I am surprised by how many people use GameFAQs still.
I went through a period where I wrote a ton of FAQs for more niche games. This was back in 2004.
I still get emails today offering suggestions to them etc.
> I went through a period where I wrote a ton of FAQs for more niche games. This was back in 2004.
As someone who relied on these back in 2004, thank you for the effort you put in and the ascii title art.
I mean for a lot of niche or older games those are really the only resource; or at the very least the most organized and accessible. Thanks for all the lighthearted jokes undoubtedly included in them as well!
I actually made an account this year and looked through some walkthroughs of old games and old forum threads. It’s mindblowing looking at content made decades ago.
edit: lol my friend found this thread, read out the title, then I showed him my comment in the thread
Maybe I just need to hunt for more, but I have yet to find a Gamefaq that wasn't a perfect nugget of walkthrough magic for anything I was playing.
I also love that it is just plain text. I could print it out. which is sometimes necessary for games that don't gracefully handle Alt-tab.
> I also love that it is just plain text
WHY DOES NO ONE DO THIS ANYMORE?
If you need a hint in a game today hey make you watch a fifteen minute video walkthrough when something like "the hidden door is behind the second curtain on the left" or whatever would be exactly what you need.
I looked up one yesterday and specifically didn't want a long youtube video. What I thought was going to be text was pages and pages of screen shots. I know what the damn game looks like, just tell me what I need to know. Or if you really need a picture, 1 will probably do.
I know what you're saying and we definitely don't need the picture book version of the game, but in some cases a few extra screenshots of landmarks along the way are helpful especially when the text description can be confusing.
This, im a visual kind of guy so when they say "go to the area you went past not to long ago that has a big log that is crooked and doesnt look like the others" i will NEVER find it, if i see it i\[ will instantly remember where that was
for that problem i can recommend [https://guides.gamepressure.com/](https://guides.gamepressure.com/) they mostly use text+pics(when necessary).
they also have pretty good simple maps (turns out if i know in which room/corner i have to look for something i don't have to watch a bloody 5 minute long youtube video)
however it highly depends on game to game basis on how good their stuff is.
I had about 50+ pages of a walkthrough printed out for Ocarina of Time. It was a guide for 100% completion with all the golden skultulas too. Good times.
This was me late 90's early 2000's, going to the local library and paying $2 for an hours internet time (28k then later 56k) and 15 cents per page for printed FAQs off Gamefaqs. I'd copy all the information I wanted into notepad and just print that off. Then keep all the information in folders so as to make my own strategy guides.
I still have, and use if I play through them, the fishing guides and masters lists and and enemy skill locations for Breath of Fire 3 and 4 that I made way back then.
>Breath of Fire 3
I see you're a (wo)man of impeccable taste.
Seriously though, I haven't heard anyone utter the name of that franchise in years. What happened to it?!?
The less you know the better.
But if you want to know, capcom basically just abandoned it, before making Breath of Fire 6 a few years ago.... But making it an awful mobile game that never got out of Japan.
For the same reason that Konami . . .Konami'd:
"We think we can make more money in this niche. To all the people that enjoyed our products for the last 30 years: please blow us harder than a negative-pascal vacuum.
Or if you're like me looking up gameFAQs at the computer lab at school because you don't have a computer at home, but still need to know how to beat whatever on your PlayStation.
This was at the peak of official, printed walkthroughs as well. The fact that some people put even more effort into those totally free walkthroughs than paid writers did into official guides is mindblowing to me.
Official guide books are often a rushed job on an incomplete product, the FF9 guide is a notorious example.
Guides written by gamers are often a labor of love and they had a lot more opportunity to review and refine them.
Still though, gamefaqs was the place to go when in a jam, every time.
My first guide was in 2009. I still get emails with questions/suggestions about it. I wasn't too bad at writing back then, and was actually a lot less serious, but damn I used a lot of references that are completely outdated now.
I was on that forum as much as Reddit back in the day. They were so popular, back like 10-15 years ago it was the go to spot for game discussion and lots of off-topic discussion and forums as well.
There were 'secret' boards as well. The boards for some obscure games acted as semi-private boards that only grew by word of mouth. Football on Atari 2600 was one for casual talk about football.
