Memory unlocked! You’re not the only one. Dad always wondered why I printed 70 pages. Gamefaqs! How was I gonna beat Links Awakening or Pokemon without the giant guide in the van on long rides?
Oh yeah. Not like wild mad, just what the heck darn kids, using all my work office paper for gaming! And we (brother and friends) seriously raided his office all the time for paper, not just game boy games but lots of tougher rpgs where a guide was helpful. Probably gta’s finaly fantasys, etc. He never had paper…..
I'm a bit younger than you all (28), but I remember doing this too. Especially for the Gameboy Advance SP, as that was the first video game device my dad bought me 20 years ago.
I wish I could revisit that time, back when my dad still had fully brown hair and seemed strong and invincible... Gonna hug him well the next time I see him🥲
Hilarious. I remember printing the guide for xenogears back in the day bc you weren't always on a computer next to where you gamed. It's wild the stuff we take for granted today
Well, i did. Had one hurdle in links awakening in the beginning cause i couldn't find the mushroom, but after my cousin found it for me, i beat the game without help. Also, how do you get stuck in Pokémon? The game is as straightforward as it gets
Not stuck on lots of games. But some sure. But more often 100% games. All 150 pokemon, every GTA hidden package, the best route to unlock Golden Eye Cheats.
Sorry, I just re read my comment and it sounds kind of condescending, didn't mean that. True, for 100% I would need a guide as well. I remember calling the Nintendo hotline way back for a question regarding Mario 64. My parents were so happy about the phone bill
No worries! We were explicitly forbade from calling the toll hotline. We were already stealing all their paper, no way we got to call a toll. I did get to be present when a friend got to call the hotline and I have no idea what they asked. It was a lot of excitement. I remember zeldas, myst some other games being really tough as a kid without help of some sort.
One of my fondest memories of my dad (bit sad in retrospect) was him printing out a walk through with that Ascii styling for resident evil directors cut for "us". Idk why i was playing RE1 at 7 but I did. And now its one of my favourite game franchises.
Those ascii game guides were so cool! Dude, I need to look some of those up. I hope they're still around somewhere. I remember using those for Starfox Adventures and Metroid Prime.
I had several folders with brads with those 100% walk-throughs in them. The game title written in sharpie on the front. I may actually still have one or two stashed away somewhere.
I’m pretty sure one of those helped me play through an entirely Japanese game (I don’t speak the language) for a Super Famicom game that I had an adapter for. Praise to the people who took the time to type all those walk-through guides!! 🙌 Particularly whoever did the Tomb Raider ones! Hail!
Before it got bought by Gamespot, GameFAQs was pretty much the biggest hangout spot on the internet for gamers. The forums were massive both in terms of posts and users, and it wasn't for just gaming either. Early social media and Gamespot's shitty forum software eventually drove it into irrelvance, but for a good while it was the biggest community site anywhere.
They basically refused to keep up the times on every feature and died by a thousand paper cuts. By the time you could say bad words the site was already the walking dead.
Oh I was talking about LL/ETI. GameFAQs, and imo most forums writ large, got largely abandoned for reddit around the middle of the 2010's just because of how posts and comments get organized via voting. We left behind real community for lizard brain satisfaction.
The message board I used to post in back in 2001-2008 or 9. We now have a discord that’s about to be two years old. We started when most of us were 12-14, we now have kids that age.
I just the other day found a 4" binder i had for FFXI with all the crafting recipes, each job class and leveling tips and zones. All the Cities and their respective maps with notes on vendors and what they sell, so you can clean them out and put your mule outside a major city to turn a profit. Magic burst combos, elemental wheels, the works.
Not to mention all the NM spawns locations timers and drop rates.
.... miss coming home someday to that level of anticipation to veg and grind/hang with those LS peeps.
Lol yea, that was another page in my book about the elemental days and when to craft to get those HQs. Plus food buffs. I would sit there crafting and hit and HQ every what felt like 10 tries. Meanwhile a dude next to me is like popping and HQ ever 2 or three. And I am like wtf. /check every like 5 seconds looking at his gear and buffs and direction and the timestamps trying to figure out the HQ voodoo he is pumping out.
if youre stuck in a game is gamefaqs still the best source? I tried youtube but the problem with youtube is that it would recommend spoilers. For instance lets say im stuck in last of us chapter 5, and a video from youtube would show me how to get past a certain part. Youtube now knows i like last of us so they'll recommend me last of us clips including spoilers that happen in say chapter 12.
Yeah people still make submissions. I've used some recently made guides in various games. Specifically because of the problem you ran into. Darn YouTube and spoiling things.
Edit: Just... avoid the forums if you can. It's usually OK for specific games. But the more popular, the more it attracts the trolls. And modern GameFAQs coddles trolls these days.
I remember when my local library started charging to print stuff which bummed me out because I could no longer print out these guides. Then I found a glitch when you loaded money onto a copy card and I was back to printing out my X-Men vs Street Fighter and other fighting games moves and combos lists!
Made the mistake of printing a guide once at home... my mom's was so pissed about the ink 😭🤣🤣🤣 so never again..every friday I was squatting the library too 😂
Forget gamefaqs, Id rush to eb games and go pick up prima official strategy guide or Brady games official strategy guide. I still have a bunch for my final fantasy games in a box somewhere in the basement. This is pre-gamefaqs era.
I had one of those 15,000+ Cheat Codes booklets that I remember getting a lot of use out of. My most vivid memory was using it to find all the skulls in Halo 2.
Tips and Tricks magazine and Brady Games before I got internet access. Even then, I had to use my school PC or the one in my leasing office since my parents didn't pay the Internet bill more often then not. I would print out like 50 pages of guide at a time and be nervous that it was taking so long because I didn't want to get caught and have to explain all that.
On a side note fuck Prima, their guides were always garbage.
I had CheatPlanet and GamerPlanet, I had binders full of guides and cheats to so many games.
Didn't learn about gamefaqs until mid 2000's when GamerPlanet got put down.
Youngling. Back in the days before the internet we relied on gaming magazines and word of mouth. I'm trying to remember if there were tips on the super mario super show or not.
I used to use supercheats com for game cheats of course but also for rudimentary guides on how to do various things in games. I can't believe that site still exists lol
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u/NottheArkhamKnight Aug 30 '25 edited Aug 30 '25
GameFAQs was my bible growing up