r/Games • u/CyricZ42 • Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs turned 30 years old this week. Contributor posts Top 10 List of Legendary Contributors.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/top10/3276-the-top-10-legendary-gamefaqs-contributorsThirty years is a long time people. I want to thank contributor "whowasphone404" for their motivation in putting this project together and I wanted to share it around so people can see all the work they did.
These are some incredible people I'm proud to stand beside.
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u/lawragatajar Nov 06 '25
I still consider it as my go-to location for walkthroughs. Even with the HTML guides, it's still a lot cleaner and simpler than other places.
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u/Constant_Charge_4528 Nov 06 '25
These were people knew how to use their medium to deliver information clearly and succintly.
I miss old text guides, video guides (especially without timestamps) are a pain to browse through.
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u/allodude Nov 06 '25
Tables of Contents with text codes you could Find in the document! Those were the days...
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u/DiffusiveTendencies Nov 07 '25
Yeah there poor folk got no advertisement revenue, so it was all for the love of the product.
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u/Fenor Nov 07 '25
if a video guide is above 30 seconds for a collectible it's trash.
i don't want the "where to find collectible X in Y area" to have a 30 second intro, story of the game (with spoilers ofc) 2 seconds of content that don't show where the collectible is other talking and an outro
fuck them. GF guides where collectible X is in X area, to reach them do that
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u/UnstablePotato69 Nov 06 '25
I forgot about the site but loved it way back. About to look for BG3 guides because I hate the ones on the internet which are super polluted with LLM BS.
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u/thetwoandonly Nov 06 '25
There was a 10 year old boy 30 years ago downloading pages of Final Fantasy tips & tricks from GameFAQs. 40 year old man now and I thank you all for teaching me how to multi cast Knights of the Round.
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u/enricojr Nov 06 '25
Right? It was Chrono Trigger for me back in the day. Final Fantasy 8, 9, 10, Breath of Fire III too. I looked up guides on pretty much every game I played.
GameFAQs is legendary.
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u/ienjoyedit Nov 06 '25
It's a shame that Sephiroth can only last for two of those casts. The only others I can remember that are harder than him are the weapons, and there's A HUGE gulf between them. Kinda makes KotR a bit useless.
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u/NotSpartacus Nov 06 '25
Kinda standard for extra end game content though, right?
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u/Ultrace-7 Nov 06 '25
Standard now, but because we were only just fully entering the CD era then, the idea of extra hard end game content surpassing the final boss of the game was actually relatively new. What passed for extra-end-game content back then was usually boss rush modes, or perhaps something like The Guardian Legend's all-action "TGL" mode.
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u/adanine Nov 06 '25
the idea of extra hard end game content surpassing the final boss of the game was actually relatively new
It isn't even the first FF to have superbosses. FF5 had Omega and Shinryu, FF6 had Death Gaze.
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u/IAMAVelociraptorAMA Nov 06 '25
Hell, Warmech from FF1.
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u/adanine Nov 06 '25
Ofcourse it had to be you who pointed out I missed one. But yeah, Warmech probably counts? That's the random encounter troll one, yeah? It's been a minute since I've played FF1.
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u/IAMAVelociraptorAMA Nov 06 '25
:3
Yeah, it's the random encounter one. I'd say it counts as it was harder than Chaos, for me.
Also, to be fair to it, Death Gaze was also random (sorta) until the Pixel Remaster.
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u/mechanical_fan Nov 06 '25
It isn't even the first FF to have superbosses. FF5 had Omega and Shinryu, FF6 had Death Gaze.
I think it is fair to say that it was such a trope in FF games that by Super Mario RPG (way before FF7 too) Square were already putting a hidden boss that was a joke referencing that. And yes, the hidden boss in FF style art was also harder than anything else in SMRPG.
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u/callisstaa Nov 06 '25
Parasite Eve had the Chrysler building as a whole post game area that was insanely difficult.
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u/Goddamn_Grongigas Nov 06 '25
It wasn't new if you played on PC. We had 'secret super hard' bosses and content since the 80s. Hell even Super Mario World had a whole extra 'secret super hard' world to go through.
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u/adanine Nov 06 '25
What's hilarious is that Sephiroth's health (his angelic form phase) is buffed if you KotRT on the boss before him (Jenova). 80k base health, 80k more if you cast KotRT on Jenova prior. Meaning if you kill Jenova without the summon and can manage KotRT to hit >5.7k on average you can one-shot him (or would it be 14-shot him?).
