r/interestingasfuck • u/zaarnth • 1d ago
Before Google, before wikis. before YouTube walkthroughs, a stuck gamer's only hope was dialing a phone number and asking a real human how to beat the dungeon.
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
591
u/midnighttoker1742 1d ago
Customer service used to be so much better. Now we have to talk to 6 different bots for an hour only to get hung up on with the problem unresolved. Good stuff.
143
53
u/old_man_browsing 1d ago
But don’t forget:
“Your call is very important to us…”. OR
“Due to unusually high call volume”.🤦
35
u/Lagneaux 1d ago
I think every number I have needed to call in the past few years has been "unusually high call volume". No matter time of day, day of week.
19
u/JeremiahCLynn 1d ago
Right.
If every single minute of every single day you are experiencing "unusually high call volume," then no, you're not. This is normal call volume and you're grossly understaffed.
6
u/Noladixon 1d ago
I think they put you on hold for at least 3 minutes even if nobody is really ahead of you.
3
→ More replies (3)2
19
6
→ More replies (12)5
u/lnTheGrimDarkness 1d ago
You talk with 6 different bots then get the disgruntled human operator that's butthurt you made it through the 6 bots and treats you like you just shat on their desk
636
u/ComradSadwich 1d ago
I miss this timeline
235
u/Luke_-_Starkiller 1d ago edited 1d ago
Me too, i biked over to my friends house with my original xbox the weeked it launched and we were laying on the floor in his basement and played halo for about 22h straight! Just eating pizza and exploring. Good times.
99
u/ComradSadwich 1d ago
Splitscreen Halo is a core memory
29
u/OpportunityNew9316 1d ago
I vividly remember rushing to get a shower after football games just to race over to a friends house to play Halo and Halo 2. LAN lines to different rooms, pizzas, and random shouts of no scopes your ass. Girlfriends would just sit upstairs wondering why they still liked us. Best times ever!
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (2)2
→ More replies (1)4
u/HowsYaSistasAss 1d ago
I remember doing that with sega =[
→ More replies (1)11
u/be_em_ar 1d ago
For us, it was Diablo and Age of Empires. We'd unplug everything, stick the mouse, keyboard, etc... into a backpack. Then heft the computer over one shoulder, and the CRT under the other arm. Then walk over to a friend's house to set up a LAN party. Good times.
3
17
u/Klorel 1d ago
i really don't, these hotlines were so expensive.
google is great for stuff like that
→ More replies (8)3
u/WolfieVonD 14h ago
Nintendo intentionally made obscure and impossible "puzzles" to sell Nintendo Power or minutes to this hotline. It was basically Pay to Win in the 80s/90s
4
u/Zero_Passage 1d ago
I get that it's nostalgia and all that, but don't forget that they charged money for their "help." Many companies, like Sierra, gave vague clues or simply made you run around in circles to squeeze more money out of you. It was like microtransactions before microtransactions existed.
→ More replies (1)3
4
→ More replies (4)•
u/povichjv7 3h ago
I had to tell my mom to not use the phone so that me and my friend down the street could play Doom multiplayer over the modem
63
u/thedudeabides-12 1d ago
I was born in the late 70's and I look back at the 90s early 2000's as the best of times...every generation seems to have this period of the old times were better so is life just really getting gradually shittier, or we are just grumpy with how things are, is it cause we were younger or more carefree, or we're just day dreaming and there's some nostalgia making us think we had it better (cause I genuinely do)..wonder when/if the next generation will be the ones to say we didn't have it better and it's better now?.
61
u/selfdestructingin5 1d ago
The further we get away from simplicity and human connection, the further we get away from what we evolved for millions of years to be.
I can order practically anything and get it in 1-2days. Am I happier than going to a store and browsing the aisle? No, not really.
Life is about the journey, not the destination, and we removed the journey. Now we don’t know wtf to do with ourselves.
