Thread 11978025

What compelled video game nerds to open up notepad and write thousands of pages of a walkthrough for a video game with ascii art for free on GameFAQs?

Writing a walkthrough guide on notepad seems like a lost art since video streaming on YouTube/Twitch became popular.

Pic related: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/554041-final-fantasy-iii/faqs/20665

Post your favorite walkthrough/guide and/or users/authors from GameFAQs.

>What compelled video game nerds to open up notepad and write thousands of pages of a walkthrough for a video game with ascii art for free on GameFAQs?
why would you open your thread like this and expect anything less than bait replies?

Passion, something you, a Generation Z bot whose script in the last year, will never know.

online communities existed prior to twitter, authors of worthwhile guides were usually active in IRCs and shit

Passion, something you, a Generation Z bot whose script was written in the last year, will never know.

I raise a glass to mah niggaz, Dan Simpson and shoecream, for making highly detailed BG 1 & 2 guides.

>>11978025 (OP)
Hi anon. Unlike these other knuckleheads I value the fact that you are curious about retro era customs and culture. When young men want to learn from me it brings me great joy.
Back then it seemed like a lot of people did things just for fun and community without expecting a paycheck in return. There was a sense of comradery and people enjoyed helping each other.
Also you have to consider the economic conditions of that day. Back then it was much easier to make a living with a basic job. People weren't so desperate for money as they are now. These days people have to work 2 or 3 jobs just to be able to afford a crappy apartment, so of course they want money wherever they can get it. I can't blame them for that.

>>11978025 (OP)
>for free
Its nice being old enough to very clearly see a shift in the way people think and act. Feels like a superpower or something

>>11978025 (OP)
I know you cannot comprehend this since your (mentally) female, but before "social media" you actually had to do SOMETHING to get validation of others. Brains were required.
Insane right?

>>11978025 (OP)
Half the first person dungeon crawler maps on Gamefaqs are by LastBossKiller, StarFighters76, just-craig, or Tori0809. All of those maps were uploaded in the past 7 years, and all those mappers weren't around before Youtube/Twitch. When I played MT1/2 and SMT1/2 back in the day you had to make your own map, or learn how to find a JP "game capture" site that had maps. Now all of those games have maps on GameFAQs.

Gamers and Otaku are a community, engaged in a multi-person struggle to attain greater knowledge and documentation of video games. No amount of casual zoomer streamer shit will change this. The zoomers that get with the program will end up being part of the community, the ones who don't may have millions of views now, but they will be forgotten to time while these FAQs will not.

>>11978030
>expect anything less than bait replies?

He doesn't. It's a bait thread but with enough words to try to make sure the mods don't delete it. It usually works these days.

For a lot of us we just kept notes while we played and then transcribed them online because writing them gave you some downtime while playing and we thought it was fun to share this stuff. Now everyone has something playing on a second screen or has their phones out and games are designed so easily they are basically just something to dissociate to so you probably aren't familiar with taking notes while you game. Also it wasn't like you could just search on youtube and get a complete video game playthrough guide on release day, your internet was slow and you wanted a text file since it would load quickly. Especially for games like Final Fantasy which was full of crazy secrets and stuff you would never remember, like skills that only worked on enemies whose levels were multiples of certain digits it helped to have a record to refer back to. Gamefaqs is dead at this point so I don't really see the reason to post guides any more sadly, but I still take notes to myself while I play.

>>11978025 (OP)
>notepad
It's much lighter weight and portable than a WordPad RTF document.

RARusk

>>11978025 (OP)
I'm not really the boomer obsessed with intergenerational clash that the post is obviously baiting, but the ratio of somewhat passionate and proactive hobbyists to completely passive consumers was unironically different back in the day.

Even the most dedicated modern hobbyists tend to lean towards monetization in general, therefore favoring quantity over quality for their "content"; this was hardly ever the case with FAQ and shrine creators in the late 1990s and early 2000s simply because there was no platform to do that efficiently.

>>11978114
You had to write the HTML yourself to tell people who were in those days.

>>11978180
being able to make money off of "fandom" really fucked the internet up

>>11978025 (OP)
He did it for the forum clout.

