- [JAMES] So originally,
I was going to being this video with something along the lines of
"who remembers Yu-Gi-Oh!" but I'm not.
An intro like that would imply that this series has been dead or something
when in reality it's probably bigger than
it has ever been.
I say that as someone who has been away from the franchise
for at least most of, if not all of,
the past decade.
I remember as a kid tuning in to watch
the Pokémon anime,
but before each episode I would often catch the
tail end of an episode
of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime.
I didn't catch much initially.
Mainly, unlike Pokémon,
which my sister also enjoyed and which my parents didn't mind us watching on the living room TV,
Yu-Gi-Oh! soon became what my mother referred to as
"that Japanese show with the weird hair where they scream about card games."
I find this to be a very accurate summary.
Like many things from when I was a child, though,
something having that nice combination of being marketed at
my age demographic
and also having this weird appeal of my
parents not really liking it, particularly my mother,
caused it to actually be vastly appealing to me.
I really got into Yu-Gi-Oh!
But in addition to getting into the series myself,
the series itself just became hugely popular
throughout my entire neighbourhood and indeed my elementary school.
It truly exploded, though, when I hit the second grade.
I was actually introduced to the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game
via the elementary school playground.
It became sort of an obsession.
Cards became a status symbol.
Those more than anything else.
At that point in my childhood, particularly during the second grade,
these were childhood friends I had known since before I was school age.
We were all addicted to Yu-Gi-Oh!
To be honest, by the time I got out of Yu-Gi-Oh!,
which was around 2008, mid way through Yu-Gi-Oh! GX,
I probably had at least a few thousand cards. No joke!
Y'know, I kind of regret selling them all at this point. I had all of the God cards.
I had all of the Sacred Beasts from Yu-Gi-Oh! GX.
I even had three of the five Exodia pieces!
Side note: unlike most friend groups
which were into collecting the cards but not playing the game,
my friend group as a kid was definitely into playing the game itself.
What helped this was, beginning my second grade year,
there was this one DVD that started floating around local Wal-Marts that
that actually taught you how to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game.
I swear it became a must own for every single kid!
Along with just being a nice, basic overview of the card game itself,
it also had copious references to the anime series which
I'm sure helped retain the attention of us seven and eight-year-olds!
Shockingly enough, the thing I was most oblivious to as a kid, Yu-Gi-Oh!-wise anyways,
were the numerous - and I mean numerous - video games based off the series.
The only one I ended up owning as a kid was Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul for Game Boy Advance.
I remember playing that a decent bit,
but I honestly don't remember much of the actual game content.
That honestly likely says a lot about the quality of the game itself
but that's besides the point because that's not the title we're looking at today.
Instead, we're looking at the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game to be released in the west:
Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories for Game Boy Color.
So let's get right into it!
So welcome to Stuff We Play,
home of everything weird and retro, and if that sounds cool to you,
why not subscribe?
So, what we're looking at today
definitely fits the bill
of weird and retro.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories was the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game to ever be released...
in North America, anyways.
Yu-Gi-Oh! itself first appeared in 1996
as a manga that wasn't even focused on card games.
Instead, it followed teenager Yugi Muto,
who upon completing the Millenium Puzzle,
a strange ancient Egyptian artifact that had been discovered by his grandfather,
unleashes the soul of Pharaoh Atem,
who on occasion assumes control of Yugi's body,
forcing him to grow two feet taller,
and then challenges people to mysterious "shadow games",
in which their lives are put on the line.
Unlike the 4Kids version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime,
in the early manga chapters, and indeed the Japanese-exclusive Toei Yu-Gi-Oh! adaption,
which ultimately preceded the anime that became super popular over here by two entire years,
the Pharaoh does some absolutely
horrendous, wretched stuff.
Admittedly, this is to people who probably had it coming.
Like, look at this here
where the Pharaoh sets a man on fire for losing a Shadow Game!
Wow that's screwed up!
Eventually though,
the manga and anime introduced a card game.
While originally known as "Magic and Wizards",
it was later renamed in-universe to "Duel Monsters".
This would serve as the basis for the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game itself.
This would, as is evident by this point,
go on to be absolutely massive.
As for video games, the first one of these to be released was
Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule: Breed and Battle for the Playstation 1
exclusively in Japan in July 1998.
This was more of a monster breeding game than a card game, uh, game
but was followed in December of that year by
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters for the original Game Boy.
This was also Japanese exclusive.
The confusing bit comes the following year in 1999.