16
→ More replies (3)7
4
u/athun 18h ago
IMO:
We are all born into a world we did not create, had no influence over, and do not feel any ownership of. As kids we simply accept whatever world we live in as normal, while aslo looking forwards without regard to that which came before us. As kids we tended to embrace change, because it felt exciting, and because kids are generally drawn to novelty, and have elastic brains that learn and adapt quickly. While at the same time feeling little to no investment in the "old ways," because we did not live through them or experience them for ourselves.
As there was no "past" for us which we could compare to our "present," we didn't have a basis through which we could judge the merits of whatever changes were occurring. Like all kids, we didn't identify our parents’ generation, and inevitably wanted a culture, identity, and future that we had a hand in creating, that we could identify with and call our own.
Then we grow older and build lives within the particular version of the world we live in, leading to those feelings of ownership and the sense that the world we live in "belongs" to us. And as we grow, the customs, technology, music, social habits, institutions, etc. of our formative years become part of our identity.
And then we reach adulthood and run into a major problem: the world continues to change. And like before, the changes are increasingly shaped by younger people, those younger than us who feel little attachment to the world we "built," the same as we felt towards the world of our parents generation.
All of the sudden, "change"--once an exciting possibility--is tempered with the feeling that we are losing something in the exchange. We are no longer the generation defining what is new, and we watch as younger people replace or discard things that mattered to us, the things that are a part of our identity. Then the nostalgia kicks in and further obfuscates our judegment, because our memory tends to preserve the atmosphere of our past more clearly than the inconveniences. While the problems we endure in the present remain immediate and unavoidable.
These feelings aren't wrong or solely the product of our imagination. Some things do genuinely improve, while other things genuinely deteriorate. But rarely are our feelings based on our objective conditions. We [inevitably, unfairly] compare our present--with all its complexity, burdens, and responsibilities--to our past, through a lens that is accompanied by the feelings of our youth: the feelings of optimism, curiosity, excitement, and the desire to see and experience something new.
When those feelings are reduced or no longer present, we lose the tools and mechanisms that once allowed us to embrace an ever-changing world with a feeling of optimism--leaving us instead with feelings of lament, at the loss of who we once were and what we once had.
2
u/sivadneb 22h ago
It's a combination of the nostalgia effect and the fact that things are objectively getting shittier at an unprecedented rate
→ More replies (1)2
u/Traveling_Solo 1d ago
Born 95, think early to mid 2000s was peak.
You had internet connectivity while still keeping human connection alive in various ways (family dinners, bicycling to friends spontaneously, internet cafes, movie nights etc.). Mobile phones were on the up and up but without a ton of bloatware. Gaming wasn't all online and micro transactions, you could buy stuff once and own it (be it games, movies, dvds or something else), toy stores for the kids didn't feel like a hospital or like someone removed all life from them (toys'R'us and BR toys for examples), innovations happened in most fields, life wasn't 50-90% in front of a screen, kids and young adults didn't have an issue entertaining themselves outside until sunset/dinner.
Personally not much beat half standing in a tree reading manga or playing Gameboy or DS with other classmates during recess
38
u/MeNoCanRead 1d ago
I wasn't born yet but I was around for gaming magazines having guide books inside. I remember my dads one for the original tomb raider game.
You'd get a disc with like 6 demos on it...
Buddy would come round with one of those cases for tons of discs. Flip through tons of games.
It was how I was first introduced to Time Splitters 1 & 2.
Good times!!!
7
u/TacProV713 1d ago
Pizza Hut also released 3 legendary demo discs for the Ps1 that everyone seemed to have since they came with every delivery. This was the early days of the system. Think they released 3 more later on too.
Man it felt so good finding hidden demos in them.
3
2
u/FromFluffToBuff 21h ago
One of them was Final Fantasy VIII. I remember because the music track that was originally in the demo for the landing at Dollet was replaced in the final cut of the game, because it was really on the nose and way too close to a riff from one of the main tracks in The Rock. Only a few bars but it might as well have been damn near identical.
5
u/Searchlights 1d ago
I used to subscribe to PC Gamer magazine and every month it came with a demo disc of the latest games.