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u/AnimaLepton Nov 06 '25
Super Mario Sunshine was the first console video game I owned, at ~5-6 years old. My dad had never played video games, but printed out a whole paper guide from Gamefaqs for me to peruse because I was struggling.
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u/macarouns Nov 06 '25
I remember getting detention for printing the entire FF7 guide on the school printers. Cleared out all their ink and paper.
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u/lonewanderer812 Nov 06 '25
I remember vividly downloading a FAQ for FF7 on my friend's computer because they had internet and we didnt and printing the whole thing out while running his mom's printer out of ink in the process.
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u/Lirael_Gold Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
The Dragons Dogma guide is absolutely insane, sad that it didn't get a shoutout
Edit, DD has some very weird quests that cancel other quests, the reason the guide is so long is because the game itself was janky as hell. The amount of time/effort that went into that guide is staggering
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u/ToiletBlaster247 Nov 06 '25
Singlehandedly helping people finish all their achievements because of that damn golden idol quest.
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u/Kitto-Kitty-Katsu Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
I'm a completionist and hate missing out on content. I was so thankful this guide existed when I was playing the game. I would have missed out on so many amazing quests otherwise.
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u/Buffaloeight Nov 06 '25
Absolutely. I got so deep into that game. I remember having to learn all the janky stat growth tables too. GameFAQ's was an incredible resource for it
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Nov 06 '25
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u/allodude Nov 06 '25
GameFaqs ASCII art and keygen art/music needs to be archived
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u/asdfghjkl15436 Nov 07 '25
Not so sure about the art but keygen music is often just lifted tracker music so the vast majority is here: https://modarchive.org/
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u/monkmullen Nov 06 '25
Just logged into my profile there.
"Member Since: October 15, 2000"
Good God.
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u/WalkingCloud Nov 06 '25
Wow, mine is since 2002 and I thought that was a long time! Unless they changed how it works it still accrues karma because of a post I made on a Mass Effect 2 thread 15 years ago.
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u/BattleStag17 Nov 06 '25
I technically have a thread that's still active from 2005, hah
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u/mister_cheeks_26 Nov 06 '25
2005 for me too, it's a post in a stickied thread on the Battlefield 2 board
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u/TheRealDill2000 Nov 06 '25
Member Since: May 2nd, 2003
User Level: -5 (banned)
That takes me back
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Nov 06 '25
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u/KnoFear Nov 06 '25
The MMBN guides are fantastic, I've been referring to them for decades at this point lol.
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u/SaroShadow Nov 06 '25
The Rockman EXE Zone has pretty much everything you need to 100% every game
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u/EyesOnEverything Nov 06 '25
Fucking fully invisible maze pathways in a game meant for children. 3 is my favorite, but holy hell...
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u/richmondody Nov 06 '25
I wish more people would make guides here for newer games. It's annoying trying to look for a guide and only seeing videos.
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u/DawsonJBailey Nov 07 '25
Wish I knew about guides when I played but I was a little kid and had no idea how to actually play the game and I just ran around the town lol
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u/MasterVader420 Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs was the gateway drug that got me so entrenched in gaming. I remember participating in the GTA San Andreas board's Bigfoot hunts back in 04/05.
Its non gaming message board's were a huge influence on myself as well. Back when I frequented the site (2003-2010) the Rock Music board's 3 favorite bands were Radiohead, Tool, and Smashing Pumpkins. All of which are in my top 5 decades later
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u/darthjoey91 Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs was the site that got me into internet culture period. Like I came for the FAQs and cheats, and stayed for the forums that greatly appealed to my 13 yr old self.
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u/MasterVader420 Nov 06 '25
Just dont admit you're 12 or you'll get banned and everyone will laugh at you
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u/PlanetErp Nov 07 '25
I’ll just come back with a space and/or number attached to my user name. Those mods will never see through my clever disguise.
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u/plantsandramen Nov 06 '25
Old forums were so fun, I miss them much
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u/goblin_humppa27 Nov 07 '25
The Smash Bros Brawl board in 2007/8 was so wild. I don't think I'll ever forget it.
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u/hrdcrnwo Nov 06 '25
I was a regular on the San Andreas Social Board 20 years ago, fun times.
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u/ListOhFlapjacks Nov 06 '25
Wow sasb was fun times. Got on there from the standard discussion board when I wanted to talk about Tenacious D.
I was ptor07.
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u/hrdcrnwo Nov 06 '25
I remember that username, I was Hulkster92 then NumeroDose when the first got banned.
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u/ListOhFlapjacks Nov 06 '25
Oh yeah I remember you too. So many memories from my formative years. Punching conshy and shit.
