The excellent proofreading alone puts it above GameFAQs.

November 4, 2007 1:50 PM

Most video game walkthroughs on the web are in text form- GameFAQs is perhaps the best-known host for them. Sometimes text just isn't enough, though, and that's when Visual Walkthroughs comes into play, offering screenshot-based walkthroughs for a number of games like Ghost Master, Deus Ex, and Half-Life 2.

Be sure to check out the screensavers made from his screenshots.

posted by Pope Guilty (61 comments total)

CHEATERS!

Wait, what? No I did not! I DID NOT. You LIE!

Ok, maybe. Maybe I had to use the graphic novel length guidebook to finish the first Metroid on the NES. Maybe.
posted by loquacious at 1:54 PM on November 4, 2007

The flash ads and pop-unders make it far more annoying than gameFAQs
posted by b1tr0t at 1:56 PM on November 4, 2007

Objectivistnutjob tag? Why so?

*peruses some of the walkthroughs*

Ah...

His City of Heroes character is name Ms. Ayn Rand. This is the description: "A Russian immigrant, Ayn Rand came to Paragon City with the singular purpose of defeating the dual enemies of collectivism and altruism. Her Objectivist philosophy of rational self interest and pure laissez faire capitalism will lead Paragon City to new heights of freedom, liberty, abundance, and architectural splendor." The Bioshock walkthrough is also a good example.
posted by Kattullus at 1:58 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

Whatever. If you can't get through a game with a text description it is time to quit gaming.

Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?

Congratulations, you can beat a game by following step by step instructions. You are awesome.

I got an idea, I'm gonna program a cheat into the next Zelda. You press 1 it progresses through 1/4 of the way through the game. Press 2 you get halfway. 3 3/4. 4 and you beat it. Or if you are too lazy to actually play the game hold down 1 and start the game. No playing necessary!

/rant
posted by andryeevna at 1:59 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

This is all well and good, but walk-throughs don't work for that FUCKING CHARLIE DANIELS SONG in guitar hero 3 on hard. I beat 1 and 2 on expert, but dear lord, I am only human. Satan is a cheater.
posted by Mach5 at 2:02 PM on November 4, 2007

I've found recently that there's some videos over at YouTube (I won't bother you with links, just do a search over there for your favorite game if you're so inclined) where talented players record whatever happens on their screens during a game and then they post it to the web. That way someone like me who's far too incompetent at playing these games can see highlights of the Superman game or the Hulk game or Vice City GTA or whatever. I wanna cheat so much I don't wanna bother playing. I just wanna see what happens.

There's some Justice League game with some pretty cool cutscenes. I got to see them all together in YouTube videos and it was like watching an animated feature, without being interrupted by several hours of trying to beat the next level of the game.

I wish movies of games existed when I played Tomb Raider. Cuz in hindsight I had no real fun trudging my way through that. I just liked watching her jump around on the rocks and stuff. I wasn't trying to win anything. Exploring the caves was what made it fun. Seeing what was behind the next corner. Always ticked me off when what was behind the next corner was spikes. Again. I already saw those.

I tried playing American McGee's Alice a couple years ago. I sucked. Recently I got to see the rest of what happened in that game. It was cool, cuz the videos were made by someone who could actually play the game well.

Screenshots? Hell. Show me movie files! LOL!
posted by ZachsMind at 2:05 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

"Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?"

Uh. No. I drank those days into oblivion.

"I got an idea, I'm gonna program a cheat into the next Zelda. You press 1 it progresses through 1/4 of the way through the game. Press 2 you get halfway. 3 3/4. 4 and you beat it."

You might have something there!
posted by ZachsMind at 2:07 PM on November 4, 2007

I'm going to wager there isn't a video walk-through for KOL, that would be very meta though.
posted by edgeways at 2:12 PM on November 4, 2007

unfortunately the walkthroughs are still just text but to be fair to cheaters of that game, you can't play KOL unless you're telepathically linked to Jink's brain and have been exposed to every random cultural reference he remembered while he was drunk and making that game.
posted by ZachsMind at 2:19 PM on November 4, 2007

I thought Gamefaqs choose to remain text based only due to copyright concerns when publishing multiple screenshots of a videogame. Fair Use can only take you so far, right?
posted by motherfather at 2:20 PM on November 4, 2007

The only visual guide to Deus Ex you'll ever need.
posted by dismas at 2:21 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?

The days of gaming magazines, 900 lines, and games that you just fucking put down because some bullshit puzzle killed your enjoyment of the game?

