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[TylerDurden4321]

Gargoyle's Quest for the original Game Boy.
I was 8 and only ever played (edit: easier) sidescrolling action games without a map and rpg elements before (plus tetris and other intuitive games), didn't speak any english... I had absolutely no idea what to do or how or why whatsoever.

 

[eso76]

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!

Dude, I beat all the last ninja games without cheats when I was between 10 and 12 I think.
Worst part was definitely the platforming.
Having to cross the river jumping on those stones and then the boat...
No idea how we could endure stuff like that back then.

 

[didamangi]

Another Sonic 3 barrel victim.

And any Sierra adventure games. Always get stuck one way or another.

 

[Koren]

Flashpoint.

30 years ago, and I'm still annoyed I never managed to understand a single thing about this game.

Should anyone have an explanation, I'd be really, really glad.

Gargoyle's Quest for the original Game Boy.
I was 8 and only ever played (edit: easier) sidescrolling action games without a map and rpg elements before (plus tetris and other intuitive games), didn't speak any english... I had absolutely no idea what to do or how or why whatsoever.

Interesting... It was kinda a genre I didn't know well at this time, and I remember spending some time on it. I was really surprised when I replayed it a couple years later to finish it in something like 1 hour.

 

[DrunkShogun]

Digimon world. Couldn't train a good digimon and would always wander to the wrong part and be destroyed by a far stronger enemy. Played it again 10 years later and made significant progress but the disc was scratched and glitched at an entrance point of a new stage so that comeback finished early.

 

[Solaire of Astora]

I own games as an adult I can't figure out. I've tried three times to play Elite : Dangerous, and failed to understand how to even get to one of my missions. The game seems to give me no explanation and fails to plot a route.

I'll admit, I haven't gone through all the pages in this thread, so this may have already been answered, but failure to plot route means that the target system is too far away for your current ship to jump to.

When you go to the mission board, you can check if your ship is capable of making the journey to the target system. Click on "open galaxy map" and the target system should be selected. Click "plot route" and if a route comes up, your ship is capable of making the journey. If it doesn't, then this mission isn't for you.

 

[Council Pop]

I remember renting some Digimon game for PS1 and there being absolutely no clue about what to do. I'd just wander around this horrible isometric map and then my digimon would die of hunger or something. I honestly mustn't have got past the first ten minutes of that game.

Also Yoda Stories on the GBC- I couldn't seem to progress anywhere or find anything to do, I'd just get killed by snakes if I remember correctly.

 

[Garlador]

"Reset the computer" they tell me...

Never made it past this part. Never even CONSIDERED you had to hit the "reset" button on your video game SYSTEM.

 

[GuyKazama]

Yep.

Jaws on NES. What's the end game here lol?

Fucking Jaws..... yes.......

Came here to post Jaws.

As a kid, I didn’t understand the concept of grinding and leveling up. In this game, you can encounter Jaws almost immediately but can barely make a dent. I killed 1000s of stingrays, jellyfish, and mini-Jaws sharks — but could never get Jaws life down to zero.

Later, out of a magazine or somewhere, I learned you just bounce port-to-port delivering conch shells. After a couple visits you are leveled up enough to slaughter him. Game can be beaten in less than 15 minutes.

 

[Keinning]

myst

still loved clicking around to see pretty screens though

 

[Recall]

Syndicate Wars on PS1

You could never override a save, just make a fresh one so 4 saves later your memory card was full and it made zero sense as a game. Could never figure it out, and tried sooooo much to figure it out.

 

[Zombegoast]

It took two years for me to figure this out. Every zelda game before it you push a block into a hole and progress. I was stuck for years and was finally able to solve it until...

Seasons was a better game

 

[Silvawuff]

Dragon's Lair. Couldn't tell if controlling or not.

Why does the Knight keep dying to the frying pan?!

 

[bryanee]

I cant even remember why I had trouble with this one but I know I did.

 

[Reszo]

A game called Kings Field.

I could not for the life of me figure out what to do in that game . I would always get lost and run away from the monsters. I never got too far in that game.

 

[Cyrus_Saren]

I got stuck on the Pearls password in Mario RPG. I ended up cheating and checking out my friends file to see what it was.

I was one of the kids that got stuck on the barrel in Sonic 3.

