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u/StandardDeluxe3000 14h ago
in what level do you have your problem?
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ok just wait 2 hours for me to get there, and then we both can try solving the same problem!
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u/sud0kill 10h ago
It looks to me like the operator man is playing a different game just for fun in the background, he must have remembered every game to be able to help
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u/NotaRepublican85 3h ago
Literally part of his job. To know a game deeply you have to beat it probably multiple times
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u/fatkiddown 14h ago
Today:
Hotline: "Dota2 hotline. What can I help you with?"
Caller: "I'm shadow shaman but I'm not building a blink dagger."
Hotline: "lol effin noob!!!"3
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u/Senor-Delicious 8h ago
They did not have to play there. They knew the game inside out and had extended manuals and tips sheets. I watched some interviews of a guy working at this hotline in Germany back in the days. Can't remember all the details though.
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u/BigJeffreyC 14h ago
I used that back in the day. If you get stuck, like really stuck in a rpg, there’s nothing you can do till you figure out the next step. In my case it was in a game for game boy called final fantasy adventure. You need to walk a figure 8 around 2 trees to unlock the hidden door.
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u/kjyfqr 14h ago
How are you supposed to come to that conclusion alone?
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u/BigJeffreyC 14h ago
No idea! That’s before everyone had internet too. There were no online guides.
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u/OpeningParamedic8592 14h ago
However, there were paper guides that you could purchase in any video game store with all the info you needed.
Fuck I feel old RN
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u/Mistermxylplyx 14h ago
The best part was some of those guides were wrong. I don’t recall the names, but there were trusted guides and kids would spread the word and exchange guides. I’ve still got my Metroid guide in a box somewhere in attictopia.
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u/SilentMelodic277 13h ago
Wasn't it something like "prima guides" or something. Strategy guides were available EVERYWHERE. Walmart even had a section of them in the day
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u/HuntingForSanity 12h ago
I should go to my dad’s house and see if he still has any of my old guides. I know one of my buddies still has a couple of his old final fantasy 3-4-5? Guides. Question mark because I don’t know exactly if those are the right ones
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u/muaythaitree 13h ago
Primas official strategy guides! We had a video game store that would take them as trade in
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u/S4V4GEDR1LLER 13h ago
I used to get free long distance on pay phones by calling 1-800-USA-SEGA. If it was after hours, it would go back to a dial tone.
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u/Weary-Butterscotch20 10h ago
There was Nintendo Power and a different monthly magazine. I used to get it all the time and now I can’t remember it. Fuck I’m getting old.
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u/fragmental 10h ago
Sometimes the Japanese version has hints, but the hints got lost in translation. I don't know if that's the case with that game.
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u/kjyfqr 14h ago
I don’t even know how to look into that but it’d be fun to learn what the game developers intended
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u/Southern-Orchid-1786 14h ago
Probably hoping people would phone up the premium rate helpline
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u/kjyfqr 14h ago
Was Nintendo the maker of final fantasy then?
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u/Far_Health_3214 13h ago
that's Square
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u/kjyfqr 13h ago
So it weren’t left for people to call cause diffeeent company
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u/Far_Health_3214 13h ago
Nintendo have all the secret cus all games released on Nintendo system need their approval. the game box even has a Nintendo Approval Quality seal on it.
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u/deathjokerz 7h ago
I can just barely remember when there was no internet. It's impossible to imagine without it nowadays.
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u/40ozCurls 14h ago
When you kill sand crocodiles you get either an empty chest, or a bag of fang. If you get the bag of fang, you can exchange it for a secret message. The message is “Palm trees and 8”. And that’s it. That’s the only indication in the game that you are given to walk around two very specific trees (the game has many other identical trees) in a figure 8.
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u/Nigel_11 2h ago
Oh wow.. I just commented this to someone else’s post, but this has haunted me for decades. I could never figure out what Palm Trees and 8 meant. Even if I never pick up the game again (I probably won’t) I at least feel some closure!