In July of that year,
the second handheld game was released:
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories.
Despite having a similar name to the game we're looking at today,
this one was actually also Japanese exclusive.
Mind blowing, I know.
But then in December of that year,
Japan also got Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories for the PS1!
The game in-question today wasn't even released until 2000,
where it was known as Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Advent!
However, when the franchise's video games would finally make their way to the western world in 2002,
this would be renamed in the west to Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories.
This was despite being a sequel to the game that actually had that name in Japan!
Thus, this would make it the first game in the franchise to see a western release,
upon coming out on 18 March 2002.
Then, it would be followed by the western version of Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories on PS1
literally two days later.
The first of the Game Boy Advance games,
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul
would be released only a little over six months later in North America.
As you can see, a lot of games based off Yu-Gi-Oh! were released in quick succession.
But y'now what, rushed release or not,
is Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories,
the North American Game Boy Color game
that's actually Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters III: Tri-Holy God Advent in Japan,
worth your time and is it any fun?
Well let's find out.
- [PHARAOH] Welcome to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories!
Before you start, input your duel name.
This will be the name you use while dueling
as card games are only acceptable when played anonymously.
Now if you excuse me, I must go.
Technically, I'm not even in this game after this.
I'm only available as a secret duel in the post game!
And they still put me on the box! Haha!
- [JAMES] The game honestly opens just like that.
You're presented with all of these options here
but they honestly all mostly mean nothing when you start.
You have a basic deck and need to get better cards, and in this game
you earn cards by winning duels.
Unlike the first Pokémon Trading Card Game video game,
which was released in 1998 for the Game Boy Color
and had its own unique RPG style adventure,
and will also be my main source of comparison for this title,
as I played that game an absolute ton as a kid,
Dark Duel Stories instead features you,
as a silent, faceless protagonist
as you play card games with various characters
from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime and manga series.
You get this Mega Man style stage select screen
and get to choose who you take on first in a duel.
To start off, let's begin with fan favourite side character
Joey Wheeler.
- [JOEY] Ay it's ya boy Joey.
I'm the school's second best duelist!
If you want to face the best,
you'll have to get through me and my inadequacy issues first!
- [JAMES] So I jumped into my first duel with Joey
and I realised something crucial here:
to win at this game,
I was going to have to once again
get familiar with the inner workings of the
Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game.
Thankfully, the in-depth how-to DVD that I mentioned earlier
was ripped years ago and is now easily available free-to-watch on YouTube!
Despite how it looks,
the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, even in Dark Duel Stories,
is a little bit more complex than just magical Uno.
At the beginning of each game,
a player is randomly selected to go first
and each of the two players draw five cards.
Small note:
it's literally completely random and I have no idea how it's decided who goes first.
Pokémon TCG on the Game Boy
at least had a little coin flip at the beginning of each card game.
Unfortunately, nothing of that sort is present here.
However, from here,
you can summon monsters to the field in either attack mode or defense mode.
What mode you summon your monsters in
may be more viable depending on their attack points and defense points.
Though you can't attack on your first turn,
in subsequent turns,
your opponent will try to destroy your monsters
to try to take down your life points to "zero".
Damage happens if they either attack you directly
if you have no monsters on the field,
or if they attack one of your monsters
and their monster's attack points are higher than your monster's attack points.
At this point, your monster is sent to the Graveyard,
or I guess "GY" as it's called now,
and removed from play.
Then you receive damage to your life points.
This is unless it was in defense mode, in which case the monster is still destroyed
but your life points take zero damage.
There's also numerous spell and trap cards.
These can be set and activated
at numerous times throughout the match to cause effects to you or your opponent,
such as Pot of Greed here...
whatever that does.
Also, not all monsters can be directly summoned to the field.
Instead, each monster is given a level.
If their level is five or higher,
you will have to "tribute" and remove a monster or two of yours from play
in order to summon them.
Also, some monsters have special abilities and effects that you can activate
while they are in play.
Furthermore, some monsters can be fused together
using a card such as Polymerization
to create a fusion monster,
except said card doesn't exist in this video game
so it has its own arbitrary fusion summoning system in place
that I never figured out.
Oh, and some cards also outright
behave completely differently in this game than in the actual card game
and it's kind of a mess.
Well, perhaps mess isn't the best way to describe it
but it's certainly confusing.
I mean holy crap I was a smart kid
because this isn't as easy as I remember it being.
To use the Pokémon example again,
in that title there were tutorials built into the game
that would actually teach you
the basic mechanics of the card game itself.