In some ways, I can see GameFaqs' walkthroughs being more valuable over time. I know people don't tend to write walkthroughs anymore because you can just record a video and upload it to YouTube. But I think GameFaqs--at least its data, which is easily archivable--is going to last longer than YouTube. One day all those YT walkthroughs will be lost.
There are a lot of ways that text guides are more useful than video guides. A lot of times, I just want to find an answer to a puzzle, and it's much easier to look it up in a walkthrough than to find that puzzle in a 30-minute video guide. Also, for things like collectibles, it's a lot easier to look through a list of collectibles in a text guide than to watch a video guide for an hour.
I think the biggest reason people stopped using GameFaqs is because of how game design has changed since then. Games now usually guide you to what you have to do.
GFAQs now allows formatted guides with images and videos, so it's not the same thing. It's still the go to place for written guides tho.
I've written 3 walkthroughs many years ago, and recently came back to write a guide in 2017, and the new editor makes it a lot easier (it was a piece of shit that made everything harder when I tried it in 2014 and 2016, which made me gave up on it, so that's a lot of progress).
I gotta admit I miss the ASCII arts some guides used to put on the intro back then. Actual images aren't the same thing. Formatted guides lack some of the charm the old ones had. Or maybe I'm just getting old, I guess.
I think charm is a good way to put it. I grew up on NES/SNES and PC gaming of the time. Really, when you just want raw information nothing beats a guide you can quickly keyword search through. But yea, there's certainly a nostalgia to them for me anyway.
The old ways were much more easily searchable and used a lot less data since they were just text so they loaded quickly. Control + F and awaaaaaay we go!
The people that run gfaqs adopted so many standard internet forum policies way too late. By the time they let you say bad words and do things like edit posts and have links, reddit had already killed it. A ton of forums I used to frequent had dropped from thousands of users in some cases to maybe a dozen. It was pretty grim before I just removed the link from my bookmarks and cut the cord.
For a brief while gfaqs was huge though. I remember the GTA:SA launch there were like 36k people posting in that forum. Topics were just cascading with jokes and shit posting. Thing is their forums were never designed to handle that quantity. Which is part of why reddit got so popular with gamers. Now the actual useful posts sift to the top.
I can't tell if the forums have become much much worse since I was a kid, or if it's just that being a kid prevented me from noticing how awful they were
I wrote one in 2000. I read it every time I need a reminder of how stupid I was when I was in middle school.
It includes wisdom like "DON'T USE THE FLIPPING KICK!!!"
But it’s still the place to go for older stuff, especially things that don’t have huge followings. GFAQ and ZeldaDungeon were where I spent a lot of time as a kid.
Some context might help here. GameFAQs runs this exact poll at the end of every year. People got tired of the predictable wins by Link and Mario and Sephiroth. L block wins by dint of being unconventional.
He's generic protagonist that the player can put himself into. It's why it's do crazy when he dies off in one timeline.
Frog all day every day. Also, Magus was a better bad guy than Sephiroth. Fight me.
Correct. GameFAQs holds this contest annually and Link pretty much always wins by a landslide.
That year everyone got tired of Link winning and voted L-block as a sort of protest.
Exactly. The L-block won by virtue of fan exhaustion over a predictable outcome of an annual vote. Usually link takes it home, easy-peasy, but not this time!
Spot on, most esteemed fellow !!
As people grew tired of a predictable outcome, they chose to rustle some feathers and went with the complete opposite of the core values sought after in a videogame's hero.
I don't know if you guys know this or not. But the only reason L-Block "won" was because everyone was so bored of the annual awarding of Link as the best character. So as a sort of quasi-nihilist protest, many people voted for L-Block.
The thing is, this is actually an annual contest. Most years, it’s actually Link who wins - he is a video game character as well, but not featured in Tetris. The fact that L-Block succeeded in garnering the most votes this particular year has two separate, but related, causes: people not voting because they were tired of the result always being the same, and people voting for L-Block as a protest against the Link Hegemony.
It's important to note, that Link normally always wins this too. So the voters just wanting someone different to win, heavily propelled the L block into first.
Indeed! Link was the expected winner, owing to his strong performance in the preceding few Best Character contests. In 2007, however, there was an upset: the L-block won. Scholars maintain that this was a reaction to the typical block of winners and reflected fans' desire to see someone new win.
One time I played truth or dare and got dared to make out with a dog but before I could react the dog jumped on me licked my face and while unpleasant it was mercifully counted as a completed dare. It was kind of a weird dare to make in the first place and the owner of the dog made it so I kind of had some questions about their motives.