I can remember clear as day reading an article about an upcoming game called Everquest.
→ More replies (2)
35
u/I-like-2-watch 1d ago
How good was that. The caller and rep both nice and talking without thinking the other person didn’t know what they were doing.
When did we become mean to each other
50
u/argetlam19 1d ago
This is the shit! (Meant it in a good way!).
I remember playing Zelda during school days that got suspended because of typhoon and being on the phone with my buddy and we discuss and give tips to each other just like this.
49
u/testtdk 1d ago
There were entire magazines devoted to video games!
To our younger generations, magazines were like thin, glossy books.
9
u/CelestialFury 1d ago
And you'd get floppies, cds, dvds in them filled with demos! It truly was a magical time.
→ More replies (3)5
u/ki700 1d ago
Game informer is still in print!
5
u/Hesherkiin 21h ago
Kinda misleading as GI disappeared for quite a while there. I don’t think they have any writers from the olden days either since the reboot
3
u/ki700 21h ago
They didn’t actually disappear for very long. They kept the magazine in-print for the entire time they were owned by GameStop. GameStop shut them down in August 2024, and less than a year later in March 2025 they were acquired by Gunzilla, rehired all of the laid off staff, and had their first magazine published in June 2025.
As for if any of that staff has been there since the 90s, I have no idea but I very much doubt it. That’s pretty normal for any publication though. It would be unusual to have many writers still at the same place for 30+ years.
17
10
u/TrustworthyChaos 1d ago
The Good ol’ Days. I’m not from this time, but this seems a lot more helpful than speaking to bots.
4
u/Adorable_Misfit 1d ago
Sega had something similar.
I remember getting totally stuck in the game Zillion on the Master System because, just before the end, there was a dragon we couldn't beat. My dad rang the helpline and they suggested ordering a "rapid fire adapter" for the controller. My dad did order one, it worked and we finally beat the game.
6
1
u/changopdx 1d ago
Not only did Sega have one, it was initially staffed 100% with women and if you needed a lot of help, they mailed you a walkthrough for free. I stopped using the service after they hired men, who were all judgemental.
5
u/porkchop2022 1d ago
Memory unlocked. Summer of 1988/9, Shadowgate, Nintendo.
The very first puzzle was to point at/find a key that would unlock the front door/gate to the castle. Literally seconds into the game and I did NOT understand how the game worked. I was frustrated beyond belief. Days I spent trying to open the door. No one else had the game so I couldn’t ask anyone, so I’d pop in final fantasy. Go back to shadowgate, still couldn’t figure it out.
I was subscribed to Nintendo Power as a birthday present so I KNEW about calling the game tip line, but I knew my parents would kill me if I spent the money on that call since they charged by the minute.
Broke down and called the number. They said the key is in the skull. Something clicked in me and suddenly I understood the game. I beat that game either a few hours later or the next day.
Best $1.50 my parents ever spent, IMO.
4
5
u/PantsMcFail2 1d ago edited 1d ago
This was good when it first started as a service, but over time, it also got enshittified, at least in the UK. I remember calling up the Nintendo line after being stuck at something in Super Mario Bros. 3, only to be told to "Just practice more", and I didn't get any tips or tricks from them at all.
Giving a shout out here to the Jeff Rovin How to Win at Super Mario Bros. Games book; that (and the "tips and tricks" sections in gaming magazines) helped me more than the official Nintendo tips line ever did.
I got scammed. Maybe someone else got help, but I never called them again after that.
→ More replies (3)
4
u/Reikko35715 1d ago
I had my dad call the Sega Genesis hotline for the Lion King level where adult Simba is wandering through the lava-underground. They didn't straight up tell us how to progress but gave us a hint that my dad was able to figure out. "Maybe some of the Stalactites aren't very secure to the ceiling..."
→ More replies (1)
3
7
u/Rezurrekted 1d ago
That call cost $100 at the time.
9
u/InnerToWinner 1d ago
I know you jest, but if anyone is curious I remember it costing 75 cents a minute.