>>11978197
Funny thing is, forum clout had staying power. Posts were easily indexable (searchable) and quotable, unlike Discord (or, worse, YT) messages.

>>11978025 (OP)
It's something you don't really get until one day it clicks, usually as you get older and more analytical. There's a joy to be had in sitting down and taking notes while playing a game to better understand the world and its mechanics, it's only a small leap from there to start formatting it for the public and posting it online.

A long time ago, I started playing EVE Online, a game who's world is particularly poorly documented because knowing how to do something others don't gives you a certain amount of power. Generally, you're able to make in game money more effectively with certain methods and since the game is a market simulation where the total amount of money in the system determines the price of goods, you want to be the only one making bank while everyone else struggles.

One day, for my group, I decided to start trying to figure things out on my own instead of waiting for some other player to step in and lead us. To help with it, I wrote down all my attempts to learn things on my own, noting what worked and what the mechanics were for everything so I could disseminate it amongst everyone. It eventually lead to full documentation on different aspects of the game, documentation I eventually made public to ensure everyone else could keep up too.

That was the moment I understood why people wrote things for GameFAQs. There's a joy to be found in unveiling the unknown and enlightening the masses. It's partly from being the first to blaze a trail and discover things and partly from sharing that knowledge with others. It's a game unto itself, demystifying something that's usually opaque.

>>11978204
Communities were closer despite the drama and infighting.

>>11978142
Based.
FFTA still does not have a complete fully accurate guide, despite the huge efforts by multiple people, which is why many people still get stuck trying to 100 percent it.

>>11978373
I only got some aspects of it as late as this year. I started playing a JP-only gatcha game for work reasons and felt like there was a glass-ceiling if you didn't pay, then I joined a clan where the leader really loves breaking down and examining shit, and I started helping him with it as well. We figured out the RNG for shit, all sorts of strategies for the multiplayer, how to tell what strats the enemies were using, and how to beat the top players who spend fuckloads of money while we don't need to pay anything ourselves and can get into top ten to top fifty of all events regularly. Just reading some shit online goes in one ear and out the other and I never really cared about the mechanics that much, but actually figuring it out myself with friends turned me around

>>11978025 (OP)
The will to be immortalized in the anals of video game history.
>thread related
Youre talking about them. Honest question is there a better source for information about retro games other than these guides?

>>11978515
1 hour video essays about 5 things you didn't know about Mario, Sonic or FF where the guy speaks slow to increase video length to hopefully get more money from more playtime and is still unbearable on 2x speed

>>11978498
>FFTA still does not have a complete fully accurate guide
The real problem with things like that is working out which guides are accurate about what. Half the Xenosaga 1 guides fuck up the info regarding the investment emails and miss that the first investment choice actually matters.

>>11978025 (OP)
It's actually sad that you can't comprehend people doing things out of enjoyment rather than purely as a grift.

>>11978090
Not just that, but many were written by high-school students. You couldn't pay them if they wanted to. They didn't have a bank account to use on PayPal. This is also why they had the free time.

>>11978567
Old Internet was truly wonderful.

>>11978032
>IRC
i miss this lil nigga like you wouldnt believe

>>11978548
True.

Shout out to Jarulf and his guide for Diablo and Hellfire

>>11978586
it is, in fact, still going. peer pressure is the only reason you use Discord instead.

Slightly off-topic but I should warn you guys to be careful about spoiling the game when reading gamefaq guides
I'm very grateful for a Harvest Moon BtN guide I read when I started playing it in the early 2000s, because I had no idea that plowing the ground in a 3x3 square was the proper way to spread the seeds
Unfortunally I kept reading the guide out of curiosity and it took a lot of the mystery of the game for me

At the time I didn't even consider it, but I understand where OP is coming from
It's pretty crazy to think how big and detailed some of these guides are
As for my favorites guides/users I can't remember exactly, but I loved reading this Harvest Moon guide I mentioned, and also some Resident Evil 3 guides about beating the game with only the knife and things like that

>>11978731
found it
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/446412-harvest-moon-back-to-nature/faqs/26294

>>11978025 (OP)
Here's a more important question: game-facks or game-eff-ay-cues?