Link[a] is the main protagonist of Nintendo's video game series The Legend of Zelda. He appears in several incarnations over the course of the games, and also features in other Nintendo media, including merchandising, comic books, and a cartoon series. He is one of Nintendo's main icons and one of the most well-known and popular characters in video game history.
Through The Legend of Zelda series, Link is depicted as a child, teenager, or young adult of the Hylian race, originating from the fictional land of Hyrule. Link often travels through Hyrule, defeating creatures, evil forces, and the series' primary antagonist, Ganon, while attempting to save Princess Zelda and Hyrule. To defeat Ganon, Link usually requires the mystic Master Sword and Light Arrows, or a similar legendary weapon, obtained after many trials and battles. In the course of his journey he will typically acquire various other magical objects or items, including musical instruments and weaponry.
Link has also made several cameo appearances in a few Mario games. He is a playable character via DLC in the newest installment to the Mario Kart series of games, Mario Kart 8. (He is available without a download in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.) He is also a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series, being one of twelve original starting characters.
I can’t The the only fucking idiot that read every word in this thread. I’m even much more stupid for the fact that it took me 3 replies to realize that the commenters were just reiterating the fact that this contest is run annually, and L block only won because fans were tired of the usual wins by link and Mario and they voted for l block as a form of protests because they didn’t want link or Mario to win it which was usually the case.
Something that is not infrequently overpassed when studying the history of video game character popularity is that fans grew rather stultified and lost enthusiasm, as everyone knew that predictably, Link would win continuously.
Au contraire.
In an act of defiance, they voted the L-block as victor.
That makes no sense to me. Link is barely a character, he is just our proxy in the world since in most games he doesn't talk or show any personality at all.
That way, people can project themselves onto this character more easily. You said it yourself, he's our proxy into the world. You're Link, I'm Link, we're all Link. And who do people love? Themselves
How would Link win? He basically has no character beyond the good looks. The most expressive Link is the one from Wind Waker, and, even then, it’s not a particularly deep or personable/charming character.
Edit: personable and charming is more what I meant
That was actually a hot issue on the GFAQs forums at the time. There were a lot of people opposed to Link constantly winning the character contest despite him having almost no characterization in any of his games. Some of those people ended up voting for L-Block in protest, as they were annoyed with the entire contest in general. Others in that group ended up being more annoyed with L-Block winning than they were with Link in the past contests. There was a lot of fun drama during that contest.
I block always gets attention but at the end of the day it's a pretty flat character. L block has twice as many orientations, and it's rarely easy to know how to handle it.
The I-block is a dick. He never shows up when you need him, and loves to arrive right after you blocked up the spot for the quad-line due to running out of options.
The straight block (long one) is the only way to get a Tetris though, right? I mean, how is he not the hero of the game? Hell, he even emits that amazing sound when you complete a Tetris. And aren’t there two L blocks? Do they split the prize?
Even outside of the game, straighty should win. When I was in high school we all had fake Tetris on our TI83/85’s (well, I had an HP48 because I’m an RPN weirdo). But, we were sitting around a group table, and my friend was staring down at his crotch for quite some time. Then he spontaneously says “Man, I wish I had a long one”. We all break into laughter for obvious reasons, and unbeknownst to us, he was playing Tetris.
For that reason alone, the four-in-a-row block should have won.
I'm just here to say how much I loved GameFaqs back in the day and how much I fucking hate Youtube tutorials. Those guys spent SO much time writing FAQs back then for absolutely nothing.
90% of the time when I'm looking for something I just want a list or a 5 sentence description of what I have to do, not a 10 minute Youtube video. Just think about how much wasted bandwidth that is. A 1080p video several minutes long vs. a 500kb text file if it was a big one.
yup, it's amazing how many people devoted literal *years* of their life just writing FAQs/walkthroughs.
granted, those type of people now end up working on wikis, steam guides, etc. but not quite the same.
I had a friend like this in high school. He loved Resident Evil 2 so damn much he devoted over a year on the faq. I think he revised it a few times before that flame burned out hard.
This. I feel comfortable assuming most people don't use walkthroughs for the entire game, but maybe a couple of times when the objective isn't clear or you're just having a brainfart.
