Tag: Gameboy

I tribute summon this Retro Review: Yu-Gi-Oh Stairway to the Destined Duel

I like older games! So I write a lot about older games! The game I am replaying today is one of those games, you just sink so many hours into.  I truly adored this game when I was a little Pinkie, nothing made me happier than just wailing endlessly on Mokuba with my Slate Warrior and Harpie’s Brother! Which now is named Sky Scout! Yu-gi-oh changed..so has my perception of this game? Let’s find out!

Back to Battle City

Stairway to the destined duel is a Gameboy Advanced only game that came it mid April 2003 around the world. In this game you play a nameless protagonist without any sprite of their own.. as you see through their eyes in a visual novel esque way. You  travel across Battle City to defeat duellists and compete in tournaments hidden all over the map. Each day of the week you can travel a bit, and interact with one location. Each duellist you have beaten gives you a choice of a card pack to improve your deck with.These opponents usually are the series staples such as Yugi, Joey and Kaiba. Of course there is also a number  the famous opponents such as Rex Raptor, Weevil Underwood and Mako Tsunami. In total the roster contains 23 opponents you can face and everyone of them uses their themed decks.. which gradually improve like yours as time goes on. Your goal is to find and duel all five Ghouls before having a showdown with Marik for the faith of the world.. but there is so much more to do.

Unlike the story driven GBA games  “The Sacred Cards”  and “Reshef of Destruction” there isn’t much plot to follow. By winning duels and by being  at certain spots on the map in particular days you unlock stuff. New duelists become available if you win or lose against opponents or get specific cards, Rare Hunters, show up at certain days in certain areas. It is all very random and casual. You pick this game up , not because you want to complete it or rush to the ending you pick it up because you want to play a few duels. It should be noted that this is in the classic Yu-Gi-Oh erra. When I say classic I do mean classic. This game doesn’t go much further than the Labyrinth of Nightmare Booster packs which was only the fifth ever series of booster packs ever to be released. It was really the age of the anime and as such I think it works better if you see this as an anime game than a yu-gi-oh tcg game. At least nowadays there are plenty of “more expansive” games to collect cards in. While the options feel quite limited today I must say some elements really pleased me. More so than some later instalments of the series. 

It’s time to D-D-D-Duel

What makes this game stand out is how fast it actually plays. With only 1000 trading cards and effect monsters , and your extra deck being limited to fusions thi game has to make very little checks! It shows.. these duels are paced so nicely! Coming of Reverse of Arcadia, on of the alleged best Yu-Gi-Oh games I must say that dueling in this classic game feels so much snappier. The quick play spells or constant monster effects are sparing so we do not get that “AI”  lag later games have to reveal that they have something activatable on their field or in their hand. Later games have this prompt you press to skip activation points for a certain card. For example the spell card Rush Recklessly can be activated anywhere in a battle. Mystical Space Typhoon is a quick play spell and Solemn Judgment can negate any cardplay. When you know a bit about the card game you can tell when a trap card is not going to be something scary like “Mirror Force”  if your opponent stalls.  While the player can skip triggers.. the AI can not and you see it think to activate a card.  It can result in matches feeling very stally!  So pacing wise..with maybe an exception for Legacy of the Duelist, this is the game to play.

The story based games often also have save points while in this game you can just pick up your GBA,  play two matches while you wait for your pizza to come out the oven and put it away. This is what I loved so much about the game and this is why to this day I love it so much still. There is a simplicity to it that Duel Links used to emulate, but in a much more greedy money hungry way. If you want a good and nice old classic deck..You just have to pick it up and play! Within a minute after booting  the game up you are already in the first turn of your duel and can play some nostalgic matches and little by little improve your deck! All duellist differ enough from each other to also play for a bit longer if you say prefer but the monotone basic graphics might make that a bit of an underwhelming experience in the long run. Dealers choice though! With just 1000 cards to collect this is also THE Yu-gi-oh game to start with when your new to the game. Yes you mis Xyz summons, yes they haven’t heard of synchro’s and hell no there aren’t any pendulum or link summons.. so there is still more to learn.. but this game off all the Yu-gi-oh games I think is best equipped to teach you the core mechanics in a very easy way. I had no rulebook but I learned to play Yu-Gi-Oh just from this game alone bu looking at all the visual clues and text you can get far. 