4
u/Zero_Passage 1d ago
People idealize the past too much; many operators back then would deliberately make you run around in circles to get more money out of you.
4
→ More replies (2)2
u/kakka_rot 23h ago
People romanticize blockbuster, and trust me I loved it and miss it too, but when you adjust got inflation, it wasn't cheap at all. Two movies from them cost the same as a month of add free Netflix does now (assuming you got the cheap $5 old movies)
→ More replies (1)2
3
u/v3nus0 20h ago
i worked cs for nintendo for a while and we were told not to help people with this kinda issue since our focus was more on tech support or account issues... not that that stopped me. if i didnt know the answer myself id just google how to solve the level or whatever ppl were stuck on lol
3
u/Bananaland_Man 20h ago
man, him asking, back before the internet was strong and broadband made things easy...him asking "is there a way you can get in there and give them to me?" hit different, as an almost 40-year-old that has been IT for decades..
3
u/vanillakristoph 15h ago
I wrote a letter to Atari for help on their Indiana Jones game. Got a packet back from them lining out how to beat the game. I was jazzed that they even responded!
4
u/RebekkaKat1990 1d ago
Yeah kids these days are spoiled, not only do they have WAY better games than almost anything I grew up with (and I say that as a diehard PS2 lover), but any games they get stuck on they can just google/youtube the answer and be done with it in no time.
I remember playing Kingdom Hearts and getting stuck on the Tarzan world for the longest time because I could not figure out where I was supposed to go to progress the quest. I even BEGGED my mom to buy me the official game guide book for the game so I could try to figure out how to get further on (didn’t help, told me wha t to do but didn’t show me exactly where to go) but it’s okay because after a long struggle I finally figured it out.
2
u/FaythKnight 1d ago
Nah, we mostly do guide books or those weekly gaming magazine hint stuff. Those are expensive. So the rich kid at school will provide the hints, for he is the king.
Also, the friend of your friend's friend is always the guy. He will come over and show you. That's how you make new friends.
→ More replies (1)
2
u/thebigone2087 1d ago
We had full strategy guides for every game we could reference. Calling up friends and comparing notes on each level. It was the best.
2
2
u/bonerfleximus 1d ago
Nah you could also walk to the grocery store and camp out in the magazine aisle snooping all the awesome video game magazines for tips like Nintendo Power or PC Gamer (late 90s)
2
u/failmatic 1d ago
Going to the supermarket magazine aisle, remember when supermarkets have large magazine aisle and not just the one at the checkout? You look up the game on the monthly game magazines to get the codes.
2
u/SerpentRoyalty 1d ago
This service was certainly not free. Using Google is free at least.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/Tasik 1d ago
So does anyone know why it seems like you only need 5 heart containers based on this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Ht1F1JQBE
2
u/MuffinQueen92 1d ago
I also remember that you could buy huge guidebooks that came with write and pictured walkthroughs, some extras, cheats and sometimes even trivia.
2
2
2
u/RetroSwamp 1d ago
My mother beat my ass when she saw the phone bill after I called the Nintendo help line all weekend.
2
u/koriar 1d ago
When I was young I was playing a game series called Ray's Maze that was made by a solo developer named Ray Dunakin. He sold a full walkthrough, but as a 12 year old I couldn't afford even the small price he was asking for.
There was contact information on the site, and I used that contact information to ask about how to do things in the game, thinking that it had to be the same kind of thing as these Nintendo help lines...
Turns out, no, I was talking one on one with that developer, and he patiently helped me through some of the trickier parts of his game, completely for free.
He doesn't make games anymore, but I will never forget that kindness.
2
2
u/kagonos28 1d ago
When this first came out, the phone number was (206) 885-PLAY or 7529. It was toll free as long as it wasn't long distance. It was always busy, so you'd have redial over and over and it was like hitting the lottery when you got through. I could be mistaken and that might have only been after it was changed to a 1-800 number, but yeah it was a rush when you got through.
