"Hey Mr. Own, how many licks does it take to get a Blue-Eyes White Dragon?"

With the introduction of Yu-gi-oh to the West, came the desire for people to play the card game as seen on the show. Such Yu-gi-oh: Forbidden Memories was born, or should I say translated and brought over to America too, seeing it’s copyrighted in 1996. First and foremost, if you are wondering if this game is for you, you must ask yourself two questions. First, do I like Yu-gi-oh, and if you are here, then that’s the only way you probably found this. Second, do I like trading card games like Pokemon and Magic: The Gathering and of course the Yu-gi-oh trading card game. If not, then turn back, else, then get ready to emulate everyone’s favorite 4-ft. duelist, Yugi!

Story: 5/10
The storyline takes the form of a ''Choose Your Own Adventure'' type thing. Dialogue occurs, then you have the choice of where you want to take the game. Making the right choices is key because if you don’t, then you might not fight against a new opponent or skip an important section. As for the actual story, the game first takes place in Ancient Egypt, where you, the prince, can duel villagers and friends. Then there is a hostile takeover by high mage, Heishin. From there stuff happens and blah blah blah. To be all-honest, this was probably not the drawing point to the game. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before in any movie or the TV series.

Gameplay: 8/10
This is where the game matters! You the duelist start out with 40 really crappy cards. Then you take those cards and you battle other duelists to get more cards. Now how do you do that? Well, there are two ways, Campaign mode and Free Duel. Campaign mode is where you play the rpg aspect of the game. You go and live the life of the prince and Yugi. Now if you lose in this mode, game over. Next there is Free Duel, where you can face all the people you played in Campaign mode and not have to worry about dying. You are graded two ways in dueling as to what cards and star chips, used for buying monster cards in Password mode (more on that in a second). One aspect is the actual grade, ranking from D, the lowest earning you 1 star chip, to S, the highest earning you 5 star chips. The other aspect is a POW rating, meaning that you unleashed your best cards and whooped the opponent down, or a TEC rating, meaning you held your ground and used strategy. The game plays a lot like the Yu-gi-oh trading card game with some adjustments. The first is, fusion, the act of combining two or more cards together, does not require a Polmeration (sorry, but the spelling is off on this one) card, all you have to do in the game is put one card on top of the other. Also, the psx game has cosmic alignments to take note of. It’s two wheels of superior and inferior affinities. This part is all fun; it’s why you would want to play. But I must say, as a newcomer to this type of card game, it is not easy, I would even say this game is a great way to monitor how patient you are, because you will lose, a lot. The opponent knows all the fusions while you, the beginner, just cry. It takes a while and a lot of mistakes before you get what makes a good fusion. As mentioned before, there is also a Password mode. If you happen to own any of the trading cards, or are using a gamefaq, then you can use the code printed on the card to use in your own deck. There is also a Trading mode, and I think that is pretty self-explanatory. And finally, there is the 2-player mode. The gameplay score dropped a bit because of this option. Because you play on one TV, and you don’t want the opponent to know what cards you have, you have to write down on a piece of paper 1 through 40 and list your monsters. So to play this, you have to translate what monster is on what number, a little tedious for my tastes.

Music: 2/10
Actually, it doesn’t have to be totally terrible as long as you find a CD you like and put it in the stereo while playing the game. This is one track while you duel, and you’re always dueling so do the math. The music does get an extra point because at least the track isn’t bad.

Graphics: ?/10
OK, this one is really hard to judge. The game was made in 1996 originally, but then it was released in America in 2002 when we the ps2 and x-box and others. So it’s kind of hard to gauge what it should be. To overcome this, I shall make 2 ratings. In 1996, I would give this about an 8. For a psx game in 2002, I would give this about a 6. The game has 3D polygonal representations of all the monsters as well as a 2D aspect. The game can look like you are playing the trading card game, with no animations, or with the touch of the square button, you can see the attack in 3D. Most people, I believe, will not use the 3D function often. The animation takes a bit to get going. The monster is summoned, so you have the summoning animation, which is the same for all monsters. Then your monster pops out and you look at it for a second, then the camera goes to the opponent and you look at it for a second. After that, you have the attack and then the camera pans back to the winner. Lather, rinse, and repeat. It becomes worth it to see you awesome looking monsters battle once, then that’s about it. You can also look at the 3D version of your card in the Build Deck menu.

Replayabiliy: 9/10
You might beat the game, sure, that’s to be expected. But there are 722 cards you have to get! I don’t think that I need to tell you that it could take a while to get all of those. Also, there are so many strategies to choose from, it can be a while before you find your ultimate deck.

Rent or Buy
Well, if you’re not sure and you don’t have the Yu-gi-oh bug or if you’re broke, rent it of course! The only problem with that is not all rental chains have this game. For the majority why passed my caveats from the introduction, buy this game. This game can last more than a week, easily, so shell it out and have fun.

Overall, I would give this game a 7 out of 10. Sure it may lack in some areas, but it is all good where it counts.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/02, Updated 04/28/02