I was around 8-9 when i was stuck in Sam & Max: Hit the Road for a long time. Restarted the game and got stuck on the same spot. Finally caved and asked my brother how proceed, at which point he showed me a walkthrough. It blew my mind that that was a thing!
I was never able to figure out that you had to put a magnet onto the hand grabber, and then put the hand grabber into the giant ball of yarn to grab something.
I loaded it onto my Steam Deck not too long ago and my 19 year old son had a blast watching me play it. A few of the jokes did not age well, but over all it is amazing still.
What are some jokes that didn’t age well? That’s always a thing when playing 90s comedy games. Probably not many games worse than the Leisure Suit Larry series!
I remember being the first one to make a guide for the game “Bust A Move” (Rhythm dance game). I think it’s still there. My own little contribution to the gaming world.
Yes and no. In the US, it was released as “Bust A Groove”. The original Japanese release (first release) was “Bust A Move”. That’s the game I first played and based the FAQ off of.
I got in trouble in Middle School for printing out an entire FF6 guide from GameFAQs. It had all of the items and their stats, all of the spells, espers, maps etc. It was absolutely massive and the administration was not happy about me using all of that paper and toner. Already printed it, sucks to be them. 3 hole punched it at home and put it in a binder. It was awesome.
Having hypothetically done similar things with work printers, there’s also a lesson to be learned about not using too much paper and ink in one go, space it out over a few restocks.
everything is fucking videos now. You get stuch at a very particular place? Prepare to sift through literally hours of video instead of, for example, just searching for the name of the place you’re in ingame
Nah, there’s a lot of text guides too. But the problem is that they’re often just copied from one source that somehow manages to get basic shit wrong every damn time. And videos definitely have their place, so many times I’ve first searched for a text guide and only got more confused. As long as the videos are short and to the point I always appreciate them. Found some great channels that way that have helped me through several games.
I used to print armored core walkthroughs and take them to my room. I think that’s why my parents let me have a computer in my room. So I could use a floppy to bring them over without printing
I remember the game grumps did a walkthrough of some sonic game and they were going through some guys 10+ year walkthrough that was really well done. It was hilarious some of the comments the walkthrough person wrote.
Perhaps it’s because I grew up with adventure puzzle games and point’n’click games, but GameFAQs was always the nuclear option for me.
I much preferred the Universal Hint System - an approach more suited to nudging you towards figuring out the answer for yourself.
There’s no denying that it was (and is) a fantastic resource though. Hell, I’ve even written a guide myself. One of the last bastions of the 90s and 2000s WWW experience.
I once tried writing a guide for Paper Mario, and it was then I realized how much effort, consultation, and typing all of these are. It’s in some ways not a surprise that walkthroughs are now just video playthroughs of the game (often involving someone backtracking 3 times as they figure out a puzzle) - that takes a lot less effort than conscious text recorded outside of a game.
I’ve never written a game FAQ but when I’ve done documentation for other things on a computer I’ve found that I prefer recording myself doing the task and then writing the guide while going back through the video. It’s too easy to skip steps otherwise.
Don’t go for a whole guide, pick something smaller like all the recipes or a map of Dry Dry Desert (two things I remember printing off back in the day!)
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