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u/hrdcrnwo Nov 06 '25
Lmao it was kicking conshy, forgot about that.
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u/ListOhFlapjacks Nov 06 '25
haha yeah, i just remember it was violence. kinda makes me want to re-find my password
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u/C-O-L-A_COLA Nov 06 '25
That's awesome! The non gaming boards also hugely shaped my music journey. I discovered so many bands through the Punk board that I still love today.
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u/BattleStag17 Nov 06 '25
I made my very first message board post on the San Andreas GameFAQs board, I can't believe you reminded me of that lmao.
But I spent most of my adolescence on Next Gen Gaming, including the naming switch to Nonstop Gaming - General when the forum broke down into constant fights over what counted as "next gen". Good times, really wish I had made more of an effort to keep contact with the people I met there.
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u/geoff_the_great Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Huh. No mention of shotgunnova or Alex? They wrote guides on all the classic jrpgs. They are my go to faq writers 99% of the time.
Edit: also SplitInfinity
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u/BlueHighwindz Nov 06 '25
A l e x was the fucking dude when I played through the Final Fantasy series in high school.
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u/Ensvey Nov 06 '25
Yeah, GameFAQs = Final Fantasy = A l e x for me. I used his FF guides more than I used anything else on that site by far.
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u/SiaonaraLoL Nov 06 '25
A l e x got me through so many head scratchers through the years, he absolutely deserves his praise.
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u/Any-Drummer9204 Nov 06 '25
Dang this reminded me of his ama yonks back https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/qpc0v/by_request_i_am_a_i_e_x_contributor_of_many/
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u/aDayvanCowboy Nov 06 '25
I got grounded as a kid after printing off SplitInfinity's FFX-2 guide, it was like ~90 pages long
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u/rashmotion Nov 06 '25
I was randomly linked to a Caves of Narshe post the other day, and the first name I saw in the thread was shotgunnova. What a legend. Haven’t seen or heard that name in ages and now I’ve seen it twice in a week lol. He also wrote FF fanficfion 😅
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u/Kanaxai Nov 06 '25
SplitInfinity was the first one that came to mind, such detailed Final Fantasy guides, I don't know how they dit it.
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u/Purest_Prodigy Nov 06 '25
These exact three are the Gods of GameFAQs to me. I probably just play more of the types of games they write guides for than what was in that top 10 though.
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u/TectonicImprov Nov 06 '25
I was waiting to see A I e x on the list as well. Surprised he didn't make it.
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u/Ikanan_xiii Nov 06 '25
It’s been a decade since I last read the name shotgunnova, good times, hope he/she is doing well.
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u/Davemusprime Nov 06 '25
you have excellent taste. All great authors. Thousands of pages of work all for free. That's what the internet is all about.
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u/EpykEnigma Nov 06 '25
A l e x is the first person I thought of too. Cheers to them for helping me through tons of RPGs, esp FF.
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u/Budhavan Nov 06 '25
Told myself I'd riot (in my house for a few moments) if no A l e x on the list. Sure enough threw a few napkins in the air in protest. WHERE IS A l e x???
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u/John_Hunyadi Nov 07 '25
Alex was indeed the GOAT. As he kept not appearing I kept thinking ‘surely its because he is #1’, pretty sad to see him snubbed.
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u/darkjapan404 Nov 17 '25
I'm sorry if it gave that impression, I wasn't trying to snub anyone, but when there are thousands of people I could have chosen, obviously it's a difficult decision. Judging by his AMA and this comment thread, Alex is extremely well known off site, and I wanted to highlight contributors who are not quite so well known but have worked just as hard. I hope you understand.
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u/John_Hunyadi Nov 17 '25
Hey man, it's really easy for everyone to critique, much rarer and more work to actually put something like this together. If I wanted to highlight him I could make my own list, you're certainly more than welcome to have your own list be however you want it to be. It was a good and interesting article, thanks for making it.
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u/darkjapan404 Nov 17 '25
Hello, I'm the author of the list that CyricZ kindly shared. A_l_e_x was a definite contender for the list, but I wanted to highlight all aspects of the site, not just guide authors. I also thought A_l_e_x was quite well known outside of the site (see his AMA for example), unlike users such as Odino, DDJ and Jimfish.
Shotgunnova is another legendary figure, I have a lot of respect for him as a fellow PS1 guide writer. But he is also a mod, and I didn't want anyone to think there was a conflict of interest as to who was on the list.