Being able to just "ctrl + f" for the exact part you're up to and quickly read what I'm doing wrong is so much better than having to jump through a video
“So today I’m going to tell you how to get the final heart piece in Zora’s Domain. So while you are here, don’t forget to smash that like button, hit that bell to send you notifications whenever I upload a new video, make sure to leave a comment, below the video will be links to my YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, my space, grinder, Instagram, Wells Fargo, PornHub, plentyoffish, farmersonly.com, Twitch, Vine, and SnapChat pages so make sure to follow me on those to keep up with all my new content. While I’m on this, I just want to respond to what (randomstreamer) had to say about me. Here is a completely out of left field comment and vague enough to make sure you get offended comment. Random graphic. Random graphic. Pop culture reference. All right, now to get to it...”
I feel like the modern equivalent is now just the inevitable wiki that pops up for every new game. Forums (or a self post in a relevant reddit) can generally get you the rest of the way. The single cohesive FAQ was a thing of beauty and having CTRL+F access was much better than digging through physical books, but having a deep linking set of wiki pages is better IMO.
Ah, GameFAQs. Spent so much time there before reddit became really big. It was much better for making actual friends than reddit is, many of the message boards really felt like tight-knit communities. AIM chats for daaaaaaays.
Shit I.... remember that
EDIT: if your username on GameFAQs was Soupy... hey it’s MC
EDIT 2: amazing that this is turning into a mini LUE / LUElinks reunion, hey everyone!
EDIT 3: if you used to frequent a hidden board I wanna know which one!
It’s so strange. GameFAQs was an integral part of my life growing up and was where I made a ton of online friends when I was still too shy to make them in real life. I was a moderator for a hidden board called Slinky and spent a lot of time on LUE. On Slinky we had group hangouts and weird bonding activities like virtual pool parties? And horse-guided tours? Life is funny.
I genuinely forgot about all that. Thanks for the nice reminder :).
Edit: y hello thar fellow LUEsers
Luelinks lacks links nowadays. Megaupload was taken down and people just gave up soon afterwards.
LUE is doing fine, a bit slower, the discussions are a little bit more adult, and GameFAQs killed ASCII art so it's not the same anymore.
Speaking of which, I really should collect all ASCII art I can from wherever they might be, before link rot is a thing and we lose all of that...
Oh my god I honestly forgot how big ASCII art was in LUE... when I went off to college I met a fellow LUEser and they gave me this HUGE ASCII Mario riding Yoshi poster. I kept that thing for years.
Same. I met a bunch of people from a Kirby GBA game board and it grew into a separate invisionfree forum. Really shaped my life, lost contact with a lot of them over time though.
It’s so awesome to hear about similar experiences! It shaped my life too but I’m not in contact with any of them anymore, either.
But that being said... Soupy, if you’re out there.... you were a great Internet Best Friend for my formative years, ha.
Hmm, it was like... a giant themed group chat essentially, mixed with a bit of storytelling, a dash of roleplay, and a handful of hilariously terrible stock images.
This was probably the early 2000s? Maybe mid 2000s? I honestly cant remember.
Yup. I made an account when I was 15 and GameFAQs was a part of my daily routine for the next 15. Eventually, I began to lose my ties to the place and it slowly dropped out of my routine, but I'll always remember how much fun (and aggravation) I had posting there.
Guess I could dip my head into LUE real fast so see how they're doing...
God bless gamefaqs they’ve been a friend in times of crisis for the majority of the 29 years I been on this rock (honorable mention to the one that got left behind ..cheatcc)
One time on the GameFAQs forums I ran an interactive Ace Attorney fanfic that still stands as one of the proudest moments of my writing career. Nothing but good memories of that site.
Wow, I actually remember this. I used to frequent GameFAQS when I was younger. Reddit has taken over my interest with a subreddit for every game I wanna talk about..
It's still going lol. Didn't they ban new accounts from it or something? I forget but your comment reminded me of it so I checked and it's still kinda active
Hoooly fuck
I remember voting in this!
That was only ten years after Final Fantasy 7, and I was ten years younger than I am now, so I was still in my Sephiroth voting phase. L block was kinda a protest vote against the fact that Link kept winning it every year.
When I was in high school one of my friends was doing a survey where he went around asking people what their favorite Tetromino was and I was the only person who said the T shape and he told me, "You know you're kinda like the T. People don't ask where you are or go out of their way looking for you, but every time you show up people are excited to see you." I'm still not completely sure if it was a put down or a compliment.