Obviously knowing how to play will let you get further. For example the character Mokuba is unlocked by losing five duels. Tiny Pinkie unlocked him right away , as she stumbled to learn the rules she took quite a few losses. Nowadays Pinkie however has much more insight in how to play cleverly. Sending Dark Magician to the graveyard seemed bad when I was young.. but now with Premature Burial in my deck and Monster Reborn, I rather have it in the grave than in my hand. Now I know with Change of Heart I can steal a monster.. but I should not just swing in with it because after one turn I lose control! I better use that stolen monster to tribute summon. I am only one Hunter or maybe two away from facing the “final boss”  and I have yet to unlock Mokuba in my current run. Which does bring me to the downsides of the game.

Trap Hole

This game was made in a time that people didn’t completely understand the whole mechanics behind Yu-Gi-oh yet! It was fairly new and there wasn’t t THAT much of a Meta. You played a deck because you thought it was cool and you made it work. Now people realise to keep their deck very small and utilize your graveyard. It isn’t bad to have monsters be in your graveyard. Combos like stealing a Maha Vailo (who has an effect to gain 500 attack when he is equipped with something)  with Snatch and Steal.. weren’t familiar yet.. but they are now!  As a result I find this run to be somewhat too easy. I only lost to Kaiba, Joey and Ishizu so far and have almost five victories on everyone so far. And that was upon my first writing this post Since my margins have increased a lot further. The Duelists do get stronger as time passes.. but I can’t help but feel they are meant to grow alongside you.. if you are already grown they do seem a bit amateurish. To be fair Joey, Yugi, Ishizu, Kaiba Odion, Pegasus  Bandit Keith and Meric.. heck even Tea for some reason can give a run for your money but if you understand how their deck works , which isn’t that hard..it is pretty easy to build in counters.

Tiny Pinkie for example used to love to play “The Bistro Butcher” which is a 1800 attack four star beater card, which meant you can summon it directly and in 2003 there weren’t a lot of higher beaters out there. It had an effect as well which was super cool! Butchers forces your opponent to draw two cards, which could lead to decking out! Deck destruction in the anime was always depicted as something really brutal and all, but giving them +2  is actually great for them. It’s like paying 1800 life points for Pot of Greed…which is still legal in this game as well., But while it dealt massive damage it also boosted my opponents hand. Now that I know to avoid it and play seven coloured fish instead I take almost to little of a beating. It doesn’t mean I flawlessly win all the time (though my deck is approaching that point)  but yeah.. I know how to play Yu-gi-oh and getting a pack with a chance of good cards after every match is quite a lot like the easy mode. Later games like Reverse of Arcadia. give you money from which you can buy packs! I have a lot of trouble beating that game! Mostly because of the plethora of useless cards to pull with a more finite resource!

I am not sure if I want to call the card reward a negative though.. it does mean I can really see my deck get better after a particularly lucky duel and that made me a lot happier than the lucky draws in later games ever did. It makes the game easier.. but now each duel feels so much more rewarding..So I will keep this as a pick your poison. If you want a challenge you are better of elsewhere! If you want to have fun with deck building and feel like a bad-ass for whooping Kaiba’s butt! This is your game! It is really rewarding for playing and I do really love that about this game! It lacks a bit of love in the translations though! There are a few weird dialogue lines, there are typo’s and Tea gives her sub Japanese name as they forgot to change it. I kinda chuckle at the these.. old retro games did this all the time and I am happy to see it on occasion! But if you want a sleek experience..Legacy of the Duelist once more is the better option. I find these flaws.. to give it some soul!

What IS a negative though is the huge amount of RNG. For example there is a contest called the target competition in which you are given two duelist you need to face and defeat.  All duelist randomly walk across the map like you and I am not  fully sure if everyone is there every day, but whether or not you find that specific guy  or not really depends on where you decide to stroll too. The same goes for the elimination tournament.. it will be held on Fridays on a “secret” location If you aren’t on a space adjacent to a tournament on Thursday.. you can not compete. Not that winning tournaments does much anyway you just get a more “weighted” back with some chance to find rare cards. Yet again this reward is RNG. I was lucky to get a Jinzo very early on which really made dueling easier and I really want to use it against Odion just for a laugh! Yet the rare hunters that show up..start on random days and the one you do encounter is… you guessed it RANDOM! This is forgivable since the game is basically made to just pick up and play but if you want to beat Meric and get it over with.. you really should know.. in this game you are playing with more RNG than anime version Joey Wheeler.