These were helpful.
Not only did these teach me as a kid how to play that card game within the video game,
but it also taught me the mechanics of the actual card game itself.
These actually helped me get into playing that!
Going back to tutorials themselves though,
Dark Duel Stories has nothing of that sort.
You have to do outside research
and that may not even prepare you for the changes this game makes
to the literal card game it's based off of!
Perhaps this could be forgiven if the game had a sense of flow and speed to it,
but it doesn't.
To put it bluntly,
Dark Duel Stories is very slow and very janky.
Card games all take place on this white background,
and despite the cards themselves having art that is
very well done and reminiscent of their actual designs,
there is little to no movement throughout the duels.
If you use a card such as, say, "Mountain",
the field does not get a mountainous background.
If you attack your opponent using a monster of your own that has a sword or a lance,
you don't see a slice effect on your opponent!
Honestly, these duels have about as much flow and flair
as an actual card game.
I know some might praise this and be like
"oh it's more faithful to the card game itself"
but do I really need realism in my
magical monster fighting children's card game?
So we finally beat Joey using our crappy starter deck, and trust me,
it's quite crappy.
But then we're greeted by Téa.
Y'know, one of like
three female characters from the anime?
- [TEA] You won so you get a card part!
You also get Pot of Greed,
whatever that does.
- [JAMES] So let me stress this:
it's one singular trading card.
Not a pack of cards, mind you.
One singular trading card!
This is all you've got.
At least we finally beat Joey, though.
From here we can finally play around with deck building and modification.
Everything is organized into these list based menus
and this is particularly terrible
whenever you try to build a new deck.
Cards seem to be in a random order
and can't be sorted by card type or, well, alphabetically.
Furthermore, there is randomly thirty
empty pages in the deck builder
that seemed pointless to me
until I realized what the card parts actually did.
After awhile, and I mean a long while of playing the game,
you will eventually get enough card parts
to use this equally clunky and unintuitive
card builder tool
to make some of the most powerful cards in the game.
Again, no instruction is given on this
and while I'm sure if I had this game's instruction manual
it might explain this a bit in-depth,
let me remind you that this game's main competition
had a video game
that had the option to have stuff like this explained
two years before this was released!
The only way to get better cards during normal gameplay
is to defeat the various duelists in the game.
The cards you get are completely random and range from great to Kuriboh.
However, unless you want to grind against a piss-easy duelist
such as Tristan for a few hours-
- [TRISTAN] I'm grind fodder!
- [JAMES] The easiest way to get new cards
is by using the game's password system.
Now, I have no idea how you'd find out about any of this when this game first came out.
I know a lot of people
had the internet by 2002,
but not everyone!
Regardless, I'm now lucky enough
to live in the modern day,
and despite all of the issues that the modern world has,
was still have GameFAQs
and with that,
a list of all the hundreds of different passwords
you can use within this game.
But what do they do?
Well, the first password you should use
while playing this game, if you ever feel like playing it,
is the one that unlocks Yugi's grandpa.
Grandpa was just a small side character
who runs a card shop in the anime,
but here he functions as a second Téa.
This means that upon beating any duelist
you'll be given two card parts and two new trading cards.
In addition to this,
if and when you beat the game, and I mean "IF",
and we'll get into that later,
you can use the password system
to unlock additional duels against characters from the show and manga.
These are characters such as, y'know, Marik
or the Pharaoh.
He's on the game box, y'know.
Yet, this is the only way you can actually duel him.
However, you can also get almost every
single card in the game through passwords.
The caveat, of course,
is you can only get one of each card for each password.
This means that if there are any cards you want to include
multiples of in your forty card deck,
well, happy grinding!
That reminds me, in order to progress through this game's
rough semblance of something that could be called a "story"
you have to take on each duelist
five
times.
And win, of course.
After the first initial duels,
NPC dialogue doesn't really change much.
For example, in all subsequent duels with Joey,
he says this:
- [JOEY] I've got no intention of losing!
Not until I'm sure I'm the best
or at least somewhat decent!
- [JAMES] And I think now I should also mention
that most of the footage you're looking at right now
has been sped up.
This is because, holy crap, this game is
slooooooooow!
But anyways, after an eternity,
we finally beat Joey
five separate times!
We are then given a nugget along these lines:
- [JOEY] One day I'm gonna be the best...
and I'll duel until that day comes!
- [JAMES] So anyways, you continue through the game
and it tries to cover various bits from the anime and manga story.