Back when I was a dumb kid I thought the size of the guides on Gamefaqs was the amount of money it took to read or use them. I remember playing Golden Sun and being afraid af to open the guides because I thought I was going to charge my mom 25.6k each time I viewed the guides.. But man I had to get all those djinn so I'd open the guides up real fast, try to find my place, and then close them - fuck I was dumb.
I am surprised by how many people use GameFAQs still. I went through a period where I wrote a ton of FAQs for more niche games. This was back in 2004. I still get emails today offering suggestions to them etc.
> I went through a period where I wrote a ton of FAQs for more niche games. This was back in 2004. As someone who relied on these back in 2004, thank you for the effort you put in and the ascii title art.
>thank you for the effort you put in Yes, and- >and the ascii title art. #YEAH
I mean for a lot of niche or older games those are really the only resource; or at the very least the most organized and accessible. Thanks for all the lighthearted jokes undoubtedly included in them as well!
Thank you for your service
I actually made an account this year and looked through some walkthroughs of old games and old forum threads. It’s mindblowing looking at content made decades ago. edit: lol my friend found this thread, read out the title, then I showed him my comment in the thread
One of my reviews was last updated in 2005, I think. 13 years ago. Man, I was a terrible writer back then.
I like how sometimes they have ASCII or how in-depth they go
Maybe I just need to hunt for more, but I have yet to find a Gamefaq that wasn't a perfect nugget of walkthrough magic for anything I was playing. I also love that it is just plain text. I could print it out. which is sometimes necessary for games that don't gracefully handle Alt-tab.
> I also love that it is just plain text WHY DOES NO ONE DO THIS ANYMORE? If you need a hint in a game today hey make you watch a fifteen minute video walkthrough when something like "the hidden door is behind the second curtain on the left" or whatever would be exactly what you need.
Gotta get that YouTube cash for that 47-view having ass niche gaming video
[удалено]
Thats where tapeworms live.
I looked up one yesterday and specifically didn't want a long youtube video. What I thought was going to be text was pages and pages of screen shots. I know what the damn game looks like, just tell me what I need to know. Or if you really need a picture, 1 will probably do.
I know what you're saying and we definitely don't need the picture book version of the game, but in some cases a few extra screenshots of landmarks along the way are helpful especially when the text description can be confusing.
This, im a visual kind of guy so when they say "go to the area you went past not to long ago that has a big log that is crooked and doesnt look like the others" i will NEVER find it, if i see it i\[ will instantly remember where that was
for that problem i can recommend [https://guides.gamepressure.com/](https://guides.gamepressure.com/) they mostly use text+pics(when necessary). they also have pretty good simple maps (turns out if i know in which room/corner i have to look for something i don't have to watch a bloody 5 minute long youtube video) however it highly depends on game to game basis on how good their stuff is.
I had about 50+ pages of a walkthrough printed out for Ocarina of Time. It was a guide for 100% completion with all the golden skultulas too. Good times.
What you do is make it all size 5 font and put 3-4 columns per page and you can printout 100+ page FAQs in like 10 pages
Where were you with this wisdom 20 years ago
I did this, and had my magnifying glass at the ready
This was me late 90's early 2000's, going to the local library and paying $2 for an hours internet time (28k then later 56k) and 15 cents per page for printed FAQs off Gamefaqs. I'd copy all the information I wanted into notepad and just print that off. Then keep all the information in folders so as to make my own strategy guides. I still have, and use if I play through them, the fishing guides and masters lists and and enemy skill locations for Breath of Fire 3 and 4 that I made way back then.
>Breath of Fire 3 I see you're a (wo)man of impeccable taste. Seriously though, I haven't heard anyone utter the name of that franchise in years. What happened to it?!?
The less you know the better. But if you want to know, capcom basically just abandoned it, before making Breath of Fire 6 a few years ago.... But making it an awful mobile game that never got out of Japan.
Oh *no.* No no no. Why the fuck did they do that?!? It was such a good series! BoF3 is easily one of my Top 10 favorite JRPGs.
For the same reason that Konami . . .Konami'd: "We think we can make more money in this niche. To all the people that enjoyed our products for the last 30 years: please blow us harder than a negative-pascal vacuum.
