/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8375549]

Ever called a video game hotline to ask for tips or something else back in the 90s?

[Anonymous No.8375587]

I used to call Diehard (Gamefan's game/import store) and listen to the game music that played while on hold. Until my parents bitched about the long distance charges

[Anonymous No.8375610]

Millennials:
>"haha fuckin zoomies are bad at games, no attention span and need to google everything"
Also millennials:
>literally pays money to learn how to progress through the game

[Anonymous No.8375626]

>>8375549
no my parents wouldve beat the shit out of me if i racked up a phone bill like that

side note: in the early 2000s me and my friends found a wireless house phone on the side of the street. were gonna smash it but then i checked and it had dial tone
so we spent the next like 3hrs dialing up 1-800-BUTTSEX and wtf ever else we could think of, charging it to the house phones phonebill
was fucking hilarious, and it was funny cuz the chicks gave zero fucks as they were still getting paid. i guess being harrassed by 12yos is marginally better than """flirting""" with demented 45yos

i can only imagine that whoevers phone that was ultimately ended up in divorce court cuz that shit is EXPENSIVE holy shit

[Anonymous No.8375658]

I remember an anon who called Nintendo Power to ask how to find the flipper in ALTTP and they basically gave him the runaround; you need to try harder, you need to explore everywhere. He was understandably pissed when this happened.

[Anonymous No.8375667]

>>8375626
I'm stealing this premise for a Beavis & Butt-head fanfic.

[Anonymous No.8375670]

>>8375549
I called in regarding Pokémon once and the guy on the phone didn’t believe that I had a level 99 mewtwo, I might have been the first to explain the missingno trick to him.

[Anonymous No.8375672]

>>8375667
lol yea sounds about right

[Anonymous No.8375756]

>>8375549
Called the Nintendo line a bunch regarding FF3. The voice recording spoke very slowly. My copy was cart only, so a bunch of terms that would have been in the manual was news to me.

[Anonymous No.8375816]

>>8375658
I've called and they always gave me that. bear in mind the official Nintendo hotline in Germany (Nintendo had their European hq in Germany in the 90s, don't know about today) was free or wasn't really that expensive. so I got
>look around more
>try harder

and I was like
>dude I told you because I'm stuck for days now so spill the beans
but he said he doesn't want to ruin the fun for me
>that's some BS you don't know it yourself!

I still don't know how exactly it worked. I heard some interview of someone working for the help line and it seems like they didn't have walkthroughs back then and had to play the games themselves to find out. what kind of BS is that???
I don't know what it was like later like if they actually got walkthroughs and had to read through it.

the game I've called for was Quest for Camelot which is way way better than anyone would imagine. I bought the game , had some amazing time with it and saw the film like 6 years later and was like
>meh
that game is the definition of a hidden gem and one of the very few good GBC exclusives

[Anonymous No.8375894]

>>8375816
>seems like they didn't have walkthroughs back then and had to play the games themselves to find out
makes sense desu
unless the game already had a nintendo power issue on it in which case you prolly wouldnt need to call, where exactly would you expect to find a walkthrough?
nintendo power was the ones who popularized such things and primas, thanks to myst, so if they didnt have it, no one would know for sure except for the programmers (or people who beat it themselves). and even if the nip devs DIDNT act like some sort of cloistered cult, there was also a steep language barrier to overcome. plus they were prolly too busy doin codemonkey thangs

>Quest for Camelot
ill see you that and raise you warlocked
a literal RTS for the GBC

[Anonymous No.8375917]

>>8375549
yes, she sounded really hot
& had a soothing voice
v expensive though

after the 2nd call our house banned vidya help via hotline


every once in awhile i'll get a cute sounding bank rep & have a similar experience for free.

[Anonymous No.8375923]

>>8375917
This post makes me miss early ASMR when you could find a girl role playing as a receptionist without it being all weird noises too close to the mic and oddly sexual

[Anonymous No.8376698]

>>8375549
I called the Nintendo Power line to ask how to get this sub tank. They didn't mention that you had to jump to make the boomerang arc downward.
don't sperg about the filter, it's the best pic I could find

[Anonymous No.8376756]

>>8375610
Millennial isn't the same as zoomer? Jesus. You are now supposed to study terminology for genders and generations and everything

[Anonymous No.8376954]

Swedish anon here, I called them. I guess Nintendo must have distributed their guides or w/e globally because in retrospect its a little odd that they even had a Swedish hotline considering how small the market must have been.