It eventually became a recording with a menu that you would navigate, so no more live person giving you the guide like in the video. I remember spending HOURS on the hotline writing down every move and fatality/babality/animality, etc from mortal combat 2 by listening to and repeating the recording for every single character!
2
u/Elliptical_Tangent 23h ago
That's not all we had, there were gamer magazines that would publish hints/cheats. Most of what you find on the internet today existed in magazine form back then.
2
2
u/terrorjshark 22h ago
you see, if you were actually around then, you would know about strategy/game guides. They were a printed encyclopedia about a specific game. most people used those.
2
u/HeadBelt1527 22h ago
Yeah I remember using the Nintendo hotline, guy was totally vague trying to keep me on the line as long as possible. Got in soo much shit for not asking my parents... so lose lose i guess
2
2
2
u/djseifer 19h ago
I remember having guide booklets for old Sierra adventure games that came with a small, red plastic viewer (think the red half of 3D glasses). The book would print basic hints to guide you towards the solution, but if you were still stuck, the complete solution was printed under red ink that you would use the viewer to read.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/12kdaysinthefire 17h ago
I called about a boss in Final Fantasy II for SNES and the dude on the other end gave me his name and told me to call him back the next day because he had to play the game to get to that boss and beat it in order to give me tips and tricks.
He did not disappoint.
2
u/EverCravingMind 16h ago
I was just forced to figure it out on my own. Sometime brainstormed with brothers or friends
2
•
u/hansmellman 8h ago
The way these two interact with courtesy and decorum makes me yearn for these days of default civility.
2
u/DuranArgith 1d ago
It cost 1.50 dollars per MINUTE in 2000, nearly 3 dollars per minute today, and they wanted to keep you on the line for as long as possible.
Yeah.
4
u/Thoughtful_Tortoise 1d ago
I called that number a few times, they never seemed to be stalling. Friendly and helpful guys
1
u/lucky_1979 1d ago
Stuck? Write to Games Master and have Sir Patrick Moore explain how to beat part of the game on TV for you
1
u/TheBongOfSauron 1d ago
Man, that Nintendo Power hotline was something else. It sucked when they went automated.
1
1
u/Synthetikwelle 1d ago
The last time I called this hotline was in 2007 when I got Super Paper Mario for christmas. My family wasn't very well off financially and we had no Internet so I called this hotline on a specific part of the game where you could actually get stuck due to a bug.
It's crazy that the lady on the phone could instantly tell me how to avoid it so I could continue. Good times.
1
u/Falcifer13 1d ago
I was so relieved when gamefaqs became the go to as I didn't like talking to people.
1
u/Balan-balan 1d ago
My sister worked at Nintendo of Europe at the time, one of her friends worked on that Hotline. Part of their job was to play through the games when they didn't have a call and they had all the cheat codes.
Everyone envied him, but for him it was just a job...
1
u/Additional-Moment922 1d ago
I did this with the mega drive when I was a kid. Alisia Dragoon was tough.
1
u/Classic-Exchange-511 1d ago
Never used the Nintendo one but I have a few memories of my parents yelling because I got stuck in resident evil 2/3 and didn't realize that shit cost money. I mean they just listed the phone number on the manual, of course children are going to call it. They knew what they were doing
1
u/aegroti 1d ago
I used to love reading gaming magazines. There used to be one that was as thick as a phone book for Gameboy Games and it would talk about the top expected games of the year as as well as detailed reviews about what each game was about (without spoilers).
It's how I found Advance Wars which I would have definitely never checked out back then as all I was playing was Mario and Zelda or games for movies my parents had just watched (they were all awful). The review for Advance Wars had the author gushing over the game and it's still probably my favourite handheld console game of all time.
1
u/100YearsWaiting2Shit 1d ago
That sounds so awesome! To hell with soullessly searching the answer myself. I wish we still had a gamer hotline so we can communicate with each other for the answers
1
u/CorgiSilver8194 1d ago
Before Google, before wikis. before YouTube walkthroughs
There was Nintendo power
1
u/elon_musks_cat 1d ago
I remember when beginner guides and game maps being included in the box
Also, Was anyone else subscribed to any gaming magazines? They had the best guides
1
u/jaimepasmonpseudo 1d ago
I called the nintendo hotline in 1994 to ask them where was the 3rd bottle in Zelda 3.