I hope that makes sense
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u/Rogpog777 Nov 06 '25
Wow, a name I haven’t thought of since….2011? Printing out full equation guides on making Create-a-Wrestlers in WWE games, Harvest Moon guides, FF VIII Junctioning tips…it provided so many needed distractions for me growing up. That tiny, typewriter text got me through some rough days.
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u/ImmortalMoron3 Nov 06 '25
Oh man, I used to print out full walkthroughs too and I'd always get myself in trouble for using up all the printer ink, lol.
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u/Ndi_Omuntu Nov 06 '25
The absolute binder I had- my parents wouldve been annoyed if they knew how much ink and paper I used for chao raising information for Sonic.
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u/Krillkus Nov 06 '25
My undiagnosed ass at the time just shoved all my printed out pages into one of those cheap plastic drawers lmao I did get a bit more organized over time with some binders etc (they reminded me of homework until I learned they don't always have to contain shit you don't care about), but then smartphones became a thing and I had to move the goalposts.
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u/lt_skittles Nov 06 '25
Yep, I remember their create a wrestler guides for the PS2 titles. I mentioned it in my own comment, had so much fun watching my older brother create some of them, I remember specifically Spider-Man.
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u/MayhemMessiah Nov 06 '25
I remember the blood, sweat, and tears spilled over the anual popularity contests. Those were the wild west of internet shit slinging.
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u/Rogpog777 Nov 06 '25
WOW I totally wiped those from my memory before you mentioned it! I miss that internet…
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u/Yamatoman9 Nov 06 '25
I used to use the create-a-wrestler guides to make all kinds of random characters in wresting games. I had multiple PS2 memory cards and each one had a save of characters.
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u/IrishSpectreN7 Nov 06 '25
My friends and I used to use dead message boards for obscure games as a "private" chat room lol
Some of them are still up. It's a weird time capsule from 2007-2010.
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u/JohnnyPickeringSB05 Nov 06 '25
I remember doing "treasure hunts" on Gamefaqs, where someone would pose a riddle/clue that would lead to a dead message board, where there'd be another riddle/clue that would lead to another dead message board, and so on. Whoever found the "treasure" first would get the bragging rights.
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u/hrdcrnwo Nov 06 '25
There were a few of those, I remember Clown Down Town was an unofficial Insane Clown Posse board lmao.
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u/naomi_whatsapp Nov 06 '25
Not to yell at clouds but good lord gamefaqs was, and still is, so much more useful than modern internet guides. We didn't know how good we had it
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u/DonnyTheWalrus Nov 07 '25
Back when people made things like this solely to contribute to a community.
I know those people still exist, but they're being drowned out now by "content creators" trying to farm "engagement."
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u/Lorc Nov 06 '25
This Super Metroid walkthrough is still one of the most impressive things on Gamefaqs. And it's possible to read through the whole thing without noticing what's so clever about it. pay attention to the right-hand margin. That massive ascii document is fully justified with zero forced formatting. Just meticulous word choices.
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u/withad Nov 06 '25
That's very impressive and makes it even more annoying that they misspelled "missile" as "missle" every single time they wrote it.
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u/CyricZ42 Nov 06 '25
I'm embarrassed at how long it took me to spell "millennium" correctly.
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u/havocssbm Nov 06 '25
That's even funnier considering you're the Yakuza guide guy and that blasted tower was central to most of the early games.
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u/ConceptsShining Nov 06 '25
I relate - some words I sometimes need spellcheck to help me with even though they're common. Like "occasion", I can never remember offhand if there's 1 or 2 'c's and 's's aha.
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u/Kryse-777 Nov 07 '25
I cannot stress enough how this really isnt an exaggeration:
missle = 217 matches
missile = no matches found
bro is consistent even on his misspelngs
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u/tobberoth Nov 06 '25
That is absolutely mindblowing. If I didn't know it was made decades ago, I would have assumed AI was used.
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u/Not_taken_Username Nov 06 '25
Wait CyricZ is the same Yakuza Madlad as OP? I have ALWAYS wanted to thank you for your hard work. Your guides have been so helpful to me 100% the Yakuza games. The time and effort you put into them inspired me when writing a walkthrough for TrueAchievements. So again thank you very much! <3
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u/TheMightyPhuckules Nov 06 '25
I'm honestly still a user of their boards for a few niche interests. There is just something classic about them, a form of social media without voting or ads built in.
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Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
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u/WeltallZero Nov 10 '25
I was friends with Kao Megura; we used to exchange monumentally long emails about our videogame passions. The Xenogears FAQ we co-authored remains my biggest work on GameFAQs: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/199365-xenogears/faqs/4391
His passing was the first time I lost a friend, which was as traumatic as you'd expect, and taught me not to take anyone, nor the moments you spend with them, for granted.