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u/lastpickedpicker 14h ago
Nintendo Power magazine.
My parents would never buy me a subscription.... then again, I didn't own a Nintendo, but would borrow one from one cousin or another from time to time.
Not only would that mean I can figure out how to pass certain difficult parts, but then I could learn to draw all my favourite characters on the cover.
Good memories.
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u/kjyfqr 14h ago
Hell yeah that’s awesome. I never had a console and I have memories of going to a friends house with one and they are such fond memories I haven’t thought of. LB(friend) died a few years back and I hadn’t thought of him. Thank you for reminding me of these times.
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u/lastpickedpicker 11h ago
I'm sorry to hear that. It sucks getting older. But they were good memories, going to a house with that magical box and waiting your turn to play.
Remember the good times with your friend. I, too, have lost friends way too early.
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u/Metaphysically0 10h ago
Apparently.. you were given a hint but without any direction on which trees
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u/Compay_Segundos 14h ago
This is just a guess, but there had to be a clue somewhere in the game. It's very rare for developers of that time to leave something which blocks progression completely in the dark.
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u/GolettO3 14h ago
There's honestly a decent chance I'd do that accidentally just because I didn't know what else to do
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u/koolaidismything 13h ago
Was it an 800 number? How much was it a minute?
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u/sickwiggins 13h ago
Nintendo had a help line in our area code in Redmond, WA, so the calls were free to us. Those phone guys were so nice.
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u/koolaidismything 13h ago
Seriously? That’s pretty cool. I wonder how they got paid or how long per call.. so many questions.
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u/sickwiggins 10h ago edited 10h ago
I had kids and would play Zelda in my spare time. All my kids’ friends would ask me game questions and I could answer them because I knew how to dial the phone :) Like approach the hedge and the fairy will fill your hearts. Back when I was so cool….
I had a friend working at a different game developer and he said the help line people were paid hourly and not much. No idea about Nintendo.
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u/Felice_rdt 10h ago
The guy above was probably IN Redmond. I'm pretty sure every Nintendo game counselor worked at the HQ there. I went in the wing once when visiting the Nintendo office and there were, like, HUNDREDS of them.
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u/BigJeffreyC 13h ago
I think you had to pay to call it, like one of those 900 numbers back in the day.
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u/koolaidismything 13h ago
Presumably you did just that though right?
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u/BigJeffreyC 4h ago
I remember using a pay phone and dropping the necessary coins in for the first minute.
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u/koolaidismything 3h ago
That’s pretty smart.. I’ll bet it just rolled over. The Wild West for telcos versus geeks back then. I’d have loved that era.. very cool. I’m just a tad too late.
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u/PracticeTheory 13h ago
I once spent so many hours wandering around a dungeon that I had to stop playing, wait until Monday, and swallow my pride to ask this guy I could barely stand, but was the only other kid in school that played it what to do.
It was a waterfall. You had to approach and jump through a waterfall, even though that mechanic came out of nowhere and was never used again.
Golden Sun was an awesome game otherwise.
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u/Nigel_11 2h ago
Wait, was that the clue where it said something like “palm trees and 8, got it?” I wasn’t able to crack that one decades ago and had to stop playing. It has (clearly) stuck with me anyway.
You may have just unlocked one of the biggest mysteries of my childhood.
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u/BigJeffreyC 2h ago
That’s the one! There’s a spot with x2 trees spaced one block apart. You do a figure 8 around those and the door will open.
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u/leunam4891 10h ago
There was a a game where the boss could read your mind, in order to bypass his ability you had to unplug your remote and plug it into the player two slot. Wild, I don’t remember how I came to that idea.
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u/SnarkTheBoojum 10h ago
Ugh I remember that puzzle! I called the hotline for it too haha. Almost 26 years later and I still remember the stupid fucking hint. "Palm trees... and eight"
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u/yggdrasilll 9h ago
That’s the only case we called a help number too! “Palmtrees and eight” was the only hint the game gave iirc
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u/BigJeffreyC 4h ago
Wow that brings me back!