Look, Gamefaqs is a great, great resource. When I'm playing a game, I'm doing it for fun. If the thing I really enjoy about a given game is the puzzles, then, no, I'm not going to go running to an FAQ every time I get caught up. I'm not cheating my way through Picross, etc.

But if the developer fucks up and makes a bad puzzle, or a bad design decision, or by some other means gets between me and enjoying their game, I can either beat my head against it until I decide to drop the game entirely, or I can get past whatever the hurdle is with a little help from the internet.

I gave up on pride over enjoyment in my games a long time ago. If I want to enjoy a good hair-tearing session, I'll pick a game that makes that fun; nethack, or dwarf fortress, or a good old SCUMMer or whatever.
posted by cortex at 2:39 PM on November 4, 2007 [6 favorites]

Seconding what cortex said. Games are fun for different reasons, but rarely does the fun come from spending hours trying to figure out what one is supposed to do, or from repeatedly dying because you missed one thing earlier in the game.
posted by Godbert at 2:42 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

Actually, there is a video walkthrough for KoL.
posted by shadow vector at 2:43 PM on November 4, 2007

I don't speak German, but I thought this video walkthrough (spoiler alert, obviously) of the Half Life games was very helpful.

More seriously, Speed Demos Archive is along similar lines to what ZachsMind was talking about. It's the more generalized version of (and new home to) Quake Done Quick.

The videos there make great time killers when you're not able to... you know, play the games. Some of them can also serve as walkthroughs, although the focus on speed means that they may take shortcuts that are impractical or unfun for John Q. Nukem.
posted by Riki tiki at 2:59 PM on November 4, 2007

Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?

- I remember the good'ole days when games weren't designed with hint book sales in mind.

- I remember the good'ole days when games were designed by designers, not committee.

- I remember the good'ole days when games with stories were valued over never ending, immersive online monstrosities where you had to pay to play with 13-year-old kewl d00dz.

- I remember the good'ole days when games were shipped AFTER being play tested, not before.

In light of these recent and other developments some games are simply unplayable without a walkthrough built from numerous hours of frustrated owners trying and failing to fix, or solve, or even get running their latest $50 investment. See also Neverwinter Nights I & II ad infinitum.
posted by wfrgms at 3:05 PM on November 4, 2007 [5 favorites]

I agree with cortex, too. Walkthroughs can be really useful if you are stuck on something. I would have loved that Ghost Master walk through, for example - it was a fun game that would have been extremely frustrating and no fun at all without a tiny bit of online help.

It can also be a lot of fun to see how others did things - like least portals or least steps in Portal for example - once you have completed them on your own. Sometimes, like with my very favorite games, reading them can also be a fun way to remember a game that you can no longer easily play for whatever reason - like the original Monkey Islands or similar.
posted by gemmy at 3:09 PM on November 4, 2007

previously
semi-double
posted by WolfDaddy at 3:16 PM on November 4, 2007

Not too rain on your parade or anything, wfrgms, but your "good'ole days" never existed. Hint-book-sales-driven, committee-designed, buggy-as-an-antfarm computer games have been with us since the days of the Atari 2600. Though I also miss the days when PC gaming wasn't dominated by MMO games.
posted by Kattullus at 3:17 PM on November 4, 2007

I'll pass on the lectures regarding BioShock's apparent philosophical failings ("Why do they make fun of poor Ayn Rand? Why!?").

What a dick.
posted by billypilgrim at 3:17 PM on November 4, 2007

Remember Nintendo Power maps?

Now, those were epic walkthroughs.
posted by pokermonk at 3:19 PM on November 4, 2007

andryeevna writes "Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?"

Yeah. I remember those days. I used to really struggle and work at figuring out difficult parts of games. It was hardcore.

Then I realized that it wasn't any fucking fun to do so. Now I don't struggle through problems, and I actually enjoy my games.
posted by Bugbread at 3:20 PM on November 4, 2007

Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?

Dude, have you ever played Dungeon 9 on the original NES Legend of Zelda? I will eat my pointy green hat if you can beat that without a walkthrough.
posted by Demogorgon at 3:21 PM on November 4, 2007

All of you whining about the good old days, go and play ICO. That's what the good old days would've been like, if they ever existed. Seriously, I can't think of any game which feels more - well, I really don't want to use the word "auteured", but it feels appropriate, if pretentious. I've recently finished re-playing it after a gap long enough to more or less forget the puzzles' solutions, and was blown away all over again. That it sold less than a million worldwide, apparently, while far, far, far worse titles routinely sell twice that is something of a travesty.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 3:25 PM on November 4, 2007

I can't help it. I've got to pile on about the non-greatness of the old puzzle-based games, if only to make sure that there's a link to Old Man Murray's piece about the awfulness of those utterly random puzzles and their "absurd dream logic".