The first batch of duelists is based off the Duelist Kingdom arc from the
first anime season.
Despite this, Maximillion Pegasus,
who was the big bad there,
is nowhere to be found.
After beating each of these guys FIVE TIMES,
we move on to the next section,
which covers the Battle City arc from the second and third seasons of the anime.
It is here, of course,
where we meet fan favourite egocentric billionaire
Seto Kaiba.
- [KAIBA] I'm Seto Kaiba,
president of the Kaiba Corporation
and a level above your standard duelist.
I'm afraid this is the end of your winning streak.
- [JAMES] Oddly enough, with how Kaiba is positioned on the character select screen,
you can tell he's intended as some sort of boss duel, though,
honestly, compared to some of the duels that came before him
he's not that bad.
Who was a real pain here, though,
especially when I tried to play this game before I knew about the password system,
was this guy.
This stupid,
magician
clown
dude
who wasn't even important enough
in the grand scheme of things for me to even remember his name!
However, he had a deck built around the Dark Magician card.
This is funny, seeing as this is Yugi's,
y'know the main character of the show and manga, main card.
But y'know, when I actually duelled Yugi earlier in the game,
he didn't even manage to summon it!
But anyways, this guy who uses Dark Magician
kicked my ass.
However, he also had some of the most interesting
dialogue in the game once I beat him.
Well, y'know, for the FIFTH TIME!
- [ARKANA] Pressure! I just love pressure!
You think you've won? Idiot!
Every magician has got an escape!
In fact, I...my dear...MARIK!
- [MARIK] I...hate excuses! You know the rule!
You lose, you pay!
There's no excuse!
- [JAMES] That! You hear that?
That actually got me a bit excited.
Marik was one of the major villains from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime
and was one of my favourite characters,
especially with the more childish portrayal he was given in
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series.
I was pumped to duel Marik.
It's just a shame that, much like I mentioned earlier and as is also the case with the Pharaoh,
he's locked behind a password
that can only be used if/when you beat the game.
So you go and beat each of these duelists five times
and then you go on to...ancient Egypt?
Okay.
These duels are definitely more annoying than the ones that preceded them, but
honestly they're just more of the same.
I could talk about how the difficulty seems to have hugely spiked somewhere around here,
but also honestly,
the game itself by now has just become so repetitive
what with the mostly static presentation,
that I've become numb to it by this point
and was only playing through sheer willpower
to make a hopefully entertaining review.
Also, I don't know who half of these people are!
I know her.
She was in the anime.
And him, who's just Kaiba's ancient Egyptian recolour, also from the anime.
- [PRIEST SETO] I'm an original character. Do not steal.
- [JAMES] Finally, after much perseverance,
I finally get past these four and reach the final boss of the game!
But I wonder, who do YOU think is the final boss of the game?
For all of you Yu-Gi-Oh! fans out there!
Well, we already know it's not Pegasus or Marik.
Nor is it you, helping Yugi fight the
Pharaoh to reconcile the fact that he's
been constantly possessed on occasion
by a three thousand-year-old dead guy
in order to play card games!
Honestly, the most logical big bad here seems to be Bakura,
who if you watch either of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime adaptions
ended up being the end-all be-all final encounter of the series.
However, as far as I can tell,
he's not even in this game and it's...
this...dude.
- [DARKNITE] Ha ha ha!
It was I all along who was...
playing card games.
Why am I the end game final boss?
What was I even doing?
I assume that I'm somehow evil.
Is this part of the game still in ancient Egypt?
Does this have something to do with the pyramids being built by slaves?
- [JAMES] I'm completely baffled!
This game hardly had any story
and this even still managed to come out of nowhere!
I honestly don't remember HIM
from anything pertaining to Yu-Gi-Oh!
That really doesn't matter, though, because
he's a cheating S.O.B.
Well, technically anyways.
Darknite's deck has a few major gimmicks.
Obviously he has some super powerful monsters and spell cards,
such as Raigeki, which destroys all monsters on your opponent's side of the field, and which
you'll usually find at least one of in most actual high level Yu-Gi-Oh! decks,
but Fortnite also abuses
two of the most powerful spell cards in the game.
These are Swords of Revealing Light and Change of Heart.
Now, before I go on,
I need to mention that, yes,
you can get each of these cards yourself. I got one of each by using the password feature!
However, even if you had a maximum of four of each of these
you could still potentially not be able to use them due to one of the most arbitrary additions to this game:
the deck levelling system.