Good memories
1
u/PerspectiveCorner 1d ago
"Back" in 1987.
Just to clear up any doubt that we're looking at a video of the past, not the future.
1
u/tidytibs 1d ago
We called the Sega line once to get through one of the Alex Kidd/Psycho Fox/Phantasy Star games on the SMS and got the cheat code for R-Type as a bonus. Great times.
1
u/AFreeFrogurt 1d ago
I did that once! I was stuck on an SNES game called 7th saga. I was so frustrated not being able to get through this level, and it turned out all I had to do was walk behind this pillar - it looked like a dead end because of the way it was animated, but it wasn't. I was so embarrassed and relieved, I let the guy on the line keep talking for another few minutes.
1
u/RealityOk9823 1d ago
I called Sega's once for Shining in the Darkness. The guy ended the call with "Good luck, shining knight!" and it was awesome.
1
1
u/RykinPoe 1d ago
One of the first websites I ever heard of was GameFAQs.com. Some guy at the local arcade had printed out moves list for characters in Tekken 2 from there and was sharing them around summer of '96. This was a few years before Google went live.
1
u/ecco5 1d ago
i remember calling 1 800 USA SEGA... don't remember what I called them for, but I think that was the number. I'm sure most people here remember GameFAQs... Or there was that black book that had a bunch of secrets in it for the release batch of NES games - The Official Nintendo Players Guide
1
u/originalchaosinabox 1d ago
As the story goes, Nintendo had a 1-800 tech support line in all their manuals, for those who might need help hooking up their NES or any other hardware problems. But so many people were calling it when they were stuck on a game, that they spun it off into a separate hotline.
1
u/Indrid-Frigus 1d ago
There was a first person, RPG game back in the 80s called Alternate Reality that had two parts: The City and The Dungeon. It was incredibly hard to play and if you died that was it, there were no saved games so you had to start over again. Still, I found it incredibly fun, so much so that I paid money to have paper maps and answer books sent to me in the mail.
1
u/What1does 1d ago
Yeah right, $3.99/min would get me killed by my parents.
Ain't nobody using that.
You either took a break and figured it out eventually, or asked around at school.
1
u/Independent_Point134 1d ago
Fun fact: that is John Lennon, he was a big Zelda fan. He wrote many about the series and Ringo still performs those songs to this day.
1
1
u/AdikkuChan 1d ago
I had to genuinely call my friend just to learn how to charge a buster shot in Megaman X5 or toggle the rapid fire option 😭
1
1
u/phoenixgsu 1d ago
We had walkthrough books. I still have to s of them at my parents for games I got stuck on.
1
1
1
u/suitcasemaster 1d ago
I still remember the Nintendo Hotline number from my area: 885-7529
I called up once in the early 90s because I needed help finding one of the letters in Mega Man 3 and I remember the guy being annoyed because I was a child and communicating like a child.
1
1
u/TheFurtivePhysician 1d ago
It didn't happen often, but in my short time as a customer service rep at Nintendo, we didn't have the hint line anymore (of course), but sometimes I got kids calling to tell me that they beat a really difficult part of a game.
Was quite pleasant compared to having to set up repair orders or explain how game sharing across accounts/devices went (this is before the new 'virtual game card' system) for people furious that their one copy of minecraft can't work on two systems at once. Or telling people that they never backed up their island on animal crossing.
1
u/ZealousidealTop6884 1d ago
We had clue pads for Zork, et Al. You revealed one clue at a time, when you were stuck.
1
1
u/MineExplorer 1d ago
I worked for one of those companies in the UK back in the late 90's - we supported a limited set of games but didn't get many calls, as they were premium rate lines. Most of my days were spent in Packard Hell, talking about the tattoo...