>>11978514
>>11978373
I experienced something similar recently playing an old text-based MMO
Game is from 2007 and was killed and revived a couple times, but the code remained basically the same
Recently some of us started really digging into discovering new crafting recipes and things like that, it was so much fun. We discovered some recipes for the first time ever, they weren't even that hard, but it's fun to think they were in the game for 15+ years and nobody had found them yet
The game simple but very small (about 200 players), so I guess that's why it was so slow to figure out stuff
Some of us did end up writing guides on the game's wiki, but nothing compared to those huge gamefaqs guides

>>11978765
Based. The gacha I played had no wiki besides Chinese people posting the artwork and base stats. Pretty much everything was hidden info and there is a 5ch thread but nobody shares good info and just says the basic stuff or talks about what girl they like. Occasionally you will run into a guy in-game and he'll share some knowledge just out of respect for a good battle you had with him or something and he'll tell you his strat and other hints and you tell your crew and then piece it all together to make an even better strat then rematch his crew a few months down the line and it is good times.
>>11978626
It just kind of faded out of my rotation over time. Back in the day I had everything I even remotely had interest in installed, and was on Teamspeak talking trash in a random room and irc and other stuff talking about whatever but nowadays I know about computer bloat and whenever I get a new one I am paranoid to put anything on it besides absolute essentials because 'it's a new computer' then years pass and I still have barely anything on it. Same thing with phones. First Android I got was loaded to the brim with dogshit apps and games and shit. Now, I have barely anything.
>>11978731
Yeah, I make an aim to play as much as possible and potentially 100 percent it as far as I know possible then check a guide or some shit and be amazed there was some extra shit I didn't know about. Once you have your fill of a game then guides bring it to the next level. I posted in a recent Clock Tower thread, but this guy is a goldmine for anyone who understands Japanese, as he plays the game perfect, no-damage, all items on max difficulty, and leaves notes all through the video on how the game works, how encounters and the system works, what can go wrong, and even all the small details of the story. It really brings my appreciation of the games even higher.

>>11978801
Forgot the guys name, but he is
gtx660almostbroken4
If you understand Japanese or have some way of autotranslating the text in videos then I highly recommend.

>>11978025 (OP)
I don't know. It's impossible to find anything in that mess. I started writing my own guides for that very reason.
There is an Icewind Dale II guide on there that is the most gigantic piece of shit you've ever seen.

>>11978025 (OP)
for the lulz

>for free
1. it's the internet.
2. people want to.

>>11978098
>Feels like a superpower or something
does it, though?
what does this wonderful ability brings us? to see everything go to shit and be left wondering if we're just old men yelling at clouds? no one else cares, nothing will change

>>11978025 (OP)
Short answer is for fun and to contribute to the community. I wrote a guide for collecting things in RE4, it was done purely because I enjoyed the game and wanted to give some of my knowledge back to the community. While you never see it these days being a good guide maker was considered more highly than other members of the community, adding in little a little flair with ascii art and what not just comes from the old school demoscene and other gaming related communities and it was done purely for fun and again to add a little flair to your guides. I personally sucked ass at making it but my friend was good at it and he was credited as such for any he made for me.

It really is a lost art, as you said most people make video guides these days and while there's some value in that I hate them and 95% of the time would just prefer a written guide. Issue there is writing a good guide is a skill and one not many people have. It's why what I wrote was a simple guide to item locations because I have 0 talent for writing a proper walk through.

Steam guides still contain a handful of good guides but they just aren't the same as the good ol gamefaqs guides and the fact a guide wrote in 2003 for a game from 1993 is still good and better than most that came after is a testament to the writing abilities of the best guide makers.

>>11978025 (OP)
>he does it for free
I want to go back bros

>>11978886
Random, but it made me think of all the bangers people made for keygens, only to be heard maybe once (or best case scenario the guy can't get the shit to work and opens the keygen multiple times) and then it is eventually lost to history.

>>11978895
i got you senpai
https://archive.org/details/essential-keygen-music

>>11978025 (OP)
Dial-Up. Text was fast.

>>11978030
>>11978120
What are you guys talking about, why would it be bait? It's an interesting topic.

>>11978025 (OP)
What's up with the linebreaks?