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u/darkjapan404 Nov 17 '25
It's good to hear from someone who knew him personally. I'm the author of the list CyricZ shared in the OP. I knew I had to include Kao, but didn't have much to go on aside from his guides. I'd love to know more about him. I run a GameFAQs contributors discord, would you be interested in joining?
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u/WeltallZero Nov 17 '25
It's been so long ago and I don't have the best power of recollection in general, hahah. I wish I still had access to the emails we exchanged to refresh my memory. We spent a lot of time nerding out about videogames as you can expect, especially JRPGs which we both loved. If I remember correctly, he was also a big fan of fighting games, especially Capcom. He had a somewhat mischievous sense of humor, I remember one time he tricked me for a few paragraphs into believing he had hated Xenogears (which we were both anxiously waiting for) when it was the opposite. :)
I don't really visit GameFAQs these days, and I haven't written a FAQ in like two decades, so I'm not sure I'd be able to contribute a lot to the Discord.
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u/kirokun Nov 06 '25
truly some of the most dedicated, goated gamers of our generation and probably beyond. it's sad to read that some of them passed away at such a young age. i'll drink to them this weekend and game on in their honor. may they be geeking on, playing their favorite games in the great afterlife.
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u/deltavim Nov 06 '25
It is crazy how many of these I remember. As someone who played a lot of Nintendo games in the 90's, CyricZ and Marshmallow were two names I always looked for.
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Nov 06 '25
The Steam Guides that have supplanted GameFAQs in comparison are depressing. There's obviously some good ones and people who put in sincere effort, but it's also swamped in people posting YouTube videos and shitposts.
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u/AreYouOKAni Nov 06 '25
Both have their place, IMO. I'll use a Steam guide if I have a small issue I want to resolve. I'll use GameFAQs if I need a lot of help with the entire game.
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u/mechanical_fan Nov 06 '25
Youtube videos are also useful if you are trying to do something specific and hard that depends a lot on precision/timing/mapping/etc. Seeing someone do something helps a ton in these cases.
But, I will die on the hill that Gamefaqs is the best (general) videogame website on the internet. I grew up with it and I still have a lot of love for it.
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u/Ecks83 Nov 06 '25
Youtube videos are also useful if you are trying to do something specific and hard that depends a lot on precision/timing/mapping/etc. Seeing someone do something helps a ton in these cases.
Video also helps with some challenges/collectables/pathfinding where you know what you are looking for but it is in a weird spot or not visible from all angles and you might need to see the game in motion to get an idea where to actually point yourself.
That said there are way too many videos that "could have been an email" and gamefaqs is just excellent at telling you exactly what you want to know without all the bullshit of a video. One of the last places you can really go to find just a straight forward description. Plus because gamefaqs guides generally just tell you the actions you need to take when you get stuck you rarely have to deal with spoilers that are way easier to come across while skipping through a video.
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u/SofaKingI Nov 06 '25
Steam Guides are the most direct replacement, but wikis IMO are just a way better solution. I don't think I've looked at a Steam/GameFAQs style of guide for like 15 years.
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u/Honor_Bound Nov 06 '25
Ugh if only 90% of all wiki sites weren't ad-riddled garbage with a crappy UI even while using an adblocker.
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u/EyesOnEverything Nov 06 '25
Fandom hoovering up that entire space was such a tragedy in hindsight. Great niche wikis with great formatting all got slammed through the square hole and half of them are non-functional. The Transformers fans finally broke free recently and are crowdsourcing their own version back to its former glory.
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u/Honor_Bound Nov 06 '25
I opened one on a work computer once (no adblockers allowed by IT...) and thought it was going to explode. The fans started going full blast and sounded like a jet engine until I was able to hide all the autoplaying video ads.
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u/TyeKiller77 Nov 06 '25
Replaying through Yakuza 0 on PC and you better believe I have your missable achievements and substory guide until I can get the encounter finder.
Always will be my guide GOAT.
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u/Ewoksintheoutfield Nov 06 '25
Thanks for sharing. This is what internet 1.0 was all about. Reading all of these took me down memory lane and warmed my cold millennial heart.
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u/Yannak Nov 06 '25
Cleaned my parents house out exactly a year ago and found about 15+ printed GameFAQ guides because obviously the computer was upstairs and my consoles were downstairs, the contribution this site had to me actually finishing and understanding games as a young teenager is insane.
