you feel lucky.

if it has 'a favorite', it tries to roll for it once and then moves on. This is an upgrade over the default behavior, which was to roll for that thing three out of every four turns. Several of the opponents used to spend all their time rolling for their 🎴Crater Creator.

is somewhat biased against dimensioning its items.

can pick up (as in, use) items.

can use all the monster abilities. It knows how to use the abilities of the monsters listed below. Those not listed are ones where it was already able to use the ability. In those cases we've still tried to improve how it uses them. It will absolutely snipe a 🎴Millennium Shield with its 🎴The 13th Grave.

can "do more than one thing" per monster per turn. It can have a monster attack and use an ability, and/or move to take an item and then proceed to move more and attack-or-whatever.

📚 The rules

Dice are rolled twice per turn. More crests and more summons for all. This one had to be adapted slightly to work with the GBA interpretation of the rules.

Flying doesn't fly over opposing monsters.

Tunneling can pass under items without picking them up. Stopping on the item still picks it up.

🎒 Your pool

You start with 🎴Mighty Mage. It was pretty much just objectively correct to reroll until you happened to get the mage. Skip the rerolling; enjoy the Mov2 Mov4 it provides.

You can have at most one of any die in your pool.

The opponent will sometimes have a duplicate die. These are left as-is, in part due to flavor and in part due to not wanting to open the can of worms that is "balancing the 'decks'".

💰 Money and prizes

Rares are less rare; commons are less common. Rarity has been clamped.

Example die	base	ours
🎴Crater Creator from Jackpot (the rarest drop)	1 in 5,000	1 in 156
🎴D. Magician Girl from Yami Yugi	1 in 2,857	1 in 106
🎴Koumori Dragon from Marik (the most common one-die drop)	1 in 5	1 in 12

Sell prices are adjusted so as to not entirely mess up the economy. You should still come out about 1.5x richer than you would be in the base game.

Cups pay more. 1.5x more. In absolute terms they're still stingy.

The shop unlocks faster. 1.5x faster. Winning each cup once should now be enough.

Dark Magician Girl is sold once Yami Yugi is available. Once he starts participating in The Last Judgment, she's for sale.

🎮 Pace and looks

The game is faster. This game was slow, slow, slow, slow. And most of this slow is just waiting for tedious plodding animations that really do not add to the experience. So slow these are that we were able to add a second die roll to each turn, and yet our die-rolling phase is faster than the base game's.

Everything is still shown; the waiting is shorter. This is measured in frames; a second has 60 frames:

Opening movie is decensored. Rather: opening movie is the Japanese one. The most obvious difference is that the text behind Dark Magician is changed from "Black Magic" to "Dark Magician". But, it also re-adds the word "fetish".

USA version uses the European title screen.

One language. The patch tells it which language to use. So, there're two mainline USA patches and five European ones; one per language.

The title screen does not loop back around to the movie no matter how long you "wait". Between this and "one language": you can start the game up, smoosh "fast-forward" in your emulator, and this will actually get you to the title screen in a durable way.

Warning-text is in white rather than red. Red on gray is really hard to read.

USA and Euro version's 🎴Barrel Dragon is decensored.

The main menu doesn't shiver. The base game's main menu flickers on modern displays due to how it is being drawn. This is now fixed.

The European version has full color monster fight animations. The base game's European version has degraded 3d model colors so as to make more room for all the languages. We pack the color data more densely and repurpose the space used by unused languages, so, there's room for the prettier animations.

SET won't ever replace your selection with 'nothing'.

The cup select screen rotates the obvious way. A d-pad right-press now advances to the cup that is to the right of the presently selected cup.

🎴Warp Vortex only asks where to warp if there are two or more holes in play.

"Battle scene: Off" actually works. The base game overrides the battle-scene setting if you're holding A, B, or L. Holding A or B no longer overrides. L still does, however..

💤 Suspend

Suspend next turn. The START menu now has a fourth option, "Suspend next turn". If chosen, this ends the turn, runs through the opponent's next turn, then saves the state right before your next turn and ejects you out to the title screen. When you next "Continue", you'll be back in the match at the start of that upcoming turn.

🐛 Fixes

🎴Blast Lizard's ability cost is fixed. It used to, contra its rules text, always cost exactly Mag3.

The opponent's defense menu no longer lets the player choose whether the opponent will guard. You were able to just mash A and have this mean the opponent would always "Wait" rather than "Guard".

The opponent pays for its attacks. In the base game this was not the case until the player attacked for the first time.

UI widgets deconstruct correctly. One minor class of them would stick around until something else overwrote it.

🎴Gator Dragon's ability can't overflow its way into causing damage rather than preventing it. These ranges of Def spend used to overflow: 13-25, 39-51, 64-76, >=90.

"Rolls the lowest level they hold a pair of" opponents are now allowed to use level 4 dice.

Weak AI opponents no longer autowin against strong ones. Yami Yugi no longer autoloses to Joey and Sindin the Clown.

The opponent knows how far nonstandard monsters can go. It used to think that fliers moved very cheaply and that 🎴Knight of Twin Swords and 🎴Strike Ninja were expensive. So, it'd move them only tiny distances.

The opponent can see possessed monsters. This is about monsters possessed by 🎴Relinquished or 🎴Thousand-eyes Restrict. It wouldn't attack them, or guard against them, or (if on its side) give orders to them.

The opponent's 🎴Cocoon of Evolutions no longer have to share a brain cell. Fixed misbehaviors related to the opponent controlling two 🎴Cocoon of Evolution, or one and a 🎴Millennium Shield.

A rare freeze is avoided. Music and graphics can no longer trip over each other by simultaneously trying to use copying hardware.

Exiting the debug menu's save editor doesn't have side effects. It used to repeat whatever was the last edit made.

Using the debug menu's save editor only edits what you tell it to. Toggling off dice or opponents will no longer sometimes also delete unrelated dice or toggle off unrelated opponents.

🧪 Debug

Hold L and R as the game starts to access the debug menu. For safety / save-file-coherence reasons this access is turned off when there is a suspended duel.

This has odds and ends in it including a super-opaque save editor (menu entry ADD DEL) that will be documented eventually.