Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories FAQ (November 2025)

Warning: This run contains copious amounts of gamer tilt. Viewer discretion is advised. To prepare yourself as a viewer, I recommend watching your favorite Werster rage compilations on YouTube.
  
Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories as quickly as possible. DDS is a Game Boy Color game with similar cards, rules and characters to Forbidden Memories.

Q: What are the rules?
A: Monsters with 5+ stars require sacrifices like in the TCG. So the best monsters have 4 stars and 1800-2200 ATK. There are a few effect monsters as well. You can acquire all the best cards for free using the game's password feature (no star chip cost). However, each card has a cost, and you have a "deck capacity" that cannot exceed the sum of your 40 cards' costs. A monster card's cost equals its ATK + DEF divided by 100 (e.g. 23 for Jirai Gumo), minus 10 for number of sacrifices required. Magic cards generally have a very high cost, and traps a low cost.

In duels, there is an alignment system like Forbidden Memories, but advantageous alignments automatically win any battle interaction rather than just receiving a 500-point boost. So Kuriboh always beats Blue-Eyes White Dragon, and Flame Viper beats Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth.

The alignment charts are as follows:

Shadow > Light > Fiend > Dreams > Shadow
Pyro > Forest > Wind > Earth > Thunder > Aqua > Pyro

Q: How do you beat the game?
A: By beating all the duelists in Tiers 1-3 and the final boss 5 times each.

TIER 1: Tristan, Joey, Yugi, Mako, Mai
TIER 2: Espa Roba, Rex, Seeker, Kaiba, Pandora, Weevil
TIER 3: Heishin, Simon, Ishizu, P. Seto
FINAL BOSS: DarkNite
 
Q: What are you playing on?
A: Gambatte, an accurate emulator for GameBoy Color games.

Q: What is the world record?
A: 3:02:43 by me. Speedrun.com listed three times above mine that are played on the faster Japanese version. Since Yu-Gi-Oh! is a text-based game, the English and Japanese versions should be considered separate categories like they are for Pokemon speedruns. Also, two of these times are played on Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, which was released in 2025 and appears to have a turbo feature that speeds up duels. Full leaderboard: https://www.speedrun.com/yugioh_dark_duel_stories
 
Q: What is your goal time?
A: To beat the WR with my new route.

Q: What is the new route?
A: Use the game's card construction feature to acquire 7-9 cards with very high ATK (1800-2000), good alignments, and moderate cost, then use them to improve speed and consistency in the mid and late game. Pyro is the key alignment for this route because it's the best alignment for the hardest duelist (DarkNite) and there are no good Pyro cards in the regular game.

Q: How does card construction work?
A: After each duel, you win two random "card parts." There are four types of card parts: upper body 1, lower body 1, upper body 2, and lower body 2. You can create a monster card by combining an upper body 1 + lower body 1, or an upper body 2 + lower body 2. There are 9800 possible combinations. About 400 of them are better than anything you can get from any normal monster in the game except Jirai Gumo. Another 600 of them are just very good. There are so many good cards because the costs are effectively random -- a monster with 2000 ATK/2000 DEF is just as likely to have a low cost (20) as a high cost (40).

The tricky part -- and the reason these monsters weren't used in previous runs -- is that the game does not tell you what cards you have, only card parts. And there is no way to sort the card parts. So you have to manually scroll through 280 parts and then quickly figure out what combinations they make, which ones you want for your run, and which order to add them to minimize inputs. Then you have to find and add them in the construction menu, which is huge (two 70x70 grids) and laggy (0.5 seconds for a single input to advance the grid).

My solution for this is to click checkboxes in a spreadsheet that represent one quantity of each card part. The spreadsheet automatically calculates which combinations I have and sorts them by quality. Then I use a Google Apps script to calculate the fastest order to acquire the 7 cards I want in the construction menu. I always start with 7 and then come back for 1-2 more Pyros later if I need them.

Q: How much time does this route save?
A: Probably 3-5 minutes on average, a bit lower for lucky runs.
 
Q: Who are the hardest duelists?
A: Everyone in Tier 3 and DarkNite can be a huge pain. P. Seto and DarkNite are particularly bad because they have 3 Change of Heart and can beat you regardless of how good your hand is. Everyone in Tiers 1-2 is extremely easy.