Oh I was totally the same way, (OMG, do not even get me thinking about the YGO episodes...WEEEEEP), but at the time it was on regular television I was away at college with no one at home to tape for me, and so my only real chance came later, at the end of its life on Cartoon Network and while I was living at someone else's house. It was all subject to availability and I didn't get a lot of chance for re-runs at that point. Also, my VCR at the time had this crappy feature that would rewind the tape a little after recording was stopped/paused, which made it very hard to set it up for the next record and/or while watching and cutting commercials. (Seriously, I was just as OCD and it was KILLING ME, lol!!) Really, this is one of those examples that makes me sad that the DVD revolution was happening when I was so poor. I just couldn't buy everything twice back then. Hell, I could barely buy things once, I never did get the SM singles, I got the boxsets later. Anyway....

(OMG, now I seriously don't know why I didn't buy the YGO discs in thoese cheap sets... argh....want to re-watch so bad now...and my tapes are crap!)