Farfa must've spent a fortune for the guest appearance of Gage Nyhmnim Poljack in this video

I find it amusing that it's called "Firewall Dragon," when a Firewall keeps things out, but its effect basically allowed everything to come through.

the firewall files

This guy got 25+ other cards banned before he was banned. Konami gave up to the point where they had to rewrite Vrains so that decode talker was playmaker's ace

From greatest menace to the third best interaction on a Maliss Endboard

the card effect designers should be forced to play the duelist cup

1:50
"It isn't a dragon, it isn't fire, and it won't protect you from malware"
Not unlike THIS VIDEO'S SPONSER, NORD VPN

"It is firewall dragon"
Oh.

Imagine a main character card being so hated by the community that it even gets replaced in the anime by another card (decode talker).

Even for the recent protagonist full art retrains it was decode talker who got a retrain, not firewall.

I appreciate this foray into video essays. I think it's cool that parts of yu-gi-oh's history are kept accessible through those.

One criticism I would offer of the video is that is that the level of knowledge it expects from the viewer seems to be quite inconsistent. While the video makes effort to recontextualize things like Master Rule 4, it often feels like it is still deeply embedded in the jargon and knowledge of a seasoned yu-gi-oh player.Here's a couple ones that stood out to me :

-The video rapidly mentions that Firewall got more cards banned in it's first banlist than Halq did in it's entire lifetime. This is a very powerful comparison to use because I know the lengths Konami went to keep Halq in the game, but the video makes no attempt to explain this beyond a throwaway mention. Who is this hypothetical person who would be familiar with Halq's rap sheet but not with Firewall's ?
-For that matter, it is somewhat inconsistent which cards are actually explained or even shown at various point of the video, assuming familiarity with certain cards while taking the time to explain others.
-The video has a section on the Knightmares and their ability to Extra Link and how they played a major role in Breaking Firewall... But the concept of Extra link is barely presented in the video. A definition of it is given, but never associated to the term directly. The term then goes on to being used several times, which feels strange after taking the time to explain Master Rule 4 at the start of the video.
-I had to go back and check if Bohdan Temnyk had been introduced at all in the video because I wasn't familiar with them and the video only briefly introduces him as a YCS champion. I think taking a little more time to bring up his record orally would give a lot more weight to his interventions (a problem Jesse dodges more imo since the video brings him up a lot more by virtue of him being a lot more integral to the story the video tells)
-and of course there's all the little bits of jargon like bouncing, spinning, that we're all well-acquainted with that go completely unquestionned throughout the video.

I don't think it would be productive to list more examples, but the point I'm trying to make is that I think to really be able to follow that video you need to already be familiar with the topic it covers, which I think is a missed opportunity to make topics like the history of yu-gi-oh more accessible.

Sure, I understand everything this video talks about. but I was playing the game when this all happened in 2017. I can tell at a glance that firewall is a problem waiting to happen by reading the card text. I don't think I am the audience who would benefit the most from a video like that.

I try to think of what would happen if I showed this video to some of my friends who play yu-gi-oh a lot more casually than me and I wonder : would they get anything meaningful out of this video? or would they just end up having to take the video's word for it that it was in fact really that broken?

I want to make it clear this isn't an attempt to hate on the video - I say those things with the hope to see things improve and later iterations of those essays to reach more people. This is a problem I kind of already had with MBT's recent attempt to explain how to play Yu-gi-oh comprehensively, similarly feeling still too it it's own juice to be really accessible to the people it intends to target. And perhaps it is misguided of me to assume in the first place this video is attempting to reach more casual viewers - as we get further and further away from 2017 and more and more people become familiar with yugioh without having been there for it, I assume a lot more people would both understand this video and maybe not know firsthand what did Firewall do, so in that regard I think the video will age pretty well.

If I remember correctly, there was also a YCS event (maybe Pasadena?) where players could duel against Konami employees. The employees were repeatedly stomped by Firewall Dragon. Then it was the next banlist a few weeks after where Firewall was banned - the implication being that Konami was either completely out of touch with, or indifferent to, the state of the format prior to that event.

The classic issue of an OTK/FTK being centered around a problem card and Konami banning everything used in said combo EXCEPT the core Card. AKA The Blaze Fenix issue.

Here before the 2028 follow-up video on habakiri

My biggest takeaway from this video: That very short window where Pendulum was this problematic menace was during a format where every top deck was just FTKing.

Firewall did nothing wrong!!!!! (  he did everything wrong holy )

A point that often goes unmentioned is that Firewall Dragon didn't just break the game—it accidentally created the modern 'Hand Trap' requirement. Before this era, you could survive with 3-5 hand traps. After Firewall/Gouki/Danger FTK  the community realized that if you aren't main-decking 12+ non-engine pieces, you aren't actually playing Yu-Gi-Oh, you're just watching a solitaire performance 😅

farfa on his video essay arc, you love to see it

I actually kept track of how many card were banned because of Firewall Dragon back in the day. From the day it came out to the day it was finally banned, it got FORTY cards banned. Many of which got unbanned when Firewall was finally hit because they were largely rouge deck bystanders like A-Assault Core.

The lasting damage was that anything that spat out tokens pretty much can never ever come back.

I appreciate these kind of videos since i am a new Yugioh player (old anime fan) that skipped all these historical moments of the community, thank you Farfa

26:48 i never knew the context of why Jesse domed a child before this video now that i do go off King Jesse did us a huge service by facilitating the banning and errata of Firewall you need to show the problem so they fix the problem

Finally the legendary Firewall Dragon Video...
Honestly I feel like if you punched up the thumbnail with Jesse Kotton destroying the child and screencaps of Konami begging for peace you could easily surpass the million billion views you had projected for this.