Like i said earlier the textures can be a bit boring as well. The overworld map is  fine but its just a map with some icons on it and your duel background is just a pyramid wall. Monster art is only visual on a basic attack animation and cards are just represent as rectangles in their colour with a black square. This can make it easy to not notice a monster has been tributed and you attack into a to powerful monster or you  swap your monsters and thought Battle Ox was left and Giant Rat was on the right.. while in truth it was the opposite and you see your Rat kamikaze against Alligator Sword by accident. Again though I am not really sure if I mind I like having  to check the field and be on my guard.. it keeps my head in the duel. In Legacy of the duelist where you can see every monster crystal clear it is easy to check your messages in between an opponent thinking if it should activate Rush Recklessly on your draw phase but here.. if I look away and miss Mako tributing his 700 attack point fish for a 2300 attack ocean monster and attack into it.. it could lose me a duel. The lack of animations can get kinda boring but it also keeps the pace of the game up. This game is my favourite paced yu-gi-oh of the all.. so I am not sure if I would trade that away. As long as I keep playing this game in short bursts this is fine!

King of Games

All in all I do not think Stairway to the destined duel has aged all that poorly!  It is not a game you’ll want to play to play some modern yu-gi-oh.. but I am going to be honest here.. modern day Yu-Gi-oh is not fun to play anymore anyway. One Turn Kill Decks,  Turns that last half an hour due to all sorts of activations and combos, flooding the field in a single turn.. it has turned Yu-Gi-Oh away from a battle field where people deal blows each turn.. to people tossing stuff on the board and them making it go boom in a single turn maybe two. This to me is the Yu-Gi-Oh i like to play.. a style that would linger up until the early synchro days.
This is nothing to the actual trading card game.. but this plays pretty darn close to how the anime feels. If you want to feel like an anime character without having t o deal with stupid changing banlists, (I do not know why some games did that)  and take on the King of Games of old.. if you want to learn how Yugioh works.. this is still my highest recommendation! Jus run Seven Coloured fish over The Bistro Butcher!

It is intuitive, you keep oversight , characters look and act like themselves and there are a few hilarious glitches and exploits to take advantage of! Tea introducing herself with her japanese name but after that going back to Tea.. using cards to break the return to owner effect of Change of heart .. and other fun stuff is there for you to try.This is one of those games that might be to easy but you can just play with a more gimmicky deck! There is a lot of fun to be had with this old cartridge and I will be playing it on and off for a while I think!
I will go play a few matches and play my own Blue Eyes White Dragon! Let’s go WHITE LIGTHNING ATTACK!

Do note that this review is from a very specific standpoint! There are plenty of reasons why this game could score much much lower. For what this is however, being a callback to the purest and classic Yu-gi-oh , with a retro feel to match I do very much stand by my view! What is your favourite Yu-Gi-Oh game?! Have you even played any?! I am considering buying Legacy of the Duelist for Switc and reviewing that for you was well. Want to see that happen than please consider supporting my Kofi page!


Top 5: Weird Nintendo Peripherals

Hello again island guests, as you might now I can be a bit of a weirdo. I am into weird things like making Luffy and Naruto play Mario Party against each other instead of them having fight a Death Battle.  I prefer old games over new ones (except for maybe animal crossing) and I am very charmed by clunkiness. So what do we get if we combine those all together? Older video game stuff that is totally weird and doesn’t work all that well? Exactly! Luckily there is Nintendo who offer me the weirdest gaming peripherals out there.