>>11978905
Thanks bro, gonna find the best audio setup to listen to it through and then take a look.
>>11978958
We have been flooded for years with troll threads and spam to the point that it is umderstandable to suspect any OP of being someone trying to waste our time, but looking back on the post it seems decent and posters made it a good thread anyway. You still might wonder if OP is actually participating or just made the thread and bounced or is mining data for some video essay. It's the sad state of the net nowadays. I try not to worry about it.

>>11978194
This

>>11978151
>wordpad
F

>>11978972
to fit 80-character displays, or whatever the standard was? at least, lower-res monitors in the 90s?

if they didn't break at specific widths, the ASCII art/formatting wouldn't work.

>>11978972
>>11979042
Plus, browsers didn't word wrap simple text files automatically, so without intentional line breaks to format the width of the document you'd end up with a ton of horizontal scrolling.

>>11979042
It's also smart formatting. Wide line lengths reduce reading comprehension, speed, and retention of information. It's why newspapers used narrow column sizes.

>>11979032
S to spit, fuck WordPad

>>11979727
Nah, fuck you. It was the perfect middle point between barebones Notepad and bloated Word.

>>11978765
One lingering fear I have regarding sharing discoveries in MMOs is that it's a path that eventually leads to things like Thotbot/Wowhead and other extreme datamining services where nothing new can exist in games. If I fully catalog everything I come across and remove all mystery from the game, it starts to lose something.

This doesn't stop me from doing it because in EVE's case obfuscating knowledge of the game is used to oppress other players which is worse than the alternative, but at the same time I feel like I'm contributing to the same road WoW went down where everything new is discovered almost immediately on patch day.

>>11979771
I never liked it for the fact that its files defaulted to rtf, which was the worst of both worlds. Not generic and standard enough to be easily read on any device like a txt file, not a large enough feature set to enjoy the advanced formatting of MS word.

When Notepad++ came out, it was the best of both worlds: A slew of editing and formatting features aimed at text files while retaining the very portable file format. Much easier to write than notepad, VIM, or EMACs.

>>11978025 (OP)
I'm not sure, passion I suppose, it took effort.
Whatever it was, I'm very grateful for it, it was great growing up with them.

>>11978151
>a WordPad RTF document.
>not a CHM help document
If you're going to go that far might as well go whole hog.

>>11978118
>Otaku

Disgusting

>>11978025 (OP)
anyway for me to download all these i dread the day they are nuked from the internet

>>11980748
Right-click and save, same way you would any other webpage. Otherwise, scroll to the bottom, click the Text Mode button, and then Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into your text editor of choice.

>>11978972
This >>11979042
Notice the horizontal bars separating the major sections are exactly 79 characters. Go to the 80th character, and most text based systems will insert a line feed and mess up the formatting.

Interesting he indented the sections. I would've just run everything against the left column. Though I also formatted my stuff to be 70 columns for some reason ... I think either so you could print with left/right margins, or increase the inside margin and put it into a binder without punching holes through the text.

>>11978025 (OP)
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/android/643525-chrono-trigger/faqs/17035
>I suppose you can't get the original SNES-cartridge anymore (or actually, don't want to pay hell-amounts of hard-earned cash to those money-hungry scrubs selling their half-broken, dirt-infested, empty-battery cartridges on the Internet)
>May 13th, 2003

>>11980932
Old games felt fucking ancient in 2003,

>>11980936
I guess it's like when you're a teenager and stuff that happened a few years ago feels like ages.

>>11980968
I remember being 11 in 2002 and finding out what the NES was and looking up websites dedicated to NES games, just seemed like a whole other world.

>>11980968
It's more than that. Look up magazines from the the mid 90's, by 95-96 any 2D platformer / SHMUP getting released was getting shat on for being "old stuff"

By 2003 this stuff was dinosaur age stuff. There was no real "retro gaming" market like there is today.

Technology evolved fast and so did opinions and trends with it

>>11981008

The part that fucks with you is when you realise that's exactly what a zoomie today feels like when they play GTA III or Half Life 2 or some shit.

But partially it's also because technology did move at an exceptional pace between the late 80s and early 00s. The 90s with rapid advancements in 3D graphics and the explosion of the internet coming along at the same time were a radical anomaly in the overall trend of history, and we will likely never see the same again.