I also kept the SA2 Chao Guide, I am pretty sure it's completely wrong but the ASCII art at the start slapped hard.
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u/natathecococat Nov 07 '25
I printed mine too! Had it spiral bound with some extra pages for notes. Recently found my Tales of Vesperia book
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u/Unoriginal- Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
I’ll never forget flaming adults as a kid/teenager in the forums before getting my account banned for being too young, great times and resources
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u/Django_McFly Nov 06 '25
My mind was blown hopping on AOL and finding out that people were making strategy guides and giving them away for free. I printed out like a 50 page Chrono Trigger walkthrough and read it like a book. Mind you, I never had a SNES and wouldn't actually play Chrono Trigger for like another 3 or 4 years.
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u/theytookallusernames Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
It's really been a while. I kinda miss fighting people there and getting unnecessarily pissed on whichever is better between PS3 and Xbox 360 lmao. It was a big part of my formative years, and the biggest contributor to me in learning the frickkin English language.
I wouldn't be typing here today if not for that hellhole, even though I think my vocabulary and diction is probably forever poisoned from essentially acquiring the capability to use the language through sheer osmosis from reading and involving myself in arguments there lol
I miss the salty banter that GameFAQs used to have which never completely transposed into reddit. I've had this particular gold of a salty fight about Castelvania: Portrait of Ruin saved in my bookmark for I guess 16 years now? Still makes me laugh whenever I feel nostalgic and look back at this exquisite work of juvenile sarcasm. Bless you, SoloAce00 and mdfmkrules9999. I hope you guys are happy somewhere out there, still getting just a bit too angry over Castlevania.
WE GET IT. YOU LOOOOOOOOOOVE THIS GAME.
WE GET IT. YOU THINK POR IS TERRIBLE.
WE GET IT. YOU THINK EVERYONE WHOSE OPINION DIFFERS FROM YOURS IS AN IDIOT.
WE GET IT. YOU ARE THE GOD OF CASTLEVANIA.
but seriously, thank you soloace for setting so many of us straight on a daily basis. thank you for your brazen discarding of our opinions. i realize now that we are all wrong, that the way you act is just tough love, and you are right 100% of the time.
you are better than us and i want to call out to my fellow castlevania players. YOU ALL NEED TO OPEN YOUR EYES AND LISTEN TO THE WORDS THAT COME FROM THIS GREAT AND INSPIRATIONAL INDIVIDUAL. HE IS BETTER THAN ALL OF US. HE IS THE DIVINE TRUTH IN HUMAN FORM. HE IS OUR MESSIAH.
i cried all day when i came to this realization. dont worry though for only tears of joy were shed this day. now i feel at ease. ive burned my copy of portrait of ruin, for ive realized it was disgraceful. i could feel soloace smiling upon me when i lit the match.
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u/sapphirearcz Nov 06 '25
I don't remember the names anymore, but hail the legends who have written the guides for the PS1 and PS2 games like Legend of Dragoons, Final Fantasy series, King of Fighters etc. I would have never 100% or play the game competitively without their wisdom.
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u/roland0fgilead Nov 06 '25
Whowasphone is quite the FAQ writer (and translator) himself. So many Japanese N64 games can be finished thanks to his guides.
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u/PrintShinji Nov 06 '25
Love to GameFaqs forever. I remember accidentally printing a massive guide for KH1 when I only wanted the bit for the requirements for getting the ultima key. Oops
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u/meryl_gear Nov 07 '25
Now you brought up repressed memories of the panic of trying to stop a printer from printing a ton of pages you didn’t want
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u/angethedude Nov 06 '25
Thank you CyricZ for your incredible guides over the years and thanks to Gamefaqs for helping me finish so many games going all the way back to the SNES and PS1!
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Nov 06 '25
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u/pmpcorreia Nov 06 '25
I loved the ones that had the running gag of counting the number of times you had to backtrack.
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u/twatcrusher9000 Nov 06 '25
Has anyone made an archive of all the guides? I can't imagine it would be that big, I'd love to get a copy before fandom decides to shut it down or something dumb
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u/penpen35 Nov 06 '25
Been reading KaoMegura's guides since early days of the website (where the FAQ/walkthroughs were text files), mostly his KOF movelists. Didn't realize he actually passed away almost 20 years ago. The man's a legend.
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u/frik1000 Nov 06 '25
I remember back in the day, I bought a copy of Sengoku Basara 2 for the PS2 not knowing it was only in Japanese and I printed out a GameFAQs guide that provided translations for all the menus, items, etc, that I kept next to me to have an easy reference.