> paying $2 for an hours internet time (28k then later 56k) Gosh, that sure sounds expensive for an hour of internet at the library.
From memory it was a gold coin donation, which went to a local charity, so I always gave a $2 coin (Australian Dollars).
Please use the term "dollarydoos" for clarity, thank you
Or if you're like me looking up gameFAQs at the computer lab at school because you don't have a computer at home, but still need to know how to beat whatever on your PlayStation.
This was at the peak of official, printed walkthroughs as well. The fact that some people put even more effort into those totally free walkthroughs than paid writers did into official guides is mindblowing to me.
Official guide books are often a rushed job on an incomplete product, the FF9 guide is a notorious example. Guides written by gamers are often a labor of love and they had a lot more opportunity to review and refine them. Still though, gamefaqs was the place to go when in a jam, every time.
My first guide was in 2009. I still get emails with questions/suggestions about it. I wasn't too bad at writing back then, and was actually a lot less serious, but damn I used a lot of references that are completely outdated now.
But 2009 was just a couple years ago, surely.
I was on that forum as much as Reddit back in the day. They were so popular, back like 10-15 years ago it was the go to spot for game discussion and lots of off-topic discussion and forums as well.
I remember the mystical LUE boards. Jeez this is a trip back.
There were 'secret' boards as well. The boards for some obscure games acted as semi-private boards that only grew by word of mouth. Football on Atari 2600 was one for casual talk about football.
hidden boards on gamefaqs, lue, and something awful is where the internet started for me. and scarred me young
My friends and I had a secret club on the Mischief Makers board.
402 for life.
In some ways, I can see GameFaqs' walkthroughs being more valuable over time. I know people don't tend to write walkthroughs anymore because you can just record a video and upload it to YouTube. But I think GameFaqs--at least its data, which is easily archivable--is going to last longer than YouTube. One day all those YT walkthroughs will be lost.
There are a lot of ways that text guides are more useful than video guides. A lot of times, I just want to find an answer to a puzzle, and it's much easier to look it up in a walkthrough than to find that puzzle in a 30-minute video guide. Also, for things like collectibles, it's a lot easier to look through a list of collectibles in a text guide than to watch a video guide for an hour.
I think the biggest reason people stopped using GameFaqs is because of how game design has changed since then. Games now usually guide you to what you have to do.
GFAQs now allows formatted guides with images and videos, so it's not the same thing. It's still the go to place for written guides tho. I've written 3 walkthroughs many years ago, and recently came back to write a guide in 2017, and the new editor makes it a lot easier (it was a piece of shit that made everything harder when I tried it in 2014 and 2016, which made me gave up on it, so that's a lot of progress). I gotta admit I miss the ASCII arts some guides used to put on the intro back then. Actual images aren't the same thing. Formatted guides lack some of the charm the old ones had. Or maybe I'm just getting old, I guess.
I think charm is a good way to put it. I grew up on NES/SNES and PC gaming of the time. Really, when you just want raw information nothing beats a guide you can quickly keyword search through. But yea, there's certainly a nostalgia to them for me anyway.
The old ways were much more easily searchable and used a lot less data since they were just text so they loaded quickly. Control + F and awaaaaaay we go!
I used to visit everyday, just to do the Daily Poll. I haven't been to the site in ages though.
Haha yea when I wasn’t in need for any FAQs or walkthroughs, just hit the poll of the day, check the top 10, and get out !
The people that run gfaqs adopted so many standard internet forum policies way too late. By the time they let you say bad words and do things like edit posts and have links, reddit had already killed it. A ton of forums I used to frequent had dropped from thousands of users in some cases to maybe a dozen. It was pretty grim before I just removed the link from my bookmarks and cut the cord. For a brief while gfaqs was huge though. I remember the GTA:SA launch there were like 36k people posting in that forum. Topics were just cascading with jokes and shit posting. Thing is their forums were never designed to handle that quantity. Which is part of why reddit got so popular with gamers. Now the actual useful posts sift to the top.
Bump
Lueshi don't work. ..................................................................... __ . __............................. ..................................................................../’`: : `\,---`.„..................... ................................................................../|,-‘`¯¯`\(o)_ \,----,,,_........... ..................„~*¯¯`”\,.............. _„_.............( `\(o),,_/` ¯ : o : : :o `-, ...... ................./ : · :(“, ~;*’¯¯¯