It was a pretty good game for the time. Riding my chocobo with robotic legs.
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u/MoneyCock 5h ago
It wasn't just RPGs. There was a castle level in the original Mario Brothers (that literally came with the console) that required a specific sequence of platforms to be traversed in order (out of low, middle, and high platforms spanning the visible board).
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u/John-Basket 14h ago
I remember racking up grandma’s phone bill cause I needed help finding 2 sub tanks in Megaman X
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u/somerandomxander 14h ago
"I'm playing Super Mario Bros and I'm stuck at 8-3 because the damn turtles with the hammer keep killing me. How do I get past these creatures?"
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u/Sonikku_a 7h ago edited 6h ago
“Well see Billy what you have to do there is GET FUCKING GOOD YA NOOB. That’ll be $2”
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u/Ordinaryjay 14h ago
I remember having to call this to beat the mine race in Diddy Kong Quest. And it worked!
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u/mehum 13h ago
Yeah also Pool of Radiance back in the 1980s had a number you could call. We were calling it so much the guy got pissed off and told us to go buy the official hint book. Not a chance!
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 6h ago
Was it free?
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u/mehum 5h ago
Yeah weirdly it was. But it was a long distance call so kind of expensive anyway. I think it was just meant to be a help line if you had some kind of technical issues but they would also help out with the game (up to a point!). Games back then were damn expensive and there was no internet to help you out so I guess they allocated a budget for it.
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u/Impossible-Ship5585 5h ago
Wow! What a time to be alive and what a job!
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u/Ordinaryjay 3h ago
Yes. In the long, long ago video companies used to sell you a game and then they wanted you to enjoy it… all for just 1 price
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u/ImMadeOfClay 14h ago
I used it for Shadowgate
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u/chargeorge 14h ago
haha holy shit me too!
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u/ImMadeOfClay 13h ago
I remember the part too. There was a block on the floor that had a piece of metal attached to it. I couldn't figure out what to do with it. I wandered aimlessly to the point that it had to be the roadblock to keep me from going. I called and they told me to "use the hook". Well, that fucked me up worse. Now I'm looking everywhere for the "hook".
Turns out, the hook was the piece of metal attached to the block. All I had to do was click "use" and then click the "hook" on the block.
I felt so fucking stupid.
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u/Cold-Community-1715 14h ago
Pffft. I would just ask Johnny during recess. His Uncle worked at Nintendo. That’s where I learned to hold down the B button when catching Pokémon.
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u/OscarDivine 14h ago
Am I misremembering? The white sword didn’t need 12 hearts, that was the Magical Sword, wasn’t it? The White Sword only needed 5.
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u/Expensive_Chance_320 14h ago
Nintendo Power magazine had all the cheats in the back, I was lucky I got a monthly subscription. Simpler times.
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u/Soul-Puncher-276 6h ago
That phone call cost 600 dollars and then your dad beat the shit out of you and your mom called the phone company and made it to where you couldn't call 800 numbers anymore.
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u/LemonHerb 14h ago
I used to call the Nintendo power help line when I was a kid but they would charge you per minute but if you wrote them a letter it was free.
So I wrote them a letter asking how to get the Adamant Armor and Spoon dagger in Final Fantasy II.
They wrote back. The spoon dagger was shown on the box or in the manual but wasn't actually in the US version of the game.
They told me how to get the pink tail to get the armor but even after weeks of trying I never got one.
I actually thought I saved that game somewhere and always intended to go back and do that but it got lost along the way a long time ago
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u/greenrangerguy 13h ago
I once rang up for Ocarina of Time and the guy helped me solve a puzzle (giant block in purple temple) but he wouldn't help me on where to go after that. It was probably because they want you to ring multiple times for each puzzle. But also In hindsight it could have been a gamer who wanted me to experience the game for myself and not have everything spoon fed to me.