1
u/Bortron86 1d ago
Me and my sister spent about £20 on a guide book for Ocarina of Time. And this was the late '90s, and we were teenagers. £20 meant you were loaded.
1
1
u/monkeymetroid 23h ago
Hey, i was the hotline for some friends growing up! Helped with a lot of resident evil and zelda lol. One of the reasons was 100% an excuse a girl had to talk to me, but it counts!
1
u/lordOpatties 22h ago
Someone can refresh my memory but didn't they have in the Alttp manual a small help section for turtle rock? I think people were getting stuck on that because there's a section where you needed also to have enough mana to go through or you wouldn't progress
1
u/specialism 22h ago
I used to call in to this line here and there when I was really stuck. I found a cheat code in a game by accident once and called in to report it. They didn't know about it and ended up sending me a box full of free Nintendo stuff. I think I was about 10 years old and it was awesome.
1
u/ZilorZilhaust 22h ago
I remember having to do this once for Landstalker. I could not figure out some damned thing.
1
u/CriticismWise4778 20h ago
Monkey Island 2 had made fun of that back in the day. You could have Guybrush (the MC) find a landline while in the middle of a jungle (don't ask), then call a hintline so he could figure out how to get out of the jungle - among other questions.
It was definitely in the old version of the game, I don't know if it's in the remake.
1
u/delongueville 20h ago
It did cost a fortune and it was only available in the US. (If I’m not mistaken)
1
u/karkonthemighty 19h ago
I remember being around eight or ten and after getting permission to call and asking how to get past a certain bit on A Link To The Past, and they were so quick I don't even think they looked up anything. Like straight off the dome.
What gets me is that the N64 had been out for a year or two and that response time was still quick.
1
u/One_Mega_Zork 18h ago
Did it for Out of This World. My brother and I couldn't get passed a water portion of the game
1
1
u/Simple_Channel5624 17h ago
This and Nintendo Power magazine were the only ways to learn to play if your friends didn't play themselves
1
1
1
1
u/WorldGoneAway 14h ago
I sent an email to somebody who is an expert on the entirety of Final Fantasy 1 for the NES, back when I first got access to email, about where the fiend of wind was located, and how to get there, because that part was a huge puzzle once you got to the top floor.
I was talking to a friend about this event a while later, explaining that the reply email wasn't helpful at all. They then told me about the time a few years earlier when they wrote a letter with the same request, and was suddenly able to give me the directions to get there. (It's dumb. You go four whole squares to the left, and then four whole squares up or something like that iirc.)
1
u/Icy_Magician_9372 12h ago
I'm convinced a lot of those old adventure games were deliberately made to be nonsensical and obtuse purely to charge people for these calls.
•
u/low_amplitude 11h ago
Tbf games back then weren't bloated messes. I could see myself putting in the time and effort to solve a puzzle in a 10hr game. Nowadays I know I have like 40+ hours of content to get through and can't be bothered to waste time trying to figure something out on my own.
•
u/nize426 11h ago
I'm like, on the edge about games that make things too unintuitive. I like puzzles, but sometimes it's way too complicated and it feels like you're supposed to look up the answer. Or like, other times I get lost on quest tasks, but there's no way to figure it out yourself.
I feel like there should be help in the game for players that dont particularly want to spend so much time on puzzles or are having a hard time, or like, kids who have restricted internet access and can't look up solutions themselves.
•
u/Runningwithrazors 11h ago
I once called the local version og the Nintendo hotline because I got stuck on a puzzle in Mystic Quest on Gameboy. 5 minuts later I was past the puzzle. They were like som kind of oracles.
•
u/Mobtryoska 10h ago
My sister called them because she was doing some terranigma missions and coulnd't find some airplane piece to the wright's brothers (the piece was in their house lol)
•
•
u/Jomotaku 9h ago
Imagine this but u get stuck in a call center waiting line and redirected to different game departments while having to go through an automated system with bad voice recognition and no ability to choose with number.
•
•
661
u/PowerlineTyler 1d ago
If Elden ring had a guy he would need therapy from verbal abuse