>>11981240
>The part that fucks with you is when you realise that's exactly what a zoomie today feels like when they play GTA III or Half Life 2 or some shit.
Yep
I used to think SNES would never "age" the way it happened with ancient sfuff like Pacman etc but it did too, maybe just not as hard
I don't think there are many zoomers playing SMW multiple times just for fun, I'd guess they would just play once to see how it's like and be done with it

Plus old games only had couch multiplayer, most people prefer playing online
I think the same way a lot of us liked MMOs in the early 2000s, zoomers like big multiplayer games like fortnite and minecraft today

>>11978025 (OP)
>>11978180
i love ASCII art so much

>>11978090
>Back then it seemed like a lot of people did things just for fun and community without expecting a paycheck in return. There was a sense of comradery and people enjoyed helping each other.
This. There was a sense of pride in contributing to the site and completing a FAQ. It also brought you some stature on the boards, major FAQ writers were respected, even if it was only on the specific board for the game they wrote about. But I think the main motivation was just the feeling of accomplishment from creating something useful for a game you like.

The internet was much better when it was mostly driven by passionate young people creating for the sake of it, rather than for money. I suppose there's still people making small Youtube channels with no expectation of making money from it, but I think the potential of becoming a bigger moneymaking channel can change the dynamic even there.

>>11981392
Yeah, some people just did it for the love of the game. I had an online friend who made a video walkthrough of the entirety of FF7 just because they had another friend who was dogshit at games but was interested and wanted to know FF7. So my friend made the entire thing just to help that person experience the game. This was way early in before Youtube even popped off and was before I even heard of video guides or playthroughs being a thing other than people uploading runs or clips of shit.

>>11981349
https://www.asciipr0n.com/

>>11981349
>>11981406
Secret board with a bunch of ASCII art:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/585451-alphabet-zoo
GameFAQs ASCII gallery:
https://gfascii.art/ascii/page/16/

>>11978626
>peer pressure
which is ironic considering what the average age of /vr/ users should be. irc servers should still be packed with the 40+ crowd. same with forums

>>11978616
That is seriously a one of a kind thing. The dude almost reversed engineered the game back then.

I noticed modern games don't get comprehensive guides anymore. A good example is Pizza Tower. How is it millions of people played it but not one decided to sit down and write some sort of walk-through?

>>11978801
>It just kind of faded out of my rotation over time. Back in the day I had everything I even remotely had interest in installed, and was on Teamspeak talking trash in a random room and irc and other stuff talking about whatever but nowadays I know about computer bloat and whenever I get a new one I am paranoid to put anything on it besides absolute essentials because 'it's a new computer' then years pass and I still have barely anything on it. Same thing with phones. First Android I got was loaded to the brim with dogshit apps and games and shit. Now, I have barely anything.


I feel this, but fuck, I sometimes miss just having MSN or IRC or whatever open, and dropping in to talk some bullshit with some people when I felt like it.

I don't have any discord channels or anything nowadays because I have forgotten how to integrate myself with a new group, and I know that even if I did, half of them would be trannies, faggots, zoomers, or all three anyway.

>>11981459
Most people check Youtube now and don't want a hint as to how to do something, they want to directly see what to do to trivialize the game. The idea is not to play the game, it is to beat the game

>>11981459

Depends on the game in fairness, the Souls series has very old school levels of autism on its wikis. But games like that which appeal to a younger audience of steamer fans won't have the same engagement.

I still use GameFAQs guides when I want to look up something. Not just for retro games either, 2010s JRPGs still have great and comprehensive guides written for them.

>>11981464
Yeah, back in the day you just randomly messaged anyone on MSN even with no point or purpose whatsoever and they would reply back and you'd just go from there or randomly call a friend on the phone and talk about whatever, or go on Teamspeak and join any room and end up talking endlessly or just chat in game with people. Now you have to have some specific purpose to contact someone and something to offer them, it's like, fuk off, you are my friend, just cut the bullshit and talk to me, or if you try and join an online community you have to respect their stupid little bubble of hierarchy and be a suck up and play your part. The first time this really hit me when was I invited a friend over and he complained that he thought we would have 'something going on'. No, fuk off, us being together should be something going on or enough to have us start something 'going on'. People who just want to be around other people and have fun are a dieing breed. I don't need to be offering monetary benefits or clout or drugs or have women around or some shit to have you fucking chumps around, fuk off.

