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Did you own games as a kid you could never figure out?

urfe

Member
I think there was a game called Hylyde or something on NES. I never grasped the concept.

Likewise on NES, Friday the 13th. I just walked around, and after a minute Jason or whoever killed me.

I remember feeling Bart's Nightmare was super hard on Super NES, but not that I didn't get it. The best I did was a B- I think.
 

Renmyra

Member
I had huge troubles finding the white SeeD ship in FF8 as a kid. I was probably 8 or 9 back then and didn't know much English. Most things you could usually brute force your way through by speaking to all the NPCs or running to every location. Finding a random ship hidden somewhere on the map you didn't even know you were supposed to find was not easy to figure out even though I probably had my mom translate some of the dialogue.

Also Superman 64. Fuck that game. I never managed to progress past the first level. Had absolutely no idea what to do.
 

fireflame

Member
A lot:Alien 8,E.X.I.T, I did not know what do in Alien 8 and E.X.I.T was an obscure adventure game i I never solved.

There was also a game about an old man on a wheelchair trying to recover a pair of cructches in order to take part in a race, I think the game was bugged and I never beat it.
 

Fantastapotamus

Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
My sisters and I owned a game called "Shine" which was a horror FMV adventure game and we had no idea what to do or how to play it. We spent hours running around a city-like environment, totally creeped out by everything (which ironically enough was nothing) even though NOTHING happend. I remember at one point finding a bar and running into one of those infamous "logic" puzzles and that's pretty much where stopped.

If you have played those type of games you probably know exactly why.
 

Axass

Member
Wizards & Warriors III was simply too convoluted for my less than 10 years old mind.

Curse of Monkey Island lasted me several years.
 

Hedge

Member
I never got past the section with the floating-tower-thing in Summoner 2 when I was a kid. It really sucks, because I loved that game so much but never could complete it.
 

sphinx

the piano man
I wasn't very young, because I was able to follow stories and puzzles and what not. I was into PC gaming back then and saw this box in the store, I thought it looked badass and the story seemed interesting. Bought it

Gabriel_Knight_3_-_Blood_of_the_Sacred%2C_Blood_of_the_Damned_Coverart.png


I remember making it to a small town in France with other tourists and you were supposed to uncover the mystery of the town with help of said tourists.

after days of running around in circles, I said "fuck it I have no idea what to do, let me have a look at a player's guide."

holy shit..... never ever in a million years would I have guessed ANY of the obtuse, bullshit puzzles this game had to offer.

I went straight to the final boss with the guide, and yes great story, shit game.
 

FGanz

Neo Member
For me it was actually Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King on the PS2.

I generally knew what I had to do but I always found myself repeating some stuff I'd already done and I don't recall ever finishing that game. To be fair I don't think I cared too much for progressing with the story and just wanted to kill some bad guys or whatever.

Something similar happened with Goldeneye on the N64, but at that point I was so young that nobody would expect me to have a clue of what I was doing.
 
I wasn't very young, because I was able to follow stories and puzzles and what not. I was into PC gaming back then and saw this box in the store, I thought it looked badass and the story seemed interesting. Bought it

Gabriel_Knight_3_-_Blood_of_the_Sacred%2C_Blood_of_the_Damned_Coverart.png

This is one of mine, got stuck walking between the graveyard and phone booth for hours.

Played Full Throttle and Final Fantasy without speaking english. Got stuck in a trailer with a passed out drunk during the first one.

A turn based dragonball game in japanese was really hard as well. Took me a month or so to figure out what was what.
 
So many Atari ST games. Back in those days it was just a case of "figure it out for yourself" and the manuals weren't worth a shit. I never knew what the hell I was doing in Carrier Command, Hunter, Castle Master, Midwinter 2, and about a dozen other games.
 

Deraldin

Unconfirmed Member
Alien Legacy. Bought the CD version from a bargain bin along with Earthsiege. Didn't think much of either game at the time. Eventually came back around to mech combat with Mechwarrior 3. Alien Legacy did manage to get its claws into me the second time around though.


Okay... planets go around the sun. Yup. Everything checks out.


What? I don't understand. Something about making some colonies or whatever?


I don't get it. Is this some sort of shitty SimCity clone thing? Boooooring.

2 years later...