Anyway, did it a couple of times for Links Awakening. First was for the puzzle in level 2 about killing enemies in the right order (I was fucked since I couldn't read English so the Owl statue hint was useless) and also about using magic powder to hurt the final boss's first form. Eventually my parents got the phone bill and chewed me out so never called them again.

[Anonymous No.8377036]

>>8375549
Just once to Nintendo Power, for help with Crystalis (About the Lime Flute, I remember eventually seeing it in Nintendo Power, so it must've been a common question)

[Anonymous No.8377041]

>>8375626
Holy fucking based

[Anonymous No.8377058]

>>8375549
I called a sega hotline because i couldn't figure out how to beat the two raptors at the end. Turns out you had to blow up the stand holding the trex skeleton. I would never have figured that out on my own.

[Anonymous No.8377161]

Yeah, one or two from the Nintendo hotline (uk) would just laugh at me and be cunts, but I was about 8 or 9 years old and cant remember the details. On the whole, it was an awful service that was very expensive to use. Staffed almost entirely by reprobates, it may have been the worst thing ever to carry the nintendo branding.

[Anonymous No.8377189]

>>8377161
Maybe not totally related but I seem to remember the official Nintendo magazine being full of like swearing and rude content in the early 2000s in the UK, was pretty funny at times, then I think they totally rebranded it and made it all family friendly a few years later. I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything, pretty weird, anyone else remember that?

[Anonymous No.8377221]

I wrote Nintendo Power to ask about the lost dimension on the bottom of the map on Star Fox SNES. They replied concisely. Pretty cool.

[Anonymous No.8377273]

>>8377189
Also in one issue they were literally making fun of women/girls saying they can't play 3D games and that they should "stick to Mario" or something

[Anonymous No.8377306]

>>8375610
Nobody:

You:
I am a faggot.

[Anonymous No.8377308]

>>8375549
By the time the 90's came around you started to see walkthru guides from prima and other game periodicals. The hotlines were still used but their heyday was mostly the 80s.

[Anonymous No.8377392]

>>8375610
You risked upsetting your parents due to the phone bill.
Also yeah, due to it not being free meant you would call as a last resort, you weren't constantly calling them asking every single step of a game.

[Anonymous No.8377396]

>>8375670
>I called in regarding Pokémon once and the guy on the phone didn’t believe that I had a level 99 mewtwo, I might have been the first to explain the missingno trick to him.
I'm sorry anon, the guy was pretending to not know and make you talk more for more time on the line.

[Anonymous No.8377484]

>>8377273
I thought it was a weird comment because 2D games are not necessarily easier than 3D, which is part of why it stuck in my mind all these years. I guess it was a popular belief at the time though when 3D was still the 'new thing', that 2D games were all comparatively primitive and supposedly easier. It's odd for Nintendo to allow that to be in their own magazine though, I definitely remember reading that stuff, wonder if any other UK anons do too. Basically it was like it was written by a group of older male gamers with no oversight of the content.

[Anonymous No.8377552]

>>8375667
- Uhhhh... Hey, Beavis! Check this out - a phone!
- Heh, heh... A phone! Maybe we should like... Heh... Return to its owner... Or something...
- No, you bunghole! We should have phone sex!
- Wait, are we gonna like... Put our stuff inside the phone?
- No, asswipe! We dial a number and we talk to hot chickals and stuff! We're gonna score!
- Boin-oin-oing!

[Anonymous No.8377560]

>>8376698
LOL at picrel! Lookin' good! Amirite, fellas? Who's with me?

[Anonymous No.8377562]

>>8375549
My stepdad worked for Capcom doing this. Still have a bunch of his walk-through/guides written by the company.

[Anonymous No.8377606]

>>8377562
Mind sharing those sometime (if possible)? Might be pretty cool to see

[Anonymous No.8377642]

>>8377484
I'd only buy nms if I already had super play. It was garbage, but had some interesting content at times. I don't remember that era. I read snes and n64 era. I think you may be remembering it wrong, as n64 times at least it was very family friendly

[Anonymous No.8377847]

>>8377606
One of these days I can scan/upload them, would take a long time though

[Anonymous No.8377917]

Yeah I called up asking about the ice key and magic eggs in banjo kazooie.
day my childhood died

[Anonymous No.8377937]

>>8375549
yeah, i was at a friend's house playing conker, we got up to the bit after you feed all the people to the vampire bat and you have to find all the keys to the front door. couldn't find this one key anywhere, so we call up, end up spending like 45 mins on the phone lol, got the answers we needed though. my friend's mum got so pissed we weren't allowed to play games together for months

[Anonymous No.8378121]

>>8375658
Meanwhile I called asking about the hidden room you got sent to when the game glitched out and they gave me step by step instructions.

