>>720412960
>went through the process of learning its bullshit through hours of trial and error and asking kids on the playground
This is a huge thing if you ask me. Back then,
>we usually owned less games so we spent more time on the ones we had
>exploration heavy games were a relative novelty in the US (the UK market had a fair number of exploratory/adventure platformers like manic miner, but the US didn't really have the ZX etc market)
>games were all poorly documented, often poorly translated, and we were used to it
Nowadays, if you butt up against a wall for an evening, you look up WTF to do immediately. The information is out there, guides are made in detail in multiple forms.
Back then we were just used to the fact that you couldn't get full info on a game by snapping your fingers. Individual hints were important, maps were important, and it was exceedingly rare to get your hands on a full guide.
Come the dawn of the internet, guides started to be written and shared, and it was largely seen as useful. Guides came in various forms, from walkthroughs to segment guides to the specifics of one mechanic (eg "blue magic guide" for FF5), and even the vaunted full spoiler-free walkthrough that you could search without seeing plot.
I think the text guides written by one dedicated autist for personal enjoyment were better than the wikis we get today and better than the multi-page shitty multi author guides written by sites that just want to show you ads and link to their youtube channel.
