Category: GameBoy Color

Yu-Gi-Oh Dark Duel Stories

On By evanescentgamingexpIn GameBoy ColorLeave a comment
Dark Yugi stands right next to Marik.

Around the same time I got caught up in the Pokémon craze, there was another equally massive craze taking over the nation. Unlike Pokémon, the game centered around a children’s card game, thus allowing a direct translation into real life. The series was named after its main character, Yugi, and would go on to spawn multiple arcs and spinoffs. Like Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh continues to be a popular series with new generations being introduced to the game every year.

My first exposure to Yu-Gi-Oh came from Kids WB11 as well. Public channel Saturday morning cartoons had a trend of introducing me to some of my most beloved series. The first episode remains distinct in my memory. Dark Yugi defeats rich boy, Seto Kiba, by using the legendary Exodia to obliterate all three Blues Eyes White Dragon monsters on the field. This is closely followed up by Maximillion Pegasus taking the soul of Yugi’s grandfather after almost losing to Yugi. This sets the stage for Yugi’s call to adventure into Pegasus’ card game tournament.

TV Entertainment Meets Reality

Unfortunately, just like Pokémon, the show’s rules were nothing at all similar to the game. It can even be argued that the show’s depiction of the card game was especially misleading because of how vague they were with the rules. Some cards were given exaggerated effects or were overhyped (Usually the protagonist’s cards or whatever big baddie they were facing for the episode). Other cards were downplayed or barely showed at all, perhaps due to their mood killing or lame abilities. However, in the show characters would routinely be blustering in confidence, showing off their “unique” cards as if their strategy was foolproof. For example, in the first episode, Yugi takes on Kaiba but is backed into a corner when Kiba has 3 Blue-Eyes White Dragons on the field. On the field, Kiba is full of pride and gives the typical gloating mannerism exhibited by every antagonist ever. Then, he gets his grin wiped off his face when Yugi summons Exodia the Forbidden One and wins the game in one turn. While the episode looked great on TV, a careful analysis would show that Kaiba played a pretty mediocre game. All three of his Blue-Eyes White Dragons could have just as easily been destroyed by a Dark Hole spell card or another alternative spell card like Raigeki. If going for a more subdued approach, the trap card, Dragon Capture Jar or Gravity Bind would have been more than adequate. Yet spell and trap cards are often lacking on the TV series as the show prefers to focus more on the cool monster cards.

Another issue with the TV series is the ever-changing rules to the game. In the first season, both players are given 2000 life points (LP) to work with. Later on, this number is raised to 4000 LP. However, with the card games at tournaments, both players are given 8000 LP. The real card game tournaments also feature an extensive ban list due to the ridiculously OP nature of some of the cards. This list is dynamic and changes with the introduction of new cards and playstyles.

In addition, the TV series often have duels that are chock full of BS logic. A quick example that comes to mind is the duel between Mako and Yugi in the first season. The environment of the beach is used in the episode to play to Mako’s favor. With the sea environment, he can “hide” his monsters so that the opposing player cannot see them. Yugi fruitlessly tries to “defeat” Mako by summoning his monster cards in attack mode, even though he cannot attack because of the sea environment. Yugi’s second attempt tries to use the lightening of the feral imp to kill the sea monsters. But Mako counters with a Jellyfish monster that enables him to “absorb” the lightning. However, Yugi later wins by purposely destroying his own moon spell card with his Giant Soldier of Stone, thus draining the ocean. Does this sound like absolute baloney to you? It should because there are so many inaccuracies and poor plays here to make your head spin. Yugi botches up by repeatedly playing weak monsters in attack mode despite the fact that he knows that he cannot attack the Mako’s sea monsters. The feral imp lightning attack is also complete BS as the feral imp is label as a Dark monster card and attributes are not suppose to even manner in the game’s rules (except when boosting with spell or trap cards). Last but not least, the Giant Soldier of Stone should not be able to destroy a spell card as there is no such special effect mentioned on the card. Unfortunately, the whole TV series is littered with duels similar to this one. It is no wonder that in the TV series the cards often do not have their descriptions on them.

Playing a Children’s Card Game

When playing the card game in real life provided a more overwhelming experience. Specialized decks could burn through your life points without ever even needing to summon a monster. Other decks were so stacked with trap and spell cards that sometimes entire duels revolved around the second row instead of the first. My experience as a duelist was rather short-lived due to my small pool of friends. The peak of my duels occurred in elementary school, specifically in 5th and 6th grade. This period of dueling regularly during lunch was only possible thanks to Jeffery and Ivy.