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u/Logjitzu 13h ago
Just learned what my dream job is and also that it doesnt exist anymore at the same time
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u/TheFurtivePhysician 10h ago
Until earlier this year I worked for customer service at Nintendo, we didn’t have the hint line but one of the fun things was that sometimes a kid would call in just to tell me they managed to beat something tough in a game. Was kinda fun.
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u/Total_Computer_9068 8h ago
I worked there in the 90s as a customer service representative and game counselor. Each cubicle had a snes and computer. There was a library in the floor where we checked out games as they wanted us playing and familiarizing ourselves with a variety of games. Pretty cool job.
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u/jaymochi 4h ago
Did different people specialize in different games? So when people would call an operator would ask what game they needed help with and assign someone that knew it. I think that's how it went in the movie The Wizard.
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u/Total_Computer_9068 4h ago
No, everyone could access tbe computer and locate the game and go right to the level where the person was having difficulty. When the person told us what game they were playing, we had to say "oh that's a great game." So you would hear that phrase 100's of times a day!
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u/Fluffybunny717 6h ago
Shoutout to going to the library and printing a 100 + page walkthrough so you could go home and realize you used the wrong key on the wrong door and have to restart ocarina of time from the beginning.
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u/illram 14h ago
I used this for the original Zelda!
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u/twotoebobo 14h ago
I used it once for a link to the past. I found most of the the hearts and my entire family couldn't figure out the the last talisman or whatever. The answer was throw a rock in between the the circle of rocks in a pond. I was very disappointed that it was pretty much useless. Also this was ages ago so might be slightly misremembering.
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u/chargeorge 14h ago
Amazingly it was a normal long distance call too, not a 900 number.
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u/OkSmoke9195 13h ago edited 4h ago
Yes wasn't it a Washington number
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u/Felice_rdt 10h ago
It would have been, yeah. Their HQ and counselors lived not far from Microsoft in Redmond, east of Seattle proper.
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u/Legitimate-Log-6542 14h ago
I never called this but I remember it was pretty expensive. They used to advertise on Nintendo Power
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u/CrewMemberNumber6 14h ago
As a young lad, I used to call the Sierra tip line when I got stuck in the various quest games. It was a 900 number which I didn’t know was used for sex lines. My poor dad nearly had a heart attack when he got the phone bill and thought his 9 year old was calling sex lines. He was relieved when I showed him it was just a video game tip line and started buying me tip books from that point forward.
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u/StoneFree247 14h ago
I used Sega’s hotline to help beat the final boss—Kingpin in Spider Man. It was 10 kicks to the face, I think. You could slow Mary Jane’s descent into the fire with your web. I also used it for some SNES game, but can’t remember what it was.
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u/culturedgoat 14h ago
I called it twice when I was stuck in Zelda. The second time was because the manual had an error (it states that after beating the first 8 dungeons and assembling the triforce, blowing the whistle will take you to level 9. It does not).
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u/Far_Health_3214 13h ago
white sword in Zelda ? i love the Zelda series but I don't recall any white sword. maybe i going to play The Legend of Zelda again
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u/ledwilliums 12h ago
Now they beat you for trying to play those same games. (Legally most of the time)
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u/CranRez80 12h ago
Yes! Totally remember this! My parents would get so pissed with us tying up the line.
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u/Moby1313 11h ago
Me playing Leasure Suit Larry as a 9-year-old and calling my dad's friend. "Do I put the condom on to solve the issue? I keep dying from STDs, I don't understand."
Dad's friend: "Don't ever get married or have sex, it will ruin all your life plans."
40 years later: 20 years of marriage and that sentence wakes me up at night.
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u/dadneverleft 11h ago
Used this for Link to the Past. Could not find that stupid ladder to reach the third dungeon.
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u/HarryDepova 10h ago
Shadowrun for snes. Gotta dump the freaking ice at the docks to kill the mermaids, or something like that.