Weird Peripheral Number 5: The Inflatable Kart
(WII)

It’s a strange world where someone can make a inflatable Kart that functions as an odd on for a controller and having it barely make the top of weirdest Nintendo gadgets. In fact technically it really is not, but I chosen to exclude items I actually deem as alternate controllers, otherwise the kart wouldn’t even scratch the top 10.  Anyway … since most of you are at least old enough to have played the Switch, I think most of you know that Mario Kart Wii came with a plastic steering wheel. This is about the same thing… but with an inflatable Kart Attached to the steering wheel. 

Now Pinkie lives in a 23 square meter apartment so when it comes to add-ons for or your gaming experience she is a little bit selective , yet even in a game-room of a wealthy person I can’t imagine this working out.  It’s inflatable so prone to get leaky unless you deflate it each time after use! It’s a big kart as well so that is a lot of air you need to put in to inflate it so you are going to need something to provide enough air as well. After that you get a kid sized kart , and I can tell you that sitting in a kart like that is majorly uncomfy. I haven’t sat in this one but in a similar sized one and it killed my long dutch legs!  So without a pump this can causes intense leg cramps, respiratory issues, seasickness (yes I can get seasick from laying down on softly inflate air mattress) and you kind of look stupid sitting in a plastic kart. The Wii wheel  was bad enough.. but all this thing does is make you look sad. 

Weird Peripheral Number 4: R.O.B.
(NES)

SONY DSC

Gyromite and Stack-Up where two NES CO-Op games. Mostly the first one had some mechanics that could make for a fun puzzle game, with one player controlling gateways and the other the character. By working together you guide this little professor guy across the stages. It’s not a bad game… however it wasn’t intended to be played with a friend. Or at least not with a living one. This game was meant to be played next to R.O.B. your robot friend who could read the screen of Gyromite and Stack up and who would help you play the games.  So yes .. this is an actual robot that plays video games with you.. an actual Robot friend made for NES… that’s kinda weird right?! I mean it’s super cool but still weird. “Honey what should we hook up to our NES today?’ How about our robot friend?!

Nowadays R.O.B. I mostly know to be a fighter in smash but back in the NES era he was a true friend! Playing games with you.. however R.O.B.’s gaming skills leave a bit to be desired. First of all setting up R.O.B.  already takes about as long as beating your average NES game (once you know how to do it) so you spend 20 to 30 minutes setting up all the parts, positioning him to a screen, using the C batteries (I think it was four of them)  setting up the gyroids or the stackable blocks and then you also have to activate him. Now ROB is a 90’s robot so he is incredibly slow. Imagine Super Mario Bros world 1-1 with a question mark block this time being a gate ROB needs to open for you .

Now.. Rob doesn’t press buttons he picks up a gyro from a docking station and puts it on a scale this scale will then push A or B on Robs controller, this determines which gate is opened, the Red ones or the blue ones. .. now to switch Rob doesn’t pick up the gyroid from the controller and puts it on the other spot … no.. Rob picks it up , puts in back in the docking station, then makes another capture of the screen sees what is required of him and he moves the gyro from the docking station to the new position. So there is roughly a minute .. if everything goes well between each Mario Question block.. this is the pace that Rob holds.  And it doesn’t always go well.

ROB has butterfingers he constantly drops the gyro.. and if he does you need to make sure the gyro spins again. In Stack up where he builds coloured towers to mimic the screen he is even worse. Yet who cares you have a robot friend to play with. Now I bet GeekGirlJoy could build us another robot that does do its job better than ROB but until then either you have a gaming friend or a fairly low Tier Smash fighter.. either way if you are truly into a fluid gaming experience ROB probably should be avoided. Still a robot gaming friend.. is a pretty zaney idea for a peripheral.

Weird Peripheral Number 3: LifeCycle Exertainment (SNES) 

Nintendo always wanted that we stayed fit. The NES had a mat for running, the gamecube has a very popular DDR mat, the Wii had that Yoga balance board thing to work out with and on the Switch we now have a ring! However… there is one device that easily trumps these devices and makes them seem like child’s play. There is an exercise bike add on, for the SNES or Super Nintendo. That’s right a full fledged fully functional exercise bike. It’s extremely rare to find one these days.. as not a lot of them were sold… but back when it was made the company had full trust in this. They even released two models. One for gyms which had build in monitors and the SNES integrated into the cabinet or a home user model in which you connect the bike to an add on for your SNES that you connect via a phone cable.

