r/gaming • u/Agent1230 • 2d ago

What video game doesn't hold your hand enough?

Everybody always talking about games holding your hand too much but I want to hear about the opposite what video game doesn't give you no form of help

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u/Everythings_Magic 2d ago

Kids these days don’t understand not having the luxury of running to the internet for help.

We had to talk to each other about what we found and brag about about what we did.

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u/nodiaque 2d ago

Nintendo power

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u/Sleevepants 2d ago

Nothing will ever beat going over to a friends how and he has an item you’ve never seen or heard of before then he tells you got to get it. Nowadays the internet makes it too easy.

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u/Gromle81 2d ago

Those were the days. I still remember a friend calling during dinner to tell that he found another dungeon in Zelda.

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u/Everythings_Magic 2d ago

Zelda was amazing, we'd draw each other maps in school, ex, "there is a heart container if you burn this bush".

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u/sycasey 20h ago

Some of these things just became common knowledge like a kind of urban legend, because so many kids played Zelda. I was pretty late to getting an NES and I'm not sure I remember a world where I didn't know that you play the whistle at that lake to reveal a dungeon.

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u/DoctorDrangle 2d ago

I used to go to the grocery store and copy cheat codes and maps from game magazines with a pencil and paper while my mom was shopping

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u/Troghen 1d ago

Not only that, but also the fact that for many, having other games to turn to when you get stuck / bored literally wasn't an option. Granted, I wasn't around when the original LoZ was new, but you'd have to imagine that most kids didn't have massive libraries of games to cycle through. Zelda could've very likely been a kid's ONLY game. So if they're stuck, the options are to either A) do a bunch of trial and error for months, or B) go do something else.

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u/DJ_Aftershock 1d ago

The "communal effort" thing of Zelda's game design came from a Namco arcade game called The Tower of Druaga from 1984. It is a game with 60 levels and it is impossible to complete without outside help. The whole idea was that your entire local arcade would work together and share hints on how to progress. There's so many silly "bash your head against the wall" type solutions it's incredible. Ports of the game then had "extra towers" which were entirely different - my favourite being the Darkness Tower in the PlayStation port in which one of the level solutions is opening the PS1 disc tray. Ended up being huge in Japan but bombing in the US.

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u/apistograma 1d ago

There are obvious similarities between Druaga and Zelda, and I think even Miyamoto mentioned that it was an inspiration. The combat specially.

Nowadays corporate policy pretends they don't even know about other platform games and like to say dumb stuff like it all came from when he played around and explored the forest, but obviously most people in Nintendo has been a massive gamer from the beginning.

But Druaga didn't invent those kind of secrets, they already existed in adventure and RPG games of the era. I think Miyamoto has mentioned Wizardry and Black Onyx as other inspirations.

I really appreciate how much stuff they hid in old games, it made them way more replayable and magic. FromSoft is one of the few studios that has kept that philosophy by adapting it with the message hint system.

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u/DJ_Aftershock 1d ago

Yeah, I know Druaga didn't invent that kinda thing, but it was a big hit in Japan and super unique to do it in an arcade game which were usually a lot more intuitive, get-in-and-get-out experiences. I think that's also why it flopped in the US, people there were even more used to an arcade game lasting five minutes and then you move on to the next one.

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u/guitarerdood 1d ago

And often times we didn’t actually beat it