Yu-Gi-Oh: Forbidden Memories is the stupidest most broken appallingly imbalanced piece of shit video game ever created. I love it to bits.

Released in Japan in 1999, and elsewhere in 2002, this game ruined several years of my childhood as I spent countless hours trying to beat it. I never did, and have no desire to try again. Skill will only bring you so far - you require hours of grinding to get top-tier cards, in-depth game exploitation knowledge, and the most absurd run of RNG imagineable.

The gameplay attempts to track the Yu-Gi-Oh card game, with one slight flaw: development of Forbidden Memories began before the card game was released. So the devs had some knowledge of the cards that would come out, basic mechanics in terms of monsters/spells/traps, life points, etc. But everything else, Forbidden Memories just kind of... made up.

  • You can only play one card onto the field each turn, and it must be before you interact with the field
  • It introduces a monster Star Sign system to create weaknesses/strengths versus other Star Signs, which simply does not exist outside of this game
  • Monster effects do not exist
  • Most of the game takes place in ancient Egypt rather than with the actual Yu-Gi-Oh cast. I find this quite charming but kid me was not impressed
  • Trap cards will automatically activate at the earliest legal moment, whether you or the opponent wants it or not
  • Each monster card - and there are hundreds of them - have individually crafted 3d models, specifically for battle animations that most players will never see because you have to press a different button to see the 3d battle format, and the game never tells you this
  • Ritual cards do exist, however they're disgustingly bad to the point of it being endearing. You have to sacrifice 2-3 specific monsters to obtain the ritual monster, except THE GAME NEVER TELLS YOU WHICH MONSTERS TO SACRIFICE. AND THE MONSTERS HAVE TO BE ON THE FIELD IN ORDER TO BE SACRIFICED, IN A GAME WHERE YOU CAN ONLY PLAY ONE CARD PER TURN WHAT THE FUCK
  • The fusion system hahaha holy shit


Beating an opponent gives you a reward card, which operates off an absurdly opaque system where it judges how aggressive/tactical your gameplay was, and how quickly you ended the battle, then rates you as either "Power" or "Technical" and gives you a grade. The higher the grade, the better the card in that "Power" or "Technical" category. Good luck grinding S-rank Technicals.

Your reward for this, once you clear some huge power spikes, is a final boss gauntlet run of 6 opponents in a row. Each of these opponents has twenty cards in their card, rather than your five. They can see your hand at all times, as well as your face-down cards. Some of them (read: Seto) have cards that are so absurdly powerful that if they play multiple of them, there is absolutely nothing whatsoever you can do. You can board wipe sure, but that leaves you open to another 4500 ATK direct hit the next round. In a game with 8000 life points. And he has three of the stupid bastards.

There is absolutely no strategy that will save you if the game decides to screw you on RNG. Bad hand - dead. Opponent plays multiple Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragons DIRECTLY FROM THE HAND - dead. Game freezes at a very specific point because of a scratch in the disc - very dead. Last one might have been a me thing.

Did you think I wasn't going to elaborate on the fusion system? Well this is my blog and I do whatever I want, so enjoy:
  • Cards are fused together in the hand without Polymerization
  • The list of allowed fusions is manually coded in, with no tags in the code to specify which fusion material cards are beasts/machines/dark/male/female/whatever. Here is a quick summary of the fusions. It is insane.
  • There are plenty of instances where fusing two monster will make one that is weaker in every single regard
  • To copy a specific section I saw via a friend, here is some of the bizarre fusion rules coded in:
    [Female]
    These are monsters that fuse with Stone Ogre Grotto to become Mystical Sand.
    Notes:
    - Performance of Sword, Spirit of the Harp and Spirit of the Winds are not female, even though they can be equipped with Cyber Shield and certainly look female.
    - Mystical Sand, Empress Judge and Cosmo Queen can be considered female, as they can be equipped with Cyber Shield and look female, but they don't participate in any fusions as females because their attack level is too high.
    - every female and every monster that can be equipped with Cyber Shield can be equipped with Electro-whip, but there are dozens of monsters that can be equipped with Electro-whip that aren't female and can't be equipped with Cyber Shield
    - all females can be equipped with Malevolent Nuzzler
  • Some other funny segments that I found:
    Note: every dragon can be equipped with Dragon Treasure, but there are 36 monsters that can be equipped with Dragon Treasure that are not dragons.
    [Bugrothian]
    These are monsters with strictly less than 1850 attack points that have primary type Aqua or first guardian star Neptune and that are not Fish with strictly less than 1600 attack points nor Sea Serpents.
  • You can fuse spell and trap cards together what the fuck

    • WHY IS THIS ALLOWED

    Fuck this stupid baka piece of shit. Except I love it because the soundtrack slaps.



    Obviously Konami had to make a sequel. And they continued to be incredibly normal about it :3

    👍