I mean, in HHGTTG you could figure out the Babel Fish puzzle by stages - even if you'd completely screwed yourself by not getting the junk mail at the start, you could at least tell that you needed something to stop the robot but didn't have it.

But far too many of the old adventures - including other parts of HHGTTG - left you with no clues whatsoever about the particular combination of random God-damned things you needed to complete a particular puzzle. No aspect of the puzzle was amenable to reason; you just had to keep working your way through a combinatorial explosion until something happened or you died of old age.

(Not that old adventures were ALL like that. I liked this description of the difference between the protagonist of Full Throttle and the average adventure game hero. But, then again, the game didn't really live up to that promise...)
posted by dansdata at 4:01 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

The death knell for computer gaming was struck when you no longer needed graph paper and a pencil to draw your own maps. I said it at the time and no one believed me. Automapping was the first nail in the coffin.

Who is laugh now, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg? Who is laughing now?
posted by Justinian at 4:24 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

I just relived Out of this World without actually having to do all the frustrating parts. Thanks!

sooooo good.
posted by aubilenon at 4:47 PM on November 4, 2007

Who is laugh now? My english no good. Hope me.
posted by Justinian at 4:47 PM on November 4, 2007

Kattullus writes "Hint-book-sales-driven, committee-designed, buggy-as-an-antfarm computer games have been with us since the days of the Atari 2600."

In those days, a game could be programmed by one person, and often they were. There was a lot of experimentation, but the games weren't really buggy. Some were poor adaptions, like Pac Man for the Atari 2600, but I don't recall any that crashed or that required hint books.
posted by krinklyfig at 4:51 PM on November 4, 2007

I have to second that point about Neverwinter Knights. I felt like I was missing something because people raved so much about the first game. I just couldn't squeeze any enjoyment out of it. I Later reasoned that it was more of an "experience" than a game of any sort. Once It's presentation is superseded by others, the novelty of it's graphics, it's "system of gameplay" ( an arguable D&D reincarnation) wears off, It has no staying power or replay value to speak of. It doesn't seem to require any skill or other than familiarizing yourself with it's encyclopedic rule book. Even today I skim through that book and try to get where one is supposed to receive enjoyment from the damn game. I concluded that 1) you are supposed to enjoy simply watching your character grow (A level of geekdom i hope to never reach) 2) Enjoy the graphics and the rather gimmicky "non-linear" gameplay and storyline (which is indeed linear) 3) Enjoy the actually superb score and atmospheric sounds and actually well written dialogue.( too bad I was never a fantasy story fan, that might have made the game worth it for me) It's only strenghts.

Needless to say I never finished even with looking at walkthroughs on the web. After all the rave about the first one, a second installment was released (with probably more of the same) but got a lower score and all the gripes I had about the first one, the critics mentioned about the second one. This probably speaks to the excitable nature of the tech/geek community and why they love hype and being disappointed again and again. I Don't get it.
posted by Student of Man at 5:05 PM on November 4, 2007

Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?

Even then we had invisiclues.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 5:25 PM on November 4, 2007

I'll pass on the lectures regarding BioShock's apparent philosophical failings ("Why do they make fun of poor Ayn Rand? Why!?").

What a dick.

Yeah, that always makes me go "Ummm... right, just show me how to play the game." Of course, Emmanuel Goldstein has been fending off "Your politics suxx0r, publish nothing but l337 ha4xx articles from now on" since he started publishing 2600, so I don't want to be that guy, even if I do believe that I'm right and he's wrong.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:25 PM on November 4, 2007

Half Life in 60 seconds
posted by empath at 5:29 PM on November 4, 2007

In those days, a game could be programmed by one person, and often they were. There was a lot of experimentation, but the games weren't really buggy. Some were poor adaptions, like Pac Man for the Atari 2600, but I don't recall any that crashed or that required hint books.

