A Penalty Game is a punishment given to someone who either loses or cheats in a Shadow Game. Millennium Item holders are capable of inflicting supernatural punishments. Penalty Games played an important part in early Yu-Gi-Oh! storylines, but are used much less frequently when the main character, Yugi Mutou, decides to stop using them, being exclusively used by villains. The first series anime toned down the fatality of a number of Penalty Games, making some merely illusions.