Maybe I'll give this another shot.

Oh god my colonies are under attack! The seedship is going to wipe out the solar system! AHHHH WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?! WHAT DO YOU WANT GO AWAAAAY!


I bounced off this game hard the first time I tried to play it. Second time around I got really sucked into it. I would wake up early just so that I could get an extra hour in before I had to go to school.
 

gelf

Member
Carrier Command on the Atari ST comes to mind. It was my first system as a kid and it was one of the games that came with it. I spent time just pressing various functions on the carrier without having much clue why and what my goal was.

carrier_command_7.gif


Just so many buttons and options and we had no manual.
 
The ones I remember are Quest for Glory(3?) and Day of the Tentacle.

Never had any clue what to do in these games, but I liked to play them. In Quest for Glory I constantly died because I forgot to do...something.

Day of the Tentacle I never got very far in. I wandered around for hours picking stuff up but it ended there lol.
 
E.T.

...What?

Also Who Framed Roger Rabbit and some Quest game I cant remember the full title of also for NES. On both I think I got stuck and had no clue wtf to do.
 

redcrayon

Member
Aliens on the Amstrad. I could open doors. That was it. This is after 20 minutes loading it each time.

Gremlins 2 on GameBoy. I could get to stage 4 (out of 5) but it was insanely hard.
 
I had Ring of Power for the MegaDrive when I was a kid, with no knowledge whatsoever of the English language and no background whatsoever on WRPGs, so the game was tremendously esoteric for me. I hated it as a result.
 

Anarki

Member
Wonderboy in monster world was my first ever RPG and as a kid I got stuck within the first 15 minutes of the game.

I remember going through a forest and into a cave, the next screen had this drum thing with music notes on it and I never knew what I had to do. So I just abandoned the game forever.

In fact I still own the game now, some 20 odd years later and have never attempted to go back to it. Maybe I will one day.

That's how far my backlog goes!
 

c0de

Member
Amiga: Defenders of the crown. I didn't know what to do.
Gauntlet on Master System: no one told me you can't finish this game.
 
I remember Platoon on the C64 I had no clue what to do on the second level and would die straight away. Can't think of any others only a few that were ridiculously hard due to bad design.
 
Someone mentioned Quackshot earlier in this thread.

Heh, my cousins and I had no grasp of English back when we were 5/6 yo and it was a pain trying to solve some of the puzzles or how to advance further in the game.

That puzzle where you have to step on rocks in a certain order in Mexico (I think it was related to the sun, moon and stars) drove us nuts but hey, in the end we managed to beat the game :D
 
I couldn't ever figure out fighting games like Street Fighter or Marvel VS Capcom. It took me until I was a teenager to learn to play which is funny because now they are pretty much all I play.
 

nelo_inc

Member
Final Fantasy VII, at 11 my knowledge of english wasn't nearly good enough to get me through the big snake in the sand outside of Midgar.

I did spend some days trying to level up, but no, couldn't beat it (don't even now if its possible?).

Another that i remenber was Hercules falso for the PS1, some minotaur like boss!
 
When I was six, I got a GBA SP and with it, the GBA remaster of Super Mario Bros 3.

I got stuck at the end of 1-5 because I couldn't figure out how to enter an upside-down pipe. I was stuck there for two years. I just played the first five levels over and over again.
 
The Last Ninja Remix. Controls were weird as hell. Played it for the music. Was happy just to get the nunchucks from the toilets or the staff on some platforms. Wasn't a fun jump...

I never personally saw anyone go past level 1, actually. Jumping the boat was hard the first time and I think you had to jump a second boat for level 2 but it was fast and hard and we just kept falling into the water to drown. A time where ninjas couldn't swim or run on water ha!
 

Wulfram

Member
Never got the plumbing working properly in Sim City 2000. "Water Shortage Reported" is still a running joke with my Mum.
 

BigDes

Member
Battlezone for the Commodore 64

Was six years old and a proper tank sim was just too much for me.

EDIT: Actually after looking at videos I am not entirely sure it was Battlezone, the version I had looked a bit different
 
The Last Ninja Remix. Controls were weird as hell. Played it for the music. Was happy just to get the nunchucks from the toilets or the staff on some platforms. Wasn't a fun jump...