I just plain don't get the complaints about how buggy games are now and how games didn't used to be that way. The old games were plenty buggy- the 256th level of Pac-Man springs to mind- and that was on games that were absolutely tiny, hundreds of lines of code. The code driving modern games is thousands of times larger and infinitely more complex; expecting that bugs would not increase accordingly is just silly. The internet, for all that people complain about the "release-then-patch" cycle, has made things much, much better. The Half-Life and Doom phenomena- where a massive community emerged around games which were constantly patched and updated and for which there was a constant stream of user-created material- simply could not have happened in those old days.
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:32 PM on November 4, 2007

I think even if you have no intention of ever playing the game, the Portal videos are well worth watching.

It's not the same as playing the game, but if you're interested in the art of video games at all, you shouldn't miss out on what, imo, is the Citizen Kane of the artform, a perfect melding of technology, narrative, gameplay and audio-visual artistry.

The whole game, beginning to end is about 2 or 3 hours, total, so it's not the same investment of time that watching the whole of HL 2 would be, for example.
posted by empath at 5:38 PM on November 4, 2007

If you can seriously get through Metroid Fusion with no walkthroughs or any help, you are a better man than I.
posted by Down10 at 5:46 PM on November 4, 2007

Pope Guilty writes "The code driving modern games is thousands of times larger and infinitely more complex; expecting that bugs would not increase accordingly is just silly."

Of course. I never said otherwise.

But the way a publisher balances financial needs and getting a quality product out the door has been changed by the fact that games are hugely complex. A more beta product is more acceptable these days. I wish publishers would be more patient and wait until a game really is fully tested before releasing, but it is becoming more difficult to do so, with the amount of time and money involved.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:57 PM on November 4, 2007

Video, you say? Speed Runs at Archive.org, including Deus Ex.
posted by grabbingsand at 6:26 PM on November 4, 2007

I felt like I was missing something because people raved so much about the first game. I just couldn't squeeze any enjoyment out of it. I Later reasoned that it was more of an "experience" than a game of any sort.

Neverwinter Nights was an odd, odd duck. I think you're actually well on track with the "experience" notion, but there are two very specific things going on there:

1. This was a faithful, from-the-ground-up adaption of the D&D ruleset, on technology sufficiently advanced to make it look good, by a company with a strong enough reputation that it was expected to not suck. Graphically, it was a lot more exciting and ambitious than any solid D&D engine previously put forth, and it was built with a DMing in mind—as a separate, purpose-built view of the game. You would (the pitch went, at least) be able to not just play a computerized D&D-style game, but play a game of D&D on your computers. It was pen-and-paper, on the computer. Holy grail stuff.

2. NWN wasn't hyped as a game; it was hyped as a world-building engine that happened to come with a default campaign. Whether that meant anything or not to 90% of the folks that ended up playing the main campaign (as single-player or in a group doing co-op) is beside the point; the 10% who were desperately, powerfully excited to see such an ambitious project come to fruition were the folks that really drove the NWN hype.

And it was exciting—if you were a worldbuilding dork and a programmer as well. If anything, Bioware broke a lot of hearts when kids who thought they knew enough programming to make their own custom campaigns discovered that the scripting language provided wasn't much less complicated than raw C. Building stuff in NWN is hard, even if it's orders of magnitude easier than making your own 3D D&D game from scratch. A lot of folks expected plug and chug stuff, not hardcore coding.

So I think a lot of people were reasonably put out by NWN-as-singleplayer-RPG. It wasn't what Bioware was sinking their hearts into; it was just an okay fantasy rpg. Faint praise.
posted by cortex at 7:03 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

Also (I forgot to mention) regardless of Randroid politics the visual walkthroughs are actually pretty damn excellent. It made Ravenholm slightly less excruciating.
posted by billypilgrim at 7:05 PM on November 4, 2007

- I remember the good'ole days when games with stories were valued over never ending, immersive online monstrosities where you had to pay to play with 13-year-old kewl d00dz.

See, that's the funny thing about memory.

Those good old days?

They never existed.

Never.

The thing is, you don't remember all the buggy, relentlessly frustrating, story-less crap. You remember the classics. You remember the really, really good shit.

But you don't remember the painful shit designed not to be fun, but to keep you pumping quarters into an arcade machine. Or the direct port of that game to the NES. Or games that'd let you get stuck because you didn't pick up $RANDOM_OBSCURE_OBJECT in the first two minutes of gameplay.

I'm not saying it's all unicorns and lollipops now, but Rose-Colored Glasses syndrome is real, man, and you've got a case.
posted by sparkletone at 7:12 PM on November 4, 2007 [2 favorites]

After all the rave about the first one, a second installment was released (with probably more of the same) but got a lower score and all the gripes I had about the first one, the critics mentioned about the second one.