It was very weird back then.. but what was actually weirder is that it actually works. The bike supports two games, of which only 1 is a bike game.. the other is a Speed Racer port.. from the same system but adapted to work with the controller. While the Bike itself actually works quite well and even can detect angles in the mode-7 graphics and increase or decrease pedal resistance based on it… the controller part really fumbles. The D-pad is horrible and since the bike’s steering wheel is fixed you need to press left and right to steer in these games…which basically is barely functional. So by playing these things on easier difficulty settings you can skip steering completely and just focus on having enough power to pedal trough. However this means earning less unlock points..and thus forcing you to exercise more.. so now it’s tiring and it’s not fun?!  Sounds like actual fitness to me, and if so this thing is completely overpriced.

Weird Peripheral Number 2: Sewing Machine 
(Gameboy) 

So this one is where things really start to get weird,  this is a sewing machine you can use by hooking it up to your gameboy, and unfortunately this isn’t even the weirdest gameboy invention ever. It’s just the weirdest you can actually play.  There is a cartridge that helps you set up sewing patterns I think which actually sounds incredibly helpful for people like me! I’d love to make cosplays but I barely even know what a sewing pattern even is. I am just not sure how helpful this tool actually is.  Aside from a few cosplayers I haven’t met a lot of people who own a sewing machine and a gameboy. The two demographics don’t overlap that much, so unless this was created for a niche of a niche specifically this one seems like a really weird idea to try out.

The Singer Izek is purchasable, which put it above it’s competition the Pedistate. The pedistate was a medical tool that never got released. It was a tool for hospitals that doctors and nurses could hook up to a gameboy, put onto a kid and …..sedate children… as they play their favorite handheld video games.  Feeling it was less traumatic for kids to be sedated this way they even build it in colours to match the original purple of the game boy colour. Honestly I would have loved to knock myself out with my gameboy! Sleeping doesn’t come easy to me so that tool would have been very useful, though I doubt I would be allowed to use it unsupervised.  Maybe the idea of sewing stuff together with my gameboy is enough to put me a sleep as well. 

Weird Peripheral Number 1: Babies  (Nintendo Wii) 

The fact that I had to write this title in plural instead of singular form amazes me. There are to my knowledge..at east two baby add ons for Nintendo wii. Both come with their own game and their own baby. Baby and me takes a realistic approach and offers you a classic baby doll. To start playing you insert the wiimote…into to baby …………and start playing the game. The game pursues this realistic like style. Unfortunately with the graphic capabilities of the Wii that doesn’t always pan out.  Aside from the fact that the baby wears pink the actual baby toy you get is kinda scary looking This baby has some serious as to it. She dons a weird headband that no other baby would.  You use the nun-chuck.. which … comes out the baby to do stuff powder it’s bum and change it’s diaper all while it’s soulless eyes stare up and scream in agony for allowing it to continue it’s miserable existence. The on screen baby is even scarier. I’d honestly rather snog with Cthulhu than bear that kid’s gaze. The baby sells pretty cheaply on eBay with models going for under 10 euro so at least it’s not hard to get.

I get this was made for little girls…but you technically can do this with regular dolls as well.  These are just baby dolls  but instead of taking care of the one in your hands you take care of the one on screen…that just doesn’t really make sense to me.. nor does seeing a baby as a gaming peripheral shout good parenting to me. The second baby possibly is even weirder. It was made for a game in the cooking Mama series named Babysitting mama  in this game you control a daycare center and insert your wiimote into a plush anime like baby. By doing well in the minigames Mama can collect more babies to play with. Taking care of these babies earns coins and unlockables. Minigames include making the baby move on a seesaw or burping it. These babies all are insanely expressive  and can get super grouchy or super happy which is scary! There even is a minigame where you have to change it’s diaper which involves removing the diaper from the plush baby a putting it on again to change it of virtual baby. This version is a lot more fun to play though and requires the use of the nun chuck a lot less often. Which makes this the de facto game to go to if you want to you an actual baby as a gaming tool, all you need is to remove it’s  diaper.. take a wiimote … and you can imagine the rest…. it will even fix some sensitivity problems this game has for the force of an adult playing this.