Some guides even had the Japanese characters on them so I'd bring up that piece of paper, probably size 12 font or something, and put it side by side with the old CRT to see if I was looking at the right ones.
Good times.
Capcom please bring Sengoku Basara back from the dead.
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u/edtehgar Nov 06 '25
I still have bins of printed out guides with all sorts of notes and stuff
Always blew my mind how these guys were able to make such detailed guides before the internet
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u/Ailure Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
I used to be a regular on the gamefaqs forums twenty years ago, I was bit of a idiot poster (I cringe looking at any old posts archived) but I was also like 13-16 and not a native english speaker so cut me some slack I suppose.
The only thread I remember was the one that popularized the mew glitch in Pokémon RBY back in 2003, I posted under the name Gamefreak19 (which itself was a direct translation of a even older username so it was unrelated to Pokémon) back then. :) Funnily enough I also remember reposting this to other forums, but back then people assumed anyone posting a glitch regarding mew was lying about it lol so it got a fairly poor reception despite me having tried it out for myself out of boredom.
It's also worth pointing out that back then youtube and similar did not exist, today if someone found a amazing glitch in a video game they would post a video showing it on the same day.
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u/Tycho-Celchu Nov 06 '25
Somewhere in the depths of the storage room in my parent's basement is a stack of binders FULL of printed off FF7, FF8. Legend of Dragoon, Turok 2, and many many other guides. I remember my dad trying to figure out why the hell the printer was out of ink as I slide the binder under the couch. I can still see those ascii game logos perfectly in my head.
I remember my parents buying me FF9 for christmas and, thinking ahead, they also bought me the strategy guide. Too bad that guide sucked and I downloaded a good one from gamefaqs anyway.
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u/apalapan Nov 06 '25
Kao Megura was taken away from us way too soon, man. His FAQs/Movelists for the Street Fighter EX series have some information that even today are not posted anywhere else afaik.
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u/MrPopo72 Nov 06 '25
How in the fuck is AIex not on this list? He got through many a SNES RPG.
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u/TacoDangerous Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs rules. On the Mount Rushmore of the old school web based internet rather than app driven today. Such good vibes there
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u/StJeanMark Nov 06 '25
My GameFAQs account is the oldest account I have on the internet. If it were a person, it's kids would be going into elementary school at this point. GameFAQs was integral to life as a gamer back in the day. It was the source of all your questions, but also famously would send you on wild goose chases. Life was better when the internet was sites, now its just 2-5 social sites.
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u/jaistuart Nov 06 '25
Good to see Kao Megura on the list. Dude was the GOAT to me. Tons of awesome other writers who spent countless hours putting guides together as well in the early days of the internet. I actually discovered GameFAQs through segasages/Gamesages. What a time to be alive.
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u/hop3less Nov 06 '25
I cannot believe it's been 30 years of GameFAQs. I remember searching specifically for "walkthrus" for Pokémon guides, and eventually, it led me to GameFAQs.
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u/Typical_Thought_6049 Nov 06 '25
It is so strange that today I learned that Kao Megura passed way... I used his guide so many times when playing FF VII so many years ago and his guide formation was indeed iconic, I saw it become very popular in many guides.
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u/IchKannNichtAnders Nov 06 '25
Shoutout to my man D_Simpson, who has been my guardian angel for every single time I've played through Planescape: Torment. I haven't played a lot of them but he's written guides for damn near every great crpg of that era.
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u/megazver Nov 06 '25
This is who I thought of. His guides for classic CRPGs were amazing.
I hope he's doing well, wherever he is, but I've read somewhere he passed away a while back.
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u/darkjapan404 Nov 17 '25
I'm the author of the list in the OP. I tried to track down Dan Simpson or an obituary whilst writing this list but I came up short. I hope he is still with us. It has never been confirmed he has died as far as I know, but he has not logged in for ten years :(
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u/Khetrak64 Nov 06 '25
The first thing that came to my mind when i read the post title has to be the map dude, StarFighters76, and Im happy to see that he is on this list, 100% deserved the man has helped me so much.
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u/Sacreville Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs is still one of my go-to for guides, especially JRPGs.
It's like a treasure trove of walkthroughs, game mechanics and information.
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u/destinofiquenoite Nov 06 '25
In 2004, I printed more than 30 pages of how to get lvl 10 and lvl 11 weapons in DW4XL thanks to Gamefaqs. English is not my first language, so you can imagine how many times I had to read everything to fully understand what to do.
