>playing through old game
>nothing is ever explained
>learn how to do stuff by trial and error
>stuck because I need an item that I have no idea where it is nor what it looks like
How did old games get away with this? I know guides were a big thing back then but not everybody had access to them, right?
>I know guides were a big thing back then but not everybody had access to them, right?
Yeah but the important information spread among people playing games. It's kind of how you heard about good games too.
I remember talking to other kids about if they played whatever game or if they knew anyone playing it and where they got to in it and if they knew how to get someplace or get whatever item.
And then never socializing with them ever again.
No idea. If I were a kid in 1980, I'd be fucking doomed. Played through Metal Gear 1 not too long ago and had to end up using a guide to figure parts out.
In that game there is not one, not two, but three walls you have to bomb to progress through the game - with no visual indication of you having to do so. Later, you have to knock out all the enemies in a very specific room and then fiddle with your radio to find a mandatory rocket launcher in the next room over. Also if you shoot a hostage a single time you get softlocked. There is a boss that hides behind hostages as his mechanic.
Classic Kojima, what will that genius think of next??? xD
Kids figured a lot of this shit out on their own, believe it or not. Though it took a lot of trial and error sometimes - skill is subjective as fuck, but one thing that is indisputably in shorter supply now than it used to be is patience.
Guides per-se weren't a big deal for awhile - there wasn't a cottage industry for Prima and other shitter companies yet. Magazines covered bits here and there(nintendo power especially - they compiled big multi-game guidebooks), but if you were at your last helpless gasp, almost every major developer/publisher had a toll line for game hints and tips.
Yes, they both got you on the backend if you got stuck and had no other options, and made the shit that got you stuck to start with.
I used cheat codes and guidebooks all the time as a kid. When I played without them I'd often get stuck somewhere and end up making new save files if I wanted to keep playing. I actually beat more games as an adult than I did as a kid despite spending a lot longer on one game at a time when I was young.
All you have described is easily said in game or in codex. People (like me) cleared that game when they were ten or eleven years old. You have no attention spam and you need a flashy lighter to indicate where to go. I did the map with pen and paper since i played without radar so i wouldnt get lost and since ammo and tools respawns also where to find them.
Is not the game that is difficult, you are a moron and today games are no challenge cause they have to deliver to morons.
>be kid with allowance
>have to save up for weeks for each new game
>the most recent thing you bought is usually the only game you haven't beaten yet
>have nothing better to do that try literally anything you can think of each afternoon until you finally figure it out
This, i got 3 games a year for free, christmas + birthday. Spend all allowance on magic so i had 3 games in a year and a lot of free time to spend on them.
Never really used cheats or guidebooks, but I had a bunch of gaming magazines that included walkthroughs and hints, plus, if the game was well known there was a chance that someone at school had figured something out that you hadn't. I remember that playing through Maniac Mansion was more like a collaborative effort than anything else.
people like you are the reason dean takahashi's cuphead is a thing
shit tier thinkerboy, have this
Not really. But they might be the reason why the Dean Defense Force is a thing.
You would have loved playing through shit like King's Quest, OP. Shit was designed to make you call the tip phone number that charged some ridiculous rate to complete it. Required a lot of patience since point-and-click adventures are all typically full of trial and error, but King's Quest IV in particular would have many situations where you have already lost and wouldn't know until sometime later, and you might have saved since then, which means you're fucked.
One particular instance is the cat chasing the mouse in one of the early scenes. If you can't stop the cat, and don't walk off screen before it catches the mouse, you are doomed to die later in the game.
>people that struggle to finish a simple tutorial should be critiquing video games
It's not like I want speedrunning faggots to be the only ones allowed to write reviews. I just don't want a braindead retard talking about how "difficult" it is to do it.
Most games came with a manual. You would know this if you weren't a teenage faggot.
Old games were made to sell strategy guides. The difficulty also artificially lengthened them.
There are outliers, but games generally had terrible design up until the 6th console gen.
video game magazines were a thing as well as being more social on figuring shit out.
Good example was Metal Gear Solid.
People talked to each other, and in old games most hints and instructions were in the text with various NPCs, character monologues and exploring.
>There are outliers, but games generally had terrible design up until the 6th console gen.
t. underage with a 2 digits iq.
Games on the whole were predominantly incompetently designed back then. It was a mix of wanting to supplement the lack of content with difficulty, and just plain incompetence.
Prove me wrong.
For every SMB1 and Tetris, you also had a Simon's Quest or Zork.
...
Some games even had very expensive phone help lines which you'd call up.
fucking this, old games are annoying af to play if you don't know what you are doing or the game is easy
>I remember talking to other kids about if they played whatever game or if they knew anyone playing it and where they got to in it and if they knew how to get someplace or get whatever item.
>And then never socializing with them ever again.
yeah, I remember kids having this weird system where you could talk to anyone if you had some info to spread and then never talking again unless there was a really good reason.
>prove me wrong
>implies fucking Zork of all things was made the way it was to sell strategy guides
You're doing a pretty good job of that just by posting.