Your character begins this game at some really low level.
Some cards are restricted based on your duelist level, such as Pot of Greed or Change of Heart.
However, each card also has a certain number of points allotted to it
and your deck can't have over a certain amount of points.
Even at the maximum level that you can achieve in this game,
which is two hundred and fifty five,
some deck combinations are still impossible.
So, Swords of Revealing Light and Change of Heart
are two of the best cards in the game.
Also, it is unlikely that you,
like Darknite here,
will be able to have the maximum number of them in your deck.
Swords of Revealing light has a simple yet powerful effect.
Once played, your opponent can not attack you for three turns.
This means that unless you have a damage dealing spell or trap card,
your opponent is immune from damage.
In addition to this, in Dark Duel Stories at least,
the effects of this card stack,
meaning that in the absolute worst case scenario
Darknite will have you immobilized from attacking him
for a maximum of twelve turns!
This is way more than is necessary for him
to kick your sorry ass to the curb.
But let's say Darknite here doesn't manage to pull off Swords of Revealing Light,
or he does but you still manage to get some good draws
and summon your strongest possible monsters to the field.
You'll be safe with something with more than three thousand attack or defense points, right?
Wrong.
Change of Heart is the card that he uses to add
insult to injury.
This card allows you to take control of one of your opponents monsters.
Not as in "oh! they get to attack you with it for one turn!"
but as in this is their's now
to do whatever they want with
for the rest of the game.
So let's say you get your strongest dang monster onto the field
and that you feel confident about surviving Darknite's attacks.
Well think again, buddy!
Because with just one card
he can turn one of your biggest defenders
into one of your worst nightmares.
Ideally, of course,
you'll have other cards to protect you
but believing in the heart of the cards
doesn't work as well as the show would leave you to believe.
With this in mind,
it's no wonder that I, after countless deck rebuilds
and hundreds upon hundreds of battles,
never beat this guy and ultimately just gave up.
It was at this point that I had a choice to make:
do I continue on with this mind numbing card game video game?
Or do I concede defeat and go back to living a productive,
healthy, normal life,
or at least as close to one of those as a YouTuber can have.
I chose the latter.
So overall, how is Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories for Game Boy Color?
Well, I can't speak for its multiplayer features
as, mainly because whenever I tried asking friends
"Hey! Do you want to play a Yu-Gi-Oh! game with me?"
they assumed I meant I wanted to play an actual card game.
But, as far as the single player experience goes,
it's lacklustre at best and wretchedly awful at the worst.
Between the bland presentation,
snail's pace flow,
cheap duels,
a soundtrack so forgettable that this is the only mention I'm giving it,
and a disregard for the rules of the actual card game
that this is based on and comprises 95% of any and all gameplay within this title...
it's not a good time.
If you're a diehard Yu-Gi-Oh! collector,
sure, buy this game for collector's purposes.
But then again, if you're a diehard Yu-Gi-Oh! fan or collector,
you likely already own it.
My copy right here cost me
$5 at a local retro game store,
and keep in mind that I live in Canada,
so that $5 is like, what,
$3.50 American?
As for anyone else who thinks this game might look interesting
or wants some sort of way to
well, I guess, experience the Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game in a digital form,
don't buy this.
Not even for nostalgia purposes.
It's bad!
Buyer beware!
It's not a good time.
You're better off playing either that PS4 or mobile game
that I keep hearing a lot of great stuff about.
I'll be honest, if you want the most fun possible from a trading card game video game
and it doesn't matter what card game it is,
player either one of the two Pokémon TCG games on Game Boy Color.
However, this game is a trainwreck.
But, perhaps it's so bad that it's scary.
That makes it fitting, then, that this is my Halloween special.
I have no qualms saying I gave up on this title. I mean,
it's just a video game and, y'know,
I had fun talking about Yu-Gi-Oh! and
reminiscing about it and maybe this review,
even if this game wasn't great,
maybe it's going to get me back into the franchise!
Besides, not winning at a virtual card game isn't
going to kill me or anything, right?
Like what's it going to do?
Send my soul to the PG version of Hell? Ha ha!
I'm in the Shadow Realm now, aren't I?
Dammit.
- [PEGASUS] Fufufu. Wasn't that a delightful display of card game BS, viewer boy?
Truly tantalizing! That host in particular is so...
husky, so rugged! A true bear, if you will.
So, go share this video!
If you're good,
maybe I'll even tell you what Pot of Greed does!
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