 

[TheOmegaSpartan]

Oddworld: Abe's Odyssey. Rented it at a Blockbuster when I was like 8 and couldn't figure out what the point of the game was.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park on the PS1. The first level with the compy was hard and falling off small ledges either took nearly all my health or killed me. Even with the passwords I couldn't pass a single level.

Crash Bandicoot: got all the was to Bridge to Nowhere and was stumped for years. Redeemed myself in the N. Sanity Collection.

 

[RadioHeadAche]

I remember getting stuck on Small Soldiers for PlayStation. I didn't really care for it, so it didn't bother me too much.

Men in Black for PC. I made it to the arctic level and never figured out what to do. I think you had to use a pic axe on a hatch in the ground, but I never got it.
Years later I discovered cheat codes and skipped through levels. It's probably for the best that I never got through it. I now know that game was hot shit.

 

[Vistrix]

Shadowgate on NES. I barely got past the first few rooms but it was so memorable.

 

[hbkdx12]

My mom bought me FFVII with my PS1 and for the life of me i could never understand why it was that you'd get sucked into battles just by walking around the map that was devoid of enemies.

It really soured me as a kid because i distinctly remember not wanting to play the game because walking around became this futile task of "how many steps can i take before i get sucked into some random battle out of thin air"

I've never played final fantasy since

 

[quesalupa]

I was a bit too rambunctious to learn the systems in RPGs but I always liked the stories.

 

[King Al B]

Nobungas Ambition for NES. I had no freaking idea what i was doing, but i kept trying anyway.

 

[Dangansona]

People in this thread are old!

 

[EdibleKnife]

Rescue: The Embassy Mission on NES

NES was my first console. Parents brought it home from a garage sale with this game and Mario 3. Had no idea what to make of Rescue. Could never make heads or tails of the sneaking and sniper portions because I know there was more to the game

 

[Host Samurai]

I had no idea on how to play an RPG till 7th grade.

 

[jett]

Most games my six year-old self played on the C64. These were the dark ages of gaming.

 

[entremet]

People in this thread are old!

The average age of gamers is in the 30s. So NES kids. Looks about right

 

[SafeinSound]

Could never beat the spider boss in final fantasy 7 when I was real young, then like a year later I beat it and it was literally starting a whole new game hahaha. This was before guides online were popular, or if there was it was a 2000 page gamefaqs guide. I remember one time I printed out like 100 pages for valkyrie profile. My parents nearly killed me.

 

[thesonovabeach]

Sid Meier's Pirates (the original one, not the remake, although I think I got it around 2000).

I was way too young to play a strategy game that complex, but I think I was absolutely clueless on what the hell it was all about.

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Holy Shit, how I forgot about this game. I my late 30s now so I had to be 7 or 8 when we got this game and go this day I can't understand anything about it. Kinda reminds me of Zelda but devoid of charm or instructions. Since we got it from a flee market it came with no booklet (not that it would of helped)



Also, Clash at Demonhead on NES made absolutely sense whatsoever back in the day. NONE!!

 

[Currygan]

also,

stuck on this shit for MONTHS

 

[andymcc]

I remember renting lots of the Koei strategy games from Phar-Mor (really dating myself here) because of the badass boxart. Too young to figure them out tho.

I have no idea how i got my hands on it, but i rented a ps1 game as a kid and all I remeber was that it had 2d oixelly characters, everything was very brown, it had a shit ton of menus, it played like some sort of super chess game and i think it was in japanese. If anyone knows what this game moght be let me know.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Monsters

 

[Soapbox Killer]

Of course we didn't own this but I've never seen anyone make past the first cut scene.

Horseshit complete Horseshit.

 

[J-Spot]

There's was a Ren & Stimpy game for SNES that I couldn't figure out. In the first level you're tasked with getting something like one million Gritty Kitty Litter box tops. There are box tops scattered all throughout the stage but by the end of it you'd have maybe 100 of them or so. Presumably there was something you had to do that would just give you the million box tops but we could never figure out what and never made it to the second level.

 

[Bluehound]

Hugo's House of Horrors. As someone who doesn't speak English natively and didn't have English classes in elementary school yet, I never managed to even get inside the house. Gotta play it again sometime.