I never personally saw anyone go past level 1, actually. Jumping the boat was hard the first time and I think you had to jump a second boat for level 2 but it was fast and hard and we just kept falling into the water to drown. A time where ninjas couldn't swim or run on water ha!

I can pretty much finish that level without dying haha, I loved that game, played it to death. I'm proud of the fact that I actually managed to beat it without using cheats too. Probably one of the toughest games I ever finished, but mostly down to the akward controls, obscure goals, and all round weirdness. Heres me finishing level 1, I think I might die maybe once or twice, not sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0-237LW-oA
 

eso76

Member
Tons.

Well, I had Raiders of the lost Ark on Atari 2600 when i was 6 i think ?
That has nothing to do with age though, figuring out that game is just not possible for anyone.

Besides that, I used to buy C64 games in bulks (and without manuals) and tons of them, i had no idea what i had to do.

This one off the top of my head

Evening_Star.png


I could never figure how to make the damn thing even start moving and i remember trying all the damn Keys
 

McNum

Member
UFO: Enemy Unknown aka X-Com: UFO Defense

So this new game has a fantastic intro and looks really fun. And then you start a new game and there's... a globe?

Of course, since I was young enough I had other disadvantages:
- Poor English skills, not knowing words like "Intercept", "Research" and "Hire/Sack"
- Being scared of aliens (which is not entirely unwise in X-Com)
- No tactical skills at all
- Little patience

I never figured X-Com out until we got close to the release of the reboot, where I sat down and tried to actually figure it out. That was fun. Turns out being able to read English fluently and knowing such things as placing radars where you expect trouble instead of on the South Pole, and moving soldiers in squads and how to breach a UFO with not-horrible casualties makes the game much, much easier to play.

Not that X-Com is ever easy, just.... you know, losing as intended instead of losing because I can't read.
 

knkng

Member
Final Fantasy.

My friend's Dad would sit there with his pack of smokes and play it for hours. We thought it was the coolest thing ever and were amazed at all the monsters he could fight in the game. We weren't allowed to to touch his save file, but we had our own that we would always mess around with. The game may as well have been in Chinese, we could just never figure it out, lol. Granted, we were around kindergarten age at the time.
 

Currygan

at last, for christ's sake
Dragon's Lair for the Game Boy

160634.dragons-lair.hqibu_jpg_750x400_crop_upscale_q85.jpg


you hop around across various screens collecting small boxes until, um, you awake a dead knight or some shit. You can only jump, no other action is possible. game lasts about one hour

maybe it's just a godawf game
 
I first played Ace Combat 4 when it came out, I was apparently too young to grasp that you have to hold down R1 to thrust, so I just failed the first mission every time, going really slow. One of my favorite games today.
 

Giga Man

Member
Yeah. Mario's Time Machine for the SNES. I thought it was going to be a platformer with Mario jumping through real world history in typical Mario fashion. Instead, I'm greeted with a time machine that I had no idea what to do with, and then I'm launched into a surfing session where I had no idea what the objective was. I didn't know what the mushrooms you could collect do, and every whirlpool I went in sent me back to Bowser's Castle, the main hub.

I know what it's all about now, but I don't remember if it took me days or years before I learned how to progress and realized it was an educational game.

Glover, still to this day I cannot figure this game out at all. Good music in the game though.

This game is a doozy. I cannot for the life of me imagine anyone playing this game effectively. I honestly like the aesthetic and the silly voices Glover makes when he zaps the ball, but I can't handle anything outside the tutorial zone.

While typing this, however, I just looked up the game on youtube to refresh my memory, and I had no idea the game had cheat codes. I wonder if any of them can help me beat the game. :V
 

gamer_povro

Neo Member
Yes, this one:
sqskd5bl.jpg


Never understood what to do and how to do it.
I tried many times during many years but I never managed to understand this game.
The fact that back then English was a mysterious language for me didn't help, then i lost the manual...
Now my Supervision doesn't work anymore, I guess I'll never be able to play this game.
 

shmoglish

Member
Magic carpet on the PlayStation - was it really just flying around?

.
Seriously, popped in my mind while I was reading the headline. I managed to beat a few levels but to this day I have no Idea what was going on here. It was fun and kinda... unsettling at the same time.
 
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