I played for about 2-3 years with all of the kids in my neighborhood (when I was in 7th-9th grade). I actually had way too much fun with it and I and a friend of mine made giant battle maps with 3.5 by 3.5 inch squares (large enough to fit a card turned either direction). Movement in squares was equal to the level of the monster (stars). To attack life points, you had to be in one of the five summoning zones of the player you were attacking (and by occupying those spaces you also prevented them from using it to summon). We also made ten "traps" that we shuffled and placed face-down on different spaces. Some were beneficial, some were highly penalizing. It was fun.
I love the Abridged series because it points out everything that was stupid about the show and the game that I ignored when I was younger (and, yes, I watched the show all the way up until the end of the Marik saga - and then one or two episodes after that when I woke up really early on a Saturday morning this past summer and had absolutely nothing to do).
But, yes, the game was horribly broken (and using the labyrinths made it worse as creatures that allowed you to flip to deal direct damage or that dealt damage every round weren't susceptible to being attacked [creatures that were usually good only in very defensively-oriented decks]).