Jeffery’s deck almost always won a match because his deck was specifically created with an excellent balance of flip effect cards, trap and spell cards. His monster cards were also specifically selected for their effects that worked in conjunction with his deck. Other decks such as mine tended to revolve around preset cards because we got the starter deck packs from the stores. Ivy’s deck was more simple as she did not move too far away from her starter deck. However, she did use some booster packs to give her deck a special edge. The most memorable part of her duel was her tendency to yell, “I kill you!” while stabbing out with the middle finger. She ended up using that as a common slogan because she loved the comedy skit by Achmed the Dead Terrorist. Her victories were usually followed up with a taunt of some kind.

My Only Yu-Gi-Oh Handheld Console Game

Unfortunately, the poor transition in the rules on TV also translated to the GameBoy Color’s poor display of the game. Yu-Gi-Oh Dark Duel Stories had the 8bit look of a Yu-Gi-Oh card game except that it lacked the second row for spell and trap cards. All it had was a display for monster cards and cards in your hand. It was quite disconcerting to be unable to set down spell or trap cards like in the real-life games. Because of this inability to set down trap cards, you were denied the opportunity to use trap cards during the enemy’s attack phase. In addition, spell cards primarily focused on increasing life points, increasing monster attack/defense or destroying monster cards. There was no room for the more complex spell and trap cards. This setup of a limited number of spell and trap cards left most games a battle of monster cards. I had significant difficulty early on because the cards you were given in your deck are weak and barely above 1500 attack points.

However, for all the game’s flaws, it was unique in that it closely follows the story quite well for a GameBoy Color game. When released in North America in 2002 the game was even ahead of the TV series because in North America we were still seeing the Duelist Kingdom arc. The first area of duelist comprises of duelists that are classified as “weak.” In other words, duelists such as Tristan and Joey (In the TV series, Joey is a wildcard that sometimes plays really well to be considered part of the big three, and other times plays horribly). The second area has characters introduced from the second season in Duelist City such as Espa Roba, and Paradox, in addition to old classics such as Rex and Weevil. The third area has ancient Egyptian characters such as Ishizu and Kiba (Pharoh form). The last boss character is the “Dark Nite,” a character never introduced on the TV series. After a few victories against the DarkNite, you unlock the secret boss Yami Yugi.

The game also had a weird option in that cards would be fused without polymerization just be stacking them on top of each other. This was especially cool for me early on because I would experiment as much as possible to see which cards I could stack fused together and what I would get. Sometimes I would discover cool new combinations that I never had seen before. Usually, in the TV series, you needed the polymerization card to summon a fusion monster (that changed later on with the elemental heroes introduced in Yu-Gi-Oh GX).

Note the numbers on the bottom left.
One of Yugi’s classic cards, they later revamped it in later editions to make it more relevant to the meta.

Being the child I was, the game presented a significant challenge to me because of how it was so different from what I saw in the school cafeteria. Most of the monster cards that you start with were usually weak and below 1000 attack points. The poor early card selection meant that you often had to spam duels with the lower ranking characters to keep getting a random chance of getting a good card. Sometimes you lost, sometimes you won. However, there was a trick in the game that allowed you to get some of the stronger cards right away. Real life Yu-Gi-Oh cards had a small serial number on the bottom left of the card that you could input into the game’s passcode option in the main menu to get that exact card. It was thanks to this trick that I was able to the Celtic Guardian and La jinn the mystical genie of the lamp early. Unfortunately, some of the codes for some cards failed to work. Most of the classic cards such as the Dark Magician and Blue-Eyes White Dragon did work. The rest of the better cards were achieved through hours of grinding.

The game was entertaining. However, the overall experience was frustrating. The rules were completely not according to the even the TV series as there was a distinct lack of a spell and trap card section. Descriptions about specific cards were poor leaving you mostly guessing about their abilities. Fusions were achieved by randomly stacking cards on top of one another. If your fusion failed the card that you placed on top of the original would destroy the original. Grinding involved repeated attempts to beat certain hard characters as well as repeated victories against weak characters for the random card generator. The poor gameplay made me never want to buy Yu-Gi-Oh handheld consoles games.

Pokémon Yellow Version

On By evanescentgamingexpIn GameBoy ColorLeave a comment
The original start of Pokemon for me.