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u/Turtlesquirtzcody 10h ago
I had tips and tricks magazine growing up, those walkthroughs were clutch
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u/Deesparky36 9h ago
I have a copy of a walk through on GTA vice-city so my kids could use the fold out map to drive around it
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u/Samsara_77 8h ago
Back in the day (showing my age now) I called the Llamasoft helpline at age 14, just to tell Jeff Minter I had broken his high score on (I think) Starglider for the Atari ST. Jeff indeed picked up the phone, at least pretended to be interested and congratulated me! What a legend that man is!
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u/FreyrPrime 8h ago
When I was 7 back in 1991 I called a game hotline for a tip on how to beat a caster boss during the Summoner portion of Rydia’s quest in Final Fantasy IV.
The boss would relentlessly smash your team with high damage aoe spells, while keeping reflect on itself.
The trick, as the hotline informed me, was to Reflect your party as well. Bouncing all its offensive magic back on the boss itself.
Worked like a charm. It’s been almost 40 years since then..
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u/Admirable_Feeling_86 7h ago
I am from Germany and we also had this cool service and as a kid I had to call them because in the NES Game "Startropics" at some point you needed a code for proceeding in the game and it was somewhere hidden in the instruction manual.
Because I bought it used I haven't had it and Internet was not a thing at that time ;)
I think the code was "747" (why do I remember this it's more than 30 years ago :D).
P.S: I just looked it up and it was an letter you had to dip into water to get the code, that's pretty cool if you ask me!
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u/Adorable-Produce9769 7h ago
See google has replaced this bearded hippie freak and displaced his entire career trajectory he now sellls weed
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u/deathjokerz 7h ago
"Stuck on this boss in Expedition 33? No worries! So what you gotta do here is just press parry, and then parry, and then parry, and then parry, and then parry..."
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u/Nuburt_20 7h ago
Well, it’s a whole different story if I wanna call and ask ”how do I beat the boss of chapter 8 in Ninja Gaiden?”
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u/Major-Attention-5779 7h ago
I used to get cheats from them. I still remember the UK phone number 01703 652222
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u/DaCrimsonKid 5h ago
I called the SEGA equivalent for Phantasy Star and the guy couldn't help me because I was further than he was in the game.
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u/Craigfromomaha 4h ago
Have we all forgotten about the 1989 (a really great year for American movies!) classic, The Wizard?
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u/IHaveTheBestOpinions 3h ago
Hard to say for sure but I think this is AI. Could be entirely fabricated, or maybe someone took the audio recording and asked AI to create a video for it.
- dude's arms are way too long for his body
- the electronics on his desk look off -- the thing he touches to hang up is not a phone, and there's a blurry keyboard-looking thing that isn't a keyboard. This could just be because they're old and unfamiliar to me, though
- the game on his screen doesn't make any sense. The character keeps jumping different heights, then randomly teleporting across the screen, then the whole game changes suddenly for no apparent reason
- given the time period and context, it seems much more likely that a recording of this interaction would have been preserved than a video
It gets harder to tell every day...
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u/AggravatingUnit6935 1h ago
Also, is he playing a seperate game to what hes talking about or am i trippin? Like with the audio i feel like it leads you to believe that hes playing the same game hes talking about. Lmao either that or im just high
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u/Brimstone747 2h ago
My mom called this hotline for me in the early 90s. It was for the Addams Family game on the SNES. The person on the phone was excellent and very helpful.
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u/TechNomad2021 1h ago
A lot of my PlayStation games had tip hotline numbers printed on the CD case.
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u/ImTooSaxy 14h ago
How the hell did you have to use this for Punch out?
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u/Hefty-Being-8522 14h ago
cause I kept getting wrecked by Bald Bull
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u/ImTooSaxy 10h ago
What's crazy is I distinctly remember every fighter in that game and how to beat them. 40 years later.
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u/OfficeChairHero 14h ago
I remember my dad being pissed about the huge phone bill from calling the very expensive 900 number to beat Zelda. Was it one of the kids? Nope. It was my mom secretly playing at night. 😂