Well, actually... the much anticipated sequel to Neverwinter Nights was a complete frick'n debacle. As it shipped it was mostly unplayable and so crammed with bugs that finishing the game was impossible. The developers worked to get patches out as soon as the complaints started rolling in, but it wasn't just bugs - entire features from the first game were left out. (Like hot-slot dual wield weapons, which were not just an obvious and simple feature for the first game, but an incredibly popular and much hyped feature - just gone, completely forgotten in the second.) On top of that the developers tried to make the game into a poor man's Oblivion complete with cinematic close ups of NPCs and voice tracks... only the cool thing about Oblivion is that if a NPC annoys you can slash their throats out. In NWN2 you're stuck with the bastards.

I'm currently playing my way through the expansion to NWN2 and so far its is better than the original story, but it suffers from the exact same functional story problem that has plagued the entire NWN franchise: they won't leave your frick'n character alone! I mean, I want to play a rogue, not some cursed spirit sucking shadow being. Ditto for the early NWN2 story: I just want my Monk to run around and solve mysteries... why is he stuck playing the last half of the game with a mystic sword I never even wanted?

There is always some stupid lost race, or shadow realm, or mysterious curse that you have to muck around with. What happened to mini-quests? Why can't I just explore and make friends on my own? The NWN games force you into a role... they don't allow you the freedom to enjoy your character however you like. This was one of the things which made Oblivion so likable.

And hey, I've been playing Dungeon and Dragon's based games since Pool of Radiance on my C64. In fact, I played all those SSI "gold box" games - I love the AD&D rules. I love leveling up and finding magic weapons. That's cool. I don't like having to keep tabs on some stupid frick'n "spirit meter" though. Boo! Bad game!
posted by wfrgms at 9:26 PM on November 4, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wfrgms' argument just summarized one camp's views on CRPGs. Needless to say, it is not the only view. And, in fact, my view is the exact opposite; Neverwinter Nights 2 is the best implementation of D&D rules we're ever likely to see on a computer (turn based combat would be better but is unlikely to happen) while Oblivion was a beautiful engine in search of decent writing or character interaction.

"The freedom to enjoy your character however you like" is usually an excuse to make an engine without a game inside.
posted by Justinian at 10:30 PM on November 4, 2007

Oh, and best CRPG ever produced or likely ever to be produced? Planescape: Torment.
posted by Justinian at 10:30 PM on November 4, 2007

Bah! I see your Planescape: Torment and raise you Ultima VII parts 1 and 2.
posted by Kattullus at 10:32 PM on November 4, 2007

Planescape: Torment seems like it would be a good one to release as freeware. I wonder why they haven't yet.
posted by empath at 11:04 PM on November 4, 2007

This is the first time I've ever had to pause and consider how to respond without simply writing off a suggested contender as clearly inferior to Torment, Kattullus.

I'll cheat and avoid the question by claiming that it is impossible to compare Ultima style RPGs to more modern Infinity Engine games. Why? Because otherwise I have to decide which was a better RPG and I don't wanna. Torment clearly had the better story and writing, but there's so much other stuff in Ultima VII that oozes the awesome.
posted by Justinian at 11:34 PM on November 4, 2007

I just wish every single game ever made was Fallout.
posted by tehloki at 12:13 AM on November 5, 2007 [3 favorites]

I just wish i was 15 again.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 3:24 AM on November 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

Seconding what Sparkletone said, that many of the comments here are nostalgic for the days of gaming that you didn't need hint books to complete, I'm wondering what days people are remembering.

I was too young for "those good ole' days of gaming", and when I went back to play those NES and early Genesis games (thanks to emulation), the fact was, a lot of them sucked - I think even by then-present standards. There were gems and these are the ones that we tend to remember (who wants to remember to getting ripped for $ 40 for a cartridge - I did a couple times on PSX, when guides weren't enough to save the game from
being a bore).

The very least now, you can get help for any game without having to pay anything (besides internet access of course).
Kids these days are spoiled and so was I , to have gamefaqs during my heavy gaming days (nostalgia, I remember finding the site on AOL dial-up in 5th grade, so excited); and I don't regret it (finding it necessary to use for guides). The current games have gotten more complex, so I don't feel any guilt or lack of attention for turning to guides.

Also, there's the gamefaqs message boards (one for each and every game) and you get can get help through there if the FAQs don't help you out.