I was instantly captivated by the glittering rainbow of the Nintendo Gameboy Color. A gift from my parents, the Gameboy Color and its Pokémon Yellow version would play a major role in my love for video games. I would play the Gameboy Color constantly during weekends, after prep school, after completing my homework on weekdays, on family road trips, and during summer school. The distinct shape of the rectangular Gameboy Color with its D-pad, A & B button, and start & select button was etched into my mind.

The Beginning of a Long Journey

I started the game with a Pikachu exactly like Ash in the TV episodes. After greeting and leaving Professor Oak’s lab, I moved towards the first gym. On the way, I captured a Ratata and a Pidgey. I was quite a fool back then. I never really quite worked out the stat mechanics. Cue the often sad attempts to spam the attack button after getting hit constantly by “sand attack.” In fact, as an immature kid, I believed that attack moves that did no damage were useless. As a result, I ended up deleting stat affect moves such as growl and harden (unless I had a Metapod, then that was the only move I had). This caused me a lot of grief in the first gym battle against Brock.

This man never opens his eyes. He can literally beat you with his eyes closed.

Another fatal mistake was that I mainly focused on leveling up my Pikachu, ignoring the rest of my Pokémon. The only time when I changed to my other Pokémon was when Pikachu’s PP for attack moves ran out or when Pikachu was at risk of fainting soon. With an electric type Pokémon as my main, I attempted to take Brock, a Rock-type Pokémon trainer, head on. Needless to say, my first try ended in failure. Electric-type attacks had little effect and normal type attacks were equally not effective. However, I was not deterred in the least. I went back to the grass areas and kept on leveling up Pikachu to a point where even normal attacks could do a significant amount of damage to his Geodudes and Onix. The next time around I used brute force to break through to victory.

Unfortunately, my experience with Brock never really did hit home the mechanics of Pokémon. I never tried to diversify my pool of pokémon, instead preferring to get Pokémon that looked cool or was on the TV show (airing on Kids WB11 at the time). Most of the time when I came across Pokémon that were particularly effective against me (such as ghost Pokémon), I ended up brute forcing the battle.

Ghosts and Frustration – Lavender Town

The situation after Brock was quite fuzzy in my memory. I remember that Misty from Cerulean City was relatively easy to defeat thanks to my Pikachu. Other than that I barely remember the other gym leaders. What I do remember was that Lavender Town was especially spooky. The music that played when in Lavender Town had a creepy tune quite different from the regular Pokémon soundtrack. There were also additional aesthetics that help attribute to the scary atmosphere of the Lavender Town. The initial avatars of the Pokémon were purplish-black ghosts that you just could not run away from consistently. The avatars reminded me of the murders in Detective Conan. Both faceless avatars inflicted grievous injury upon their victims. Worse, both figures appeared to be staring straight into your soul. The Lavender Town experience was further exacerbated by the inability to actually hit the ghosts without the important Silph Scope item and the Ghost’s status effect attacks. Thus, I was continually in situations where I could not attack the random Pokémon I encountered as well as being under attack by annoying status effects.

Evil staring right into your soul.

It did not help that I could not even find the Slith Scope despite looking all over Lavender Town. I spent a massive amount of time running from ghosts and spamming the A button on every single square in Lavender Town, hoping to find the item. I only found the Slith Scope later on in the game after I beat Giovanni, the leader of the Team Rocket (the bad guys). Once I had the Slith Scope, I could reliably fight the Pokémon in Lavender town because they stopped appearing as an anonymous ghost avatar.

The Final Stretch

Past the horror of Lavender Town, the only other major roadblock that I remember was the Victory Road. As a child, I found the pathway through the dungeon extremely confusing. It involved a lot of boulder pushing, button activating, and climbing up and down ladders. You had to climb up floors, then fall down floors in a series of complex positions. I am not sure if I was too young or too stupid to realize how the dungeon was planned out. A lot of the boulders I needed ended up getting stuck in a corner due to my poor planning. I also had to fend off random Pokémon from the environment as well as Pokémon trainers I encountered because I was too stupid to figure out that maybe max repel would have really come in handy. A combination of all these factors made me have to leave Victory Road to run back to the nearest Pokémon center for healing. I had to travel back and forth between the Pokémon center and victory road more than five times. At the end of all of it, I was glad to have another Pokémon Center waiting for me.

