Ah man I remember that.

The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour ruled.

I have the collectors edition of The 7th Guest (in a huge box shaped like a book that came with a PAL VHS that I don't have the means to play (but the video was on youtube so whatever)) and this version of The 11th Hour.  Unfortunately I still haven't gotten The 11th Hour to play on my XP machine, even with a patch I found.  I plan on trying again soon though, maybe I can make it work.  It let me play up to the 1st puzzle and then crashed.  But I really want to play it because any game where a woman gets raped by a house is awesome in my book.

Some of the puzzles are so easy and some of them are DISGUSTINGLY HARD.  Most of the word-based ones aren't bad though.  I also will never forget There is no possible way and The sky is ruddy, your fate is bloody.  I don't know why, but those phrases always stuck in my mind.

The novel of The 7th Guest wasn't bad but it was way too short.  You can read it in a day pretty easily.

Pretty much every puzzle in Grim Fandango is mind-boggling and nonsensical, a lot of them don't even make sense and the only real way to progress is to consult a faq, unless you want to spend about a week doing what could have taken a few minutes.  I can't say I used any gamer instincts with this game because it was so fucking stupid that I only wanted to continue playing for the plot (which was a letdown, anyway).

The one part that made me cringe was this particular puzzle, this is the solution:

You’re back in Rubacava. Go across the hub to Velasco. Talk to him and when he leaves pick up the bottle. Go across to the Blue Casket and go into the kitchen. Use the bottle on the keg full of gelatine. Leave the Blue Casket and go back to the Bone Wagon. Carry on down to Toto’s tattoo parlour. Take the liquid Nitrogen and return to the others. Give the bottle of gelatine to Glottis. When he comes back he will feel really sick. Say something to him and he will throw up. Use the liquid Nitrogen on the vomit to freeze it. Go across the frozen vomit to disarm the Bone Wagon.

It sounds simple enough from the solution, but it doesn't cover all of the other possibilities.  It was the last thing I would have guessed when I got stuck at that part, too. 

Strategies that never die?

Uh... back-back-forward? AYZEBAMANAAAAAAAEEE!

There was one part in God of War where you have to climb these spinning pillars that have spikes on them.  I spent hours trying to get past that fucking part, and I'll never play the game again just because of that one part. 

Psychonauts had a lot of really hard parts, interspersed with really easy game play.  I was mostly pissed that once I beat the game, I couldn't continue playing to get all the challenges. 

VAMP in mgs 4, it wasn't really hard but first playthrough i almost ran out of ammo trying to figure it out

Startropics was pretty annoying because there was that one part where the password is in the instruction booklet and I got it used from a game store w/o the booklet

MGS did that too with MERYL... but at least that game was released in a time with internet if you found it without the case

Edit: I think somehow I remembered the password though

Edit: The last few levels in Double Dragon II were pretty fucking annoying and I bet they're only really possible with savestates. Seriously, whose idea was it to have platforming sections with those kind of controls and instead of just losing a bar of life every time you fall you lose a whole life like it's Super Mario Brothers

Also last level of Ninja Gaiden where you have to restart the whole level if you die against the last boss dude

Edit: Man why did I spend my whole childhood getting frustrated as hell. That's what I was saying about kids being able to emulate any game they want these days, at least if a game frustrates them it's not one of the three games in their collection

Edit: Well actually at the height of our game collection I remember we had like 50 of them. How much would that have costed circa 1992

Edit: I just remembered I got River City Ransom for free though, off some friend of my brother's - so maybe it wasn't that bad since we would trade games we got tired of

Man I can't remember the last time I BORROWED a game (and never gave/got it back)

It sucks when games require you have the manual.  Although at least nowadays there are whole sites dedicated to manual scans.

btw that reminds me there's like pdfs of every book, can you just find scans of old Nintendo Powers for nostalgia's sake

I remember the early Earthbound previews were way different than the way it ended up/gave a different impression

I just remembered how they had a shot of Ness posing for a picture and doing the V for victory sign or whatever that's supposed to be and I thought he was eating a banana instead and I was like cool they have animations for you eating everything (btw why do Japanese do that V thing anyway is that to do with WWII - shouldn't they be making an L in that case)

Edit: Oh right that's the peace sign too but I thought it'd have to do with WWII

Edit: Wtf http://www.icons.org.uk/theicons/collection/the-v-sign/a-harvey-smith-to-you/the-asian-v-sign-in-progress I guess even Japanese people don't know how that happened

Edit: http://thejapaneseeye.blogspot.com/2007/01/japanese-photo-v.html if anybody cares

Edit: If I made a game nowadays there would be an animation for every food item you can eat - but I wouldn't have any other special animations or anything and everybody would be like really weirded out why did he put so much detail into that one part

I don't know about finding scans but sometimes at flea markets and things you can find old magazines, I've found a few gaming magazines that way.  I also have a bunch of old gamepros my brother used to get in the early 90's, I read some SUPER early previews of the N64 and they basically thought it was going to be the GOD OF ALL SYSTEMS MOST REALISTIC GAMING EVER.

The coolest thing was a Street Fighter II Turbo ad that had E. Honda and I think Sagat fighting and Sagat has a word bubble saying something like "Heh that was too easy, do you know where I could find a REAL challenge???" or something like that and in E. Honda's word bubble it was your address that is printed on the front of the magazine stamped in it.  That was an awesome idea for an ad.

The Seymour Flux fight in FFX. And the fact that you were forced to watch the cutscene before it.

i think this was the point where my game fucked up or i stopped playing and took it back to the rental store the next day.

I don't know about finding scans but sometimes at flea markets and things you can find old magazines, I've found a few gaming magazines that way.  I also have a bunch of old gamepros my brother used to get in the early 90's, I read some SUPER early previews of the N64 and they basically thought it was going to be the GOD OF ALL SYSTEMS MOST REALISTIC GAMING EVER.

funny thing is that early N64 tech videos look indistinguishable from severely outdated early 90's techno videos like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPEcjQXIHX0

but Autechre might've been doing random repetitive textures on things to look trippy N64 was doing it to be REALISTIC

Speaking of game magazines I remember I was so shocking when they gave Super Mario 64 a perfect 10 like HOW CAN THEY DO THAT OMG

I agree with the Illusion of Gaia one. I got stuck in that game so much @_@ But I just.. just had to beat it...

Also, I can beat the Speed Bike level in Battletoads really easily.. except like the last part where the stone blocks come whizzing REALLY FAST

I got stuck once in Illusion of Gaia, and near the end I had a flash:


Man that game sucked balls

I gotta admit I got out of my jam with help, otherwise I'd probably never made it out.

 

I got stuck once in Illusion of Gaia, and near the end I had a flash:


Man that game sucked balls

man I thought it was a general consensus that the game was good - thank you for saying otherwise

I think Illusion of Gaia was like the most hyped game circa 1995, I even had a T-shirt with the game logo on it

imo even SOULBLAZER was better than IoG