>>11981459
>A good example is Pizza Tower.
I never understood the appeal of text guides for action games. For an RPG it makes sense since the gameplay is basically a spreadsheet simulator. For action games, video is an objectively better medium for making a walk-through. Describing movement with text has never, ever been better than having a visual. Its just clunky and confusing. Imagine trying to describe how to do the movement in picrel with nothing but text.

>>11978498
>many people still get stuck trying to 100 percent it.
people get stuck trying to 100% it because they discard 1 of 1 mission items

>>11981504
I agree videos are usually more useful for action games, but sometimes it's still easier to understand what's being done when it's explained in text. Ideally you'd have a video text explaining the steps if you needed it.

For things like fighting games, it's useful to read explanations of why things are done or how to perform things exactly in addition to watching replays demonstrating them. Obviously they can explain stuff in the video itself, but having to jump around in the video to listen to something they said repeatedly can be less convenient than reading it. Stuff like the footsies handbook is still great to have too:
https://archive.ph/w14hj

>>11981504
Text has the advantage of hypotheticals and making lists of possible actions and their effect as opposed to a video which just shows one way or would be an absolute drag to watch every enaction of. The ideal solution for complex gameplay is a video with text notes showing one way to do something, with text notes on screen listing other solutions or scenarios.

>>11981517
Lmao, but beyond that there are certain missions which trigger in certain towns on certain months and the listed info is wrong, and the info on when monsters and scenarios become inaccessible is wildly confusing.

>>11978030
it’s a decent topic, I also wondered this question even back in 2000

One thing that very few people mention is the potential that text walkthroughs had when consoles added support for manuals, like the PSP and PS3. You could convert a full txt walkthrough into a format that the PSP supported and just pause the game to read it. I thought it would be the future, but it never caught on.

Look up how to beat a boss:

Gamefaq guide from the 00's
>[unrelated rant about some irl shit] anyway once you reach the end of the level you meet the boss!! BTW [story spoiler that only happens 4 levels later and which is unrelated to the current boss], anyway this boss is really easy you don't need my help especially if you use savestates ;) ;)

Look up a modern longplay on YT
>Disclaimer: most of our Longplays use savestates!
>Player uses exploits and strats that obviously took a hundred attempts that the TAS edited out and that not even a speedrunner would pull consistantly
>Video maker brags in the comments anyway saying he's glad he's helping others play the game after some retarded who didn't read the description thought it was a legit play

Pick your poison I guess.

>>11982119
>anyway this boss is really easy you don't need my help especially if you use savestates ;) ;)
i hated that shit so fucking much

>>11982119
You made that one up.

>>11982119
>Gamefaq guide from the 00's
I've never seen that happen though?

>>11978030
>>11978120
You guys have been away from /v/ for far too long if you think THIS is bait. He took a very tiny jab at gamefaq autists and then he proceeded to suck them off.
Not to mention that only a retrofag would be aware of this topic.

>>11978204
>forum clout had staying power
Threads back then were deleted after like two weeks of inactivity, including those hitting 500 (maximum) replies, which auto-locked them.

>>11982186
What forums were you browsing that that happened?

>>11982186
Every forum I used in the early 2000s had threads from the inception of the website still visible and usually not even locked. Everyone always got mad if you made a new thread to ask a question that someone asked 5+ years prior, and even MORE mad if you found that thread and necrobumped it to ask for clarification on something.

>>11982197
>>11982208
This thread is about GF, so.. GF.

>>11982217
Imagine ever using the GameFAQs forums... You go there for walkthroughs and cheats, nothing more.

sure it’s nostalgic but GF guides vary a lot in quality, can’t complain because people were voluntarily doing it

>>11982226
Back then we discussed game mechanics, not gender and other hebrew mindrot

>>11982385
that's on you /v/idiots for bringing it up constantly

>>11982385
>hebrew mindrot
You have mindrot yourself

>>11978090
It didn't get you a paycheck but man did it get your e-peen sucked.

>>11978759
I always said facks

>>11982208
Kek, I remember this.

Because it was a better time of the internet where everything was driven by passion.

Like you have anything better to do.>>11982592