Unfortunately, my memory of the elite four battle is also quite hazy. My strongest memory was being completely annoyed by the cheap healing items that they would use when the health points of their Pokémon were in the red. The full restoration of their health points was dangerous for me because quite a few of my attack moves of my strongest Pokémon were low Power Points (PP) moves such as, “hyperbeam.” This meant that the longer a battle dragged out the more limited my attack options became. To further worsen the situation, the low PP moves also often had a high tendency to miss their target. However, after much struggle and retributive item-spamming, I finally managed to defeat Lance’s Dragonite. I remembered shouting with excitement over my first victory over the elite four. I had shouted so loudly that my mother thought I had hurt myself. That event remains permanently ingrained in my head as a great accomplishment against all odds.

Television Unrealities: Disconnect Between the Show and Game

My shortsighted uses of TMs to give my Pokémon cool or high-damage moves stemmed from my childhood naïveity of trying to emulate the TV Pokémon series. Back in the early 2000s, Pokémon was taking the world by a storm. As a child, I watched the Saturday episodes religiously on Kids WB11. My parents did not purchase cable TV (for good reason) so I was limited to common TV channels. That did not make any significant difference to me. For all I knew, Kids WB11 was the best channel on TV with all the interesting shows. Ash and his buddies, Brock and Misty, went on a long backpacking journey to “catch them all.”

The problem was that the show portrayed Pokémon battles as dynamic with opportunities to exploit the environment. However, the in-game mechanics differed in that battles tended to be static and turn-based. Thus, cool tricks such as using the move light screen to protect Pokémon from damage did not really translate over to the game well. Using light screen in-game still resulted in damage when attacked by physical moves. As a young child, I could not comprehend why moves like light screen failed to protect my Pokémon. This confusion further reinforced my misguided belief that non-damaging moves were useless. Thus, I always removed attacks like growl, sand attack, and string shot. My logic was that those moves took up space and should be replaced with moves that actually do damage to the opposing Pokémon. Thus, I usually spammed TMs and HMs on different Pokémon to remove their “useless” moves from them. I always used powerful TMs such as hyperbeam because I was so impressed by their onscreen display. However, these powerful TM moves tended to have quite low PP and as a result often left me struggling in long, extended battles.

I was also ignorant of the basic understanding of the Pokémon stats such as special attack and special defense. The only stats I had a rudimentary understanding of were health points (the bar goes down when you are hurt, and the Pokémon faints when the bar hits zero), attack, and defense. Even my understanding of attack and defense was poor because I was unsure of where they applied. Was defense only for physical attacks? What were classified as physical attacks? Unfortunately, I was never quite curious enough to focus on these mechanics and never thought to research it.

Movie Nerdiness

My love for the Pokémon series extended beyond the weekly episodes with movies. Each movie was usually set up in a manner to advertise their new legendary Pokémon. For example in the first Pokémon movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back, the story mostly revolved around the two legendary Pokémon of Mewtwo and Mew. In game, the methods of capturing both of these legendary Pokémon differed. You could find Mewtwo in an elaborate cave, filled to the brim with strong Pokémon, next to Cerulean City. Mew, on the other hand, was found through chance encounters in the wild. Of the two Mewtwo was significantly easier to catch because of his stationary placement. Mew had an annoying habit of running away before you had a chance to lower its health points enough. A similar set up occurred with Johoto region movie: Power of One that features the legendary Pokémon: Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Lugia (The first three Pokémon would later be used for team formations in Pokémon Go). The three legendary birds are included in the movie as being vital to the balance of nature and chaos starts when the balance is broken. Lugia comes to help repair the unbalance. Again with the next Pokémon Movie: Spell of the Unown the story revolves around the legendary Pokémon Entei.

Overview of Pokémon Yellow

Looking back on the game as a whole, the difficulty of Pokémon Yellow was caused mostly by my poor own decisions. I often focused on training Pikachu instead of the rest of my Pokémon. I chose high damage, low accuracy, and low PP attack moves because they looked cooler. I completely disregarded non-damage moves and replaced them using TMs and HMs. I am guilty of completing stacking as many HMs as possible on one Pokémon to save me from the hassle of switching them out. I was stubborn in gyms, routes, and dungeons despite low health, stat effects, and low PP. In short, I was hopelessly naïve when playing Pokémon for the first time. Unfortunately, I did not learn my lesson from the Kanto region and carried over my bad habits into the Hoenn region.

If I had to play Pokémon Yellow all over again today I would do three major changes: (1) I would have a well-balanced roster of Pokémon each with different types of moves. (2) I would have more status attacks such as sand attack or reflect. (3) I would split up the experience to make sure at least 4 of the 6 Pokémon in the party were at the same level. Doing all three of these actions would have mitigated a lot of the challenges I was having with the game.