 

[woopWOOP]

Thread replies reminded me of a lot more dead ends.
Yeah, that final boss in Wrath of the Black Manta was bullshit. Hitting it with regular attacks kills you immediately and I had no clue I was supposed to be doing a bunch of special moves in order. Never beaten it.
That metal wall in Bionic Commando was another. I think it appeared if you didn't select the right item for that stage? I didn't know how you could exit the level at that point so I was stuck and all I could do was turn off the game :/
In Solstice I'd do the potion cheat, spam a bunch of potions for fun, eventually fall down into some cave maze, get lost, get bored, turn off game.

I had a Japanese copy of Pokémon Green and I couldn't read Japanese so I would only get as far as finishing the SS Anne since I didn't know that HMs were a thing.

This reminds me of this half gibberishly translated rom of Gold/Silver a cousin gave to me before the games were officially released here. Made it to Goldenrod City, but I had no clue how to get past that dancing tree. Wasn't until I got the official game a year later that I understood what was going on.

 

[Drek]

Eye of the Beholder on Super Nintendo. I figured out how to beat it eventually, but there were so many things that left me confused and I knew I'd missed a lot of content.

Below the Root on C64, never actually finished it, though I'm not sure if it even has a real ending. Played it a ton but relative to it's time the game world was huge and you needed to use a lot of different equipment to navigate challenges.

 

[Unspoken90]

Myst is the first that comes to mind. Also had trouble figuring out the mini map in GTA 3.

 

[Arch]

Final Fantasy VI on the SNES when I was 9.

I had heard great things about the FF series from my friends and gaming magazines. So I traded in like 5 different SNES games at Funco Land to get a used copy of FFVI for $70. When I got home I just started from a save that was already on the cart (I did this sort of thing all the time when I was a kid. Guess I was eager to get to the good stuff?). As a result, I had no idea what was going on, where to go, or how to use the battle system.

I had played Super Mario RPG right before this game (alas, traded it in) so I was totally thrown off by the active time battle system. In SMRPG battles are turn-based and you have as much time as you want to pick your move. In FFVI, I'd pick a move but because it didn't happen right away—and enemies could attack while I was picking—I felt like the game was broken.

It would be 20 years before I would return to FFVI. The battle system makes sense to me now.

 

[Dvidus]

I had Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure on the Lynx when I was 8 years old. Game made no sense to me at all. Didn't help English wasn't my native language.

 

[canocha]

I owned the game Corporation for Mega Drive and i had no ideia what i was doing.

Still don't.

 

[MissCauthon]

ET on Atari 2600.

 

[UraMallas]

Yeah. There was this computer game where you were building a roman (I think?) city and you had to build water systems and I could never get anything to grow. It always just sat there as I built things. I remember trying multiple times but we didn't have instructions so I couldn't figure it out. It still haunts me to this day.

EDIT: Pretty sure it was this game:

EDIT EDIT: Nope. Watched some gameplay and it isn't this.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: It was actually the original one! Caesar:

 

[Lijik]

Journey Man Project Turbo came with my familys first pc when i was a child. I couldnt figure it out at all, just wandered the apartment listening to everybody's "Im not at home" message. There was a teleporter in the lobby area that would take you places but it all immediately led to the destruction of Earth when you warped.

Years later I found out what you were supposed to do after rediscovering the Packard Bell manual while cleaning. In the back was a section for the games that came with it and there was a mini walkthrough that got you through the first few puzzles.

 

[anonymous_abc]

.

 

[mokeyjoe]

I was a late era Spectrum owner (1990-1991), around about the time the whole system's library was basically being given away on the covers of magazines.

While it meant I did amass a huge collection of classic games, their general inscrutability and the almost complete lack of instructions meant legendary titles such as Tau Ceti or Lords of Midnight were forever a mystery to me.

 

[Vanguard771]

It took two years for me to figure this out. Every zelda game before it you push a block into a hole and progress. I was stuck for years and was finally able to solve it until...

Seasons was a better game

I never made it past the block.

 

[Robaperas]

Faxanadu, it was difficult, confusing and the mantras were too long. I ended up finishing it a few years ago, it was just as confusing as I remembered it.

 

[MCD250]

Myst.


Good God.

 

[nikos]

Got stuck on plenty of NES games. No internet back then, only a 900 number to call for tips. Never did that though.