In another thread someone talked about making their own maps for Jurassic Park which made me remember the pages and pages of graphing paper I used for Castle Wolfenstien when I played it as a kid. I had the entire place mapped out so I could quickly exit after planting the bomb. I also made a matrix of all of the planes in Aerobiz so I could plan out which ones to purchase for which routes. I remember having a notebook for The Bards Tale, Impossible Mission, and Flashback....
The internet sure changed things. I remember the old hand drawn maps they would sometimes print in the games mags back in the day and the paper maps we'd share amongst friends to show the secret bombable caves in Zelda. Remember the times when you had to write level passcodes down to continue a game that didn't feature saves? Then loosing said codes and having to start all over again? Arghhh!
for me if i used to get stuck it would either be asking friends or failing that buying one of the many gaming mags (crash and c&vg were the main ones) also used to stick a piece of paper in virtually every tape box with cheats etc on them or cutouts from the mag for that particular game
Yeah, I also remember the magazines like Amstrad Action printing readers walkthroughs which ranged from fantastic, coloured, artistic efforts to these crap scrawls that AA should never have printed. Some of them were wrong.... I actually have a pile of about 100+ Amstrad Actions in the attic dating back to issue #6 in 1985. So was there really ever a time when walkthroughs didn't exist?
Niiice. I hadn't heard of this before. I'll have to check it out... I used to play this game back in the day on my first iMac (the big green ones... :lol. Now I just play it on an emulator on my Xbox. I have yet to beat it though...
slighly off topic, but dont forget about the sequal to flashback on the mega cd, heart of the alien, and the crappy 3d sequal on the pc and psx, fade to black edit :: forgot to mention the 15th anniversay edition of another world that came out a few months ago, definatly worth checking out if your a fan of the series, nice enhanced graphics etc.
flashback is not a sequel to Another World. heart of the alien IS a sequel to Another world. Fade to black is a sequel to Flashback =) Flashback is the best selling French game of all time!
I remember when I was the cheatmaster of codes back in the day. Before I had internet, and all that. Damn what a flashback, I think I still have my big notebook somewhere. Damn, there I really used my photographic memory to remember codes. To pc games, anyway that was the past
argh. another world? i still can't make it past the third level... there is also a freeware gba version. highly recommended. even though its frustrating. OT: It was just last year when I played Phantasy Star 1 and drew dungeon maps on checkered paper. A special gaming experience.
I've been buying magazines with walkthroughs/strategy guides since I was 8, I can't remember any serious gaming days before that.
Back in the pre-NES days there were virtually no walkthroughs for console games in the magazines, because the games were so small that spoilers made them unplayable. They hinted around forever about the Easter egg in Adventure before finally revealing it, but by then most of us had already found it. Nowadays it's hard to believe how many hundreds of hours we spent exploring those tiny little games. I still have the letter I received from Starpath after writing to ask what the lantern was used for Dragonstomper. They replied with a typewritten letter saying, "The lantern has no use."
Flahsback....the only game where we actually called the help line and paid the fee to do it. That was short lived, but they'll be happy to know that they got our money once...
I actually remember a 1990 NES Zelda strategy guide in the Greek magazine "Pixel", in addition of many previous walkthroughs for Commodore and Amiga games so in my opinion strategy guides is not something that was born in the 90s.
I remember back in the late 80s, early 90s. There was this one computer shop about 20 miles from my house that would make maps and hint guides and sell them (They also did NES games as well, like Metroid and Zelda). I personally remember having a password book next to my NES/Genesis games that I had filled (About 100 pages worth). Now a days, Gamefaqs is around. I must say, though: writing a in-depth guide is a pain in the ass sometimes.
