For my student's choice presentation, I would like to speak about Duel Monsters VR, or DMVR. DMVR is a free, fan-made virtual reality game that lets you step into the world of Yu-Gi-Oh, a card game and manga/anime created 1990's to early 2000's. In Yu-Gi-Oh, two to four players take turns casting strong spells and summoning menacing monsters in order to gain the upper hand and eliminate the opponent's life points. Many kids, including myself, were enthralled by the game, but primarily due to the accompanying television anime which took this card game and blew it up to a massive scale.

In the Yu-Gi-Oh anime, players, or "duelists", played this card game on big dueling fields or with duel disks worn on their arms that projected life-size projections on the battlefield. These detailed and life-like replicas ignited the imaginations of millions of children. Every child that played the card game dreamed of owning a duel-disk and facing off against their friends, but it never quite felt as satisfying as in the show with the full 3D models. This is where DMVR comes in.

Duel Monsters is a fan-made VR game created in Unity that gives players the chance to live out their childhood dream of being a Yu-Gi-Oh duelist by outfitting them with their own duel disk and letting them customize their character in a myriad of ways to emulate characters from the decade plus of anime episodes. It lets you square off against anyone in the world in arenas modeled after real locations from the anime, and lastly, it lets you experience what it would truly be like to be a duelist in the Yu-Gi-Oh universe.

Upon starting the game, you are dropped into a surprisingly large hub world, which gives you a number of options of things to do. The tutorial is pleasantly effective in teaching the controls to the player, and does so in a way that shows off the gameplay. For the tutorial, you are placed into a duel against the main character of the anime, Yugi. In it, you are given easy to understand instructions on how to play the game, and it is done by giving you access to some of the most iconic cards of the series. It is capped off by Yugi summoning the legendary Egyption God Card Slifer the Sky Dragon, monolithic beast that flies onto the field from afar, giving the player an impressive sense of the scale these monsters’ models can have.

In addition to the actual duel lobbies, there are a number of other things you can do in the hub world. Firstly, you can customize your character to be nearly any combination of the different body pieces of the anime characters (plus some silly variations thrown in). This lets players really express themselves and further helps immersive experience for everyone involved. Next, there is a demo room that allows players to test out their cards outside of duels. Lastly, there is an RPG mode that allows you to fight off monsters out in the wild, and when destroyed, drop cards to add to your decks. Admittedly, this mode feels a little awkward and out of place, but more options for gameplay is never a bad thing

The rest of the hub world is adorned with giant statues of the iconic Blue-Eyes White Dragon. These also give a genuine sense of scale to the player compared to the monsters. A really cool feature to the game is that the user can climb onto structures by using the grip buttons on the controllers. Additionally, players can jump into the air by pressing the grip buttons and thrusting the controllers downward. This means that players can climb onto these massive Blue-Eyes statues and look down on the world. There is also a "secret" parkour maze that players can traverse in order to unlock a deck for play. There are a number of other buildings in the hub area, but most are just for show or have no real purpose due to changes in development plans.

Aside from all the additional modes and features is the core competency of this game: Dueling, and boy is it satisfying. This game truly lets players live out their fantasies of dueling with their favorite anime character's decks in some of the most iconic locations from the show. On your left hand is your duel disk, where you place all of your cards. Using the grip button, you can pick up cards and rotate through their positions using the trigger button on the controller. There really is nothing that makes you feel more like a bad-ass than announcing your card as you proverbially slam your monster onto the disk and see it propogate from the card on the field in front of you.

Players have the option of using their controllers as pointers to use different functions like checking their deck or graveyard mid-duel, but anyone looking for a fun and immersive experience will opt for the available voice commands. Nothing truly compares to shouting "FLIP A COIN" or "CHECK MY GRAVEYARD" mid-duel to have the virtual menus pop up in response. During duels, the experience is further improved by the various songs playing in the background on rotation from the anime. Listening to the original anime soundtrack ramp up during your duel's climax heightens the excitement and immersion of the duel like no other.

After every duel, both players records are updated based on whether they won or lost, and both receive two new cards for their collections. The DMVR website, https://dmvr.xyz/, gives duelists their own personal collection of cards that gives them the chance to build their own custom decks of cards. Otherwise, players can choose from a long list of pre-made decks that mirror the decks of the anime characters. Being able to set your character to look like Yugi while using Yugi's deck from the anime really tops off the role-play experience. The website also has rankings for all duelists based on their win/loss ratios.

On the whole, I believe this experience to be incredibly worthwhile for any fans of the game or show, past or present. The level of immersion is truly ineffable and must be experienced to really understand the appeal of the game, and being a 100% free experience means there is nothing to lose but your time. Here is a cursory list of pros and cons of DMVR:

Pros:

• Free and very easy to pick up and play. the tutorial only takes minutes and covers all important aspects of the game.
• The detail of the monsters and spells/traps contributes to the experience. The large, detailed models of Dark Magician of Blue-Eyes White Dragon add a significant "oomph" to the game
• Tons of customization and deck options lets duelists play however they want to live out their fantasies
• Available on numerous VR headsets

Cons:

• Being fan-made means development can be rather slow and seemingly aimless, evidenced by all of the abandoned features
• Because the controls require some precision, if tracking isn't working perfectly, it can really detract from the experience (which I experienced a number of times)
• Still a fair number of bugs that have existed for a while with no fixes in sight