(just watch out for the fanboys , a level of discussion that rivals the junior high lunch table; and petty moderators).
posted by fizzix at 4:25 AM on November 5, 2007

Justinian, Planescape: Torment is an excellent game, but it came out during the height of my RPG curmudgeonry when RPGs where thin on the ground and had turned away from what I valued most in the genre, complex choices and worlds that seemed living and breathing. Games today boast of having a single axis of morality (good/evil) but Ultima IV, which came out more than 20 years ago (hell, more than 21 years ago... Ultima IV is old enough to drink!) had a morality system which tracked 8 different virtues.

8!

None of which was "good/evil."

Oh, and as long as I'm ranting, why was it that it took until... oh, I don't know... Oblivion maybe? Anyway... why did it take forever for other RPGs reach Ultima VII's level of world-believability. I mean, besides the bread-baking, sword-making and all that, Ultima VII's characters had daily routines. They'd sleep at night, have breakfast in the morning, work, eat dinner, go to the inn (or had whatever other routine was appropriate for their role in the world). That did wonders for immersion.

Bah! Now I'm regressing to my former curmudgeonly self. Time to remind myself that many modern RPGs are really quite good and things aren't nearly as dire as they were in the late 90's early 2000's. I quite enjoyed Oblivion. Didn't make me think like the Ultima games did. And still do. I replayed Ultima VII the other day and I was struck by the depth of the central Fellowship narrative. There was a lot more going on in it narratively than I realized when I played it as an adolescent.

Maybe I'll give Planescape: Torment another chance one of these days. I hear it didn't have much to do with the Bioware games. I loathed the Baldur's Gate series.
posted by Kattullus at 5:12 AM on November 5, 2007

Demogorgon: Dude, have you ever played Dungeon 9 on the original NES Legend of Zelda? I will eat my pointy green hat if you can beat that without a walkthrough.

The person you were talking to may not have, but I did. Without a walkthrough. Both quests. It's challenging, but nothing well-kept notes can't get one out of.

(By the way, cool name.)
posted by JHarris at 6:38 AM on November 5, 2007

Oh, and to cortex:

Speaking as one of those worldbuilding wonks who bought NWN for the tools, and who spent long enough with it to make a rather complicated (if ultimately unfinished) module for it... the scripting was a lot like C, but I was continually frustrated when it would suddenly turn out to be not. If they had just coupled the damn thing to an actual compiler I would have been a lot less frustrated with it. (Also, if it had better documentation.)
posted by JHarris at 6:42 AM on November 5, 2007

Ok, maybe. Maybe I had to use the graphic novel length guidebook to finish the first Metroid on the NES. Maybe.

The reason I still haven't finished Metroid. I always get stuck, and then bored, at a certain point. And the crappiness of the "enter your secret code to continue" method of saving guarantees I mistake one letter for another at some point. One day, Mother Brain.
posted by Tehanu at 10:01 AM on November 5, 2007

Makes me want to play Ghost Master again. And, for 4.95 on Steam, I just might...
posted by Samizdata at 10:29 AM on November 5, 2007

The person you were talking to may not have, but I did. Without a walkthrough. Both quests.

Amazing! You must have bombed a shitload of rock walls to get there.
posted by Demogorgon at 5:01 PM on November 5, 2007

Not to mention pushed a lot of invisible, no-bomb, one-way walls. God damn.
posted by cortex at 5:38 PM on November 5, 2007

We all sound like a bunch of old farts.

"Dem good ole days? Dey never wuz! Why, back when I was young you had to wrap your joystick around your head and fight up an entire mountain uphill both ways! And we wuz thankful to do it!"

Whatever. Think I'll watch a DVD of some movie that's based off a video game.
posted by ZachsMind at 10:36 PM on November 5, 2007

andryeevna writes "Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather then google it and have the answer in two seconds?"

False dichotomy. Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather than use the InvisiClues book?

Whoops. Another false dichotomy. Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather than call the Infocom tip line?

Whoops! Yet another false dichotomy. Anyone else remember the good ole days when you used to work through a problem rather than email Infocom with a tip request?

Whoops!! Yet again another false dichotomy. Let's try again: Anyone remember when Pong came out? I'm pretty sure there were no hints for Pong. Ah, those were the good ole days, before 1980 came along and destroyed gaming forever.
posted by Bugbread at 8:14 AM on November 6, 2007

Hint: if you hit the ball with the very tip of your paddle, it will bounce at an oblique angle that will be difficult for your oppenent to track.
posted by cortex at 8:23 AM on November 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Anyone remember when we didn't have computers?

Me neither.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:25 PM on November 9, 2007 [1 favorite]