When I was 14, I got in a flame war with another kid in the pokemon forum. I dropped a “What do you know? You’re probably 12!” He replied “Yeah, I’m 12. This is a pokemon forum. What are you doing here?”
I felt so thoroughly burned that I stayed out of internet arguments as much as possible from that point forward. A real valuable lesson early on. Thanks, GameFAQs!
Funny, dunking on some old dude back in the day got me hooked on internet arguments.
Nothing beats those old ascii art guides. When you’re playing an old game, you know they won’t let you down.
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.
everything is fucking videos now
did you know that the more inappropriate the place you put the word “fucking” in is, the more seriously people will take your comments? :D
yes, but thanks for telling me anyway :)
The written language is developed by the spoken language. I.e. colloquialisms are king.
I raged against people using literally when they mean figuratively for years. I lost.
I have never been lied to by data in a .txt file which has been hand-aligned
I was fascinated at one point by ASCII art. I had seen someone manually drawing some ASCII emoji on a cup as a kid. Weird…
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.
That day you learned a very valuable lesson about permission and forgiveness.
It’s easier to ask for forgivness, than to ask for permission.
Got it!
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.
I did the same! But never got caught.
deleted by creator
So I basically started using it the year it was made. I am 40 now, and I was about 10 when I originally found it. Cool.
I remember spending hours printing an entire walkthrough for Secret of Mana on my dot matrix printer back in the day. Got me all the way through to the final boss; but then the SNES itself died mid battle. 😩
RIP Kolanaki’s SNES
I loved Secret of Mana and on several playthroughs, the hardest boss, for me, has always been that damn tiger in the witch’s castle. When it zig-zagged like a spike ball, the chances of getting wiped were huge. One hit = unconscious.
Kind of similar story of ancient gaming tragedy, I was a young lad going for 100% in FFVII, and after spending however many hours getting everything ready, I saved right by Emerald Weapon, deciding to tackle him right after school the next day. Aaaaand then I came back to everything on the memory card being gone due to some dumb glitch. Still never beat Emerald Weapon.
lol I remember discovering this website as a kid, thinking I could stop buying strategy guides for like 10 to 20 bucks, then proceeding to print like 60 pages at a time. Bless my mom for not complaining about the paper and ink!
Printers worked better back then. Also the cartridges came with more ink lol
When I was a kid, I played Black and White constantly and my dad printed off a complete guide from GameFAQs and put it in a binder with page protectors and everything. It was so awesome.
yup i was using gamefaqs when playing the older generation pokemon games very useful. the subreddit was best for friendsafari.
Coincidentally, i was just thinking about this site the other day because i was so sick of video walkthroughs!
The only time I like a video walkthrough is for some visual based puzzles because screenshots aren’t always precise enough.
The other 99 percent? Screw that, gone a step by step guide damn it!
Before the Internet got social media, we had the GameFAQs voting thing; you’d get head to head popularity contests of coolest characters. Cloud always won, but it was nice to check daily to see who was most popular.
I still use GameFAQs, though. Even after the buyout, the guides are important to those of us RetroAchevement-ing through some older titles.
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.
And explaining actions in text is much more difficult than just showing them
Even just revising my guide for the new Final Fantasy Tactics remaster is way too big a project for me right now. It’s amazing how much work it is.
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!)
yhelothar
Got banned from LUE by posting this
Big shout-out to the absolute GOAT CyricZ, who has perfect guides for every single Yakuza game in existence.
I printed out a list of gaps in THPS2 from GameFAQs. I didn’t realize it was 80 pages. My mom was really upset. I think I got every single one though.
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.
Waa there a Bust a Move rhythm game? Are you thinking of Bust a Groove?
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 feel this; I did the same but for Summoner 2. Man I loved that game. Tried getting back into it once and it was tough :(
- I need help with Final Fantasy 7.
Buddy recommends this site I’ve not heard about, Game Facks.
It did not contain game FAQ’s.
Also, whitehouse.com, as was the style of the time.
Honestly been one of the most useful websites for me over the years.