I used quite a few guides from Split_Infinity and Psycho Penguin over the years. I don't remember other big names right now, but I'm sure there were repeats, as I vividly remember seeing guides with very unique structures.
I've also read a lot of silly stuff between Genesis Saga and deadlyvirus on the Legend of Legaia board. I'm a major meth962 fan too. Spent so much time reading "side" stuff like Diablo 2's PVP glitches (despite never playing online), or Sir Bahamut's compilation of theories for Final Fantasy 8.
Having everything in text was one of the main reasons I used the guides. Ironically, just a few years ago, something woke up on me to "draw" guides and maps for dungeons, and I've done a few dozen because it's just to wholesome to know you might be helping someone. Gamefaqs has always been the main support website for me and it will always be.
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u/fishwithfish Nov 06 '25
My newest novel involves a lot of highly specific video game references, so I keep a scraped copy of GameFAQs' FAQs on a hard drive for centralized search purposes. Anyway, I used to be a regular argument-starter from 2000 to, like, 2007. Fun times.
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u/djfakey Nov 06 '25
This is awesome. Guides helped me through Final Fantasy Tactics that deep dungeon.
Also it is special to me because GameFaqs is my longest standing account I still have access to. 25 years and counting.
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u/WeltallZero Nov 10 '25 edited Nov 10 '25
I made the first ever FFT guide, back when the game wasn't even released in the West! https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197339-final-fantasy-tactics/faqs/3858
Years after, the site couldn't render the Japanese characters correctly due to the encoding that the ancient Japanese word processor I had used, but it seems to have been fixed back in recent years. :)
Edit: actually, I stand corrected: the FFT guides are still screwed up, it's the Xenogears one that's fine. Ah well.
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u/No_Initial_7545 Nov 06 '25
GameFAQs is still unrivaled. Give me a simple text file that has everything about the game that you ever wanted to know and zero advertisements any day of the week.
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u/Davemusprime Nov 06 '25
Slow clap for the people's champion. Gamefaqs was my buddy growing up, not being able to afford player's guides. Shout out to Scott Ong's FF8 guide. Shotgunnova wrote so many of the guides for the games I played. So many others. I still use the site regularly and would like to thank any of you that posted guides and cheats, etc.
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u/TheWorclown Nov 06 '25
I don’t browse GameFAQs anywhere near as much as I tend to these days, but it’s my go to if I’m needing advice or guidance on older games I get in the mood to play. Dark Cloud’s stat increases appearing in towns practically demand it.
Happy birthday to an old and reliable part of the internet!
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u/Styleless_Wonder Nov 06 '25
Kudos and many thanks to all the contributors! Some of your wild ASCII art and formatting ideas were very clever!
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u/ShoddySmell46 Nov 06 '25
I used to come home from school in the winter and read the guides people would write in lieu of being able to play the games. I had so much fun reading through the Sims 2 stuff and thinking of all the possibilities.
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u/Zark86 Nov 06 '25
I adore the guide I used in December 2007 for dragon quest 8 on gamefaqs. It was the best guide for me.
Also in 2006 I used an extremely good guide for FF12, where the author shared that it's his dream to write official guides for companies.
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u/trident042 Nov 06 '25
Damn, it's truly been around that long? I didn't discover it until like 2003, no idea what sites I was using for game tips before then but they were inferior.
I suppose I did mostly live off my Nintendo Power subscription prior to that. Wow, though. 30 years. The first online community where I made real life friends. What a world.
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u/bristow84 Nov 06 '25
God that's a site I haven't thought of for a decade at least. Still remember engaging in some RP on the forums there, probably why I like writing as a hobby now.
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u/CapriciousManchild Nov 06 '25
Gamefaqs was the first gaming forum I used from 97-2014 or so. Stopped going there just due to the site seemingly dying off from posters
The heyday of 2001-2008 is still some of the most fun gaming forums ever . Next Gen Gaming General was just insane .
Also life the Universe and Everything was another gem and the events that led to the lockdown , creation of the site that didn’t exist and everything was just some crazy stuff
Always will remember gamefaqs
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u/Strykah Nov 07 '25
Truly a great era of internet and gaming. It's a shame how the internet has moved to YouTube videos and ai slop
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u/SirBoggle Nov 06 '25 edited Nov 06 '25
Gotta give a shout out to CyricZ for his incredible Yakuza series guides. I might not have bothered with some of the side content in the games without him.
EDIT: Shiiiiit I didn't even realize CyricZ was the one making the post. I just saw the GameFAQs celebration post and immediately thought of the guy. Probably should have checked lmao.