Sorry, That Was a Strange Thing to Ask - worse than death?

If you think about, you're basically skipping dying and just getting sent straight to hell.

I guess they thought it was better since you could at least get out.

I didn't know they'd made that change when I was a kid, but ever since I found about it I've wondered.
How does it work, with people getting killed in the real Yu-Gi-Oh? Like, recovering Yugi's grandpa and Mokuba from the Shadow Realm were a big thing in the first season, and it happened, and they were both in subsequent seasons. If they were straight up dead, did they have to resurrect them in the original series? Was there something else at play there?