[Anonymous No.8378228]

>>8375549
Wonder if she’s dead

[Anonymous No.8378308]

>>8378228
Why are you wondering about that?

[Anonymous No.8378315]

>>8376756
apparently millennials are 90s kids and zoomers are 00s kids. i always i thought i was the former and zoomers were just 10s kids but i guess not, 10s kids are gen alphoomers now or whatever the fuck. dunno when that changed but imo generations are just a stupid psyop by the government to get people of different age ranges to hate each other.
>>8375626
kinda dickish but also pretty awesome. i wish i had friends as a kid.

[Anonymous No.8378484]

>>8375549
I called Delphine's automated hint line to tell me how to beat the brain room on the last level of Flashback. Instead it told me where I need to put the bomb later on.

Shame their robot couldn't just say 'git gud', it would have been more help.

[Anonymous No.8378587]

>>8375610
That's Gen X. Not millennials. Last I checked most used strategy guides or asked someone in their family who had internet at the time which was painfully slow. As for your Zoomer generation all you do is watch games being played and passively live through others experiences. Watch is no different than those who collect games and pretend they are a gamer but do not play games.

[Anonymous No.8378637]

>>8375610
colons aren't funny, faggotron

[Anonymous No.8378842]

>>8375549
I used to always call up nintendo's line every time I'd pass by a payphone just to make a quick prank call since it was free to call them on payphones and I felt like I couldn't get in trouble no matter what bullshit I said.

[Anonymous No.8378850]

>>8375549
Nah but I remember them. I got all my cheats from magazines.

[Anonymous No.8378875]

>>8375549

Twice

One time for the solution to a Tetris Attack puzzle and the other time asking what was up with the "Run" option on the Gameboy Camera.

Two short calls so I never got into any trouble with my parents.

[Anonymous No.8378959]

nah, i found the concept absurd especially since i would buy magazines which had a full list of psx cheats and they'd have >>8378850 these ads in them, which struck me as pointless advertising considering the mag itself was full of cheats

[Anonymous No.8379034]

>>8378308
Corpse rape

[Anonymous No.8379060]

>>8375549
No, I used to be afraid of phone calls.

[Anonymous No.8379085]

>>8379034

[Anonymous No.8379128]

A friend kept calling the european Nintendo hotline or whatever because he was stuck in some nes game and after some calls the guy got angry and shouted "Come ooon, stop calling me! You've gotta THINK for yourself instead of calling!"

[Anonymous No.8379142]

>>8377562
>>8377606
Seconding this

[Anonymous No.8379147]

>>8378850
Did anyone buy those? I'd just look up the section I was interested in and remembered or noted down what I was interested in. Of course you'd be yelled at if you tried that in a press outlet, but in a general store which happens to sell press you're usually left alone

[Anonymous No.8379148]

In a previous thread an anon shared a neat story how the hotline told him how to find the Chris Houlihan room in ALLTP

[Anonymous No.8379149]

Yeah I used to call the Nintendo and some other ones that weren't 1-900 numbers, because my parents had a block on the phone to prevent them.

[Anonymous No.8379175]

>>8379147
>Did anyone buy those?
yes a lot of people bought magazines

[Anonymous No.8379201]

>>8375549
Your mom called me to ask for my tip

[Anonymous No.8379219]

>>8379175
there is a difference between buying a magazine and buying a 10 bucks on a list of cheats for 2000 games when out of those you only have 15

[Anonymous No.8379336]

No but I took my autistic brother to the store to memorize passwords in magazines that we traded later for candy

[Anonymous No.8379356]

>>8379336
Wow... It's like a kids version of "Rain Man".

[Anonymous No.8379631]

>>8375549
What's her name ?

[Anonymous No.8379693]

Mods plz delete this spam thread

[Anonymous No.8380031]

hell no. I just read the guides and code books at my local Blockbuster

[Anonymous No.8380169]

>>8379631
La Jugona

[Anonymous No.8380224]

>>8375549
Twice. Once to get the code for startropics (747, I never forgot after that) and again after I just couldn't find a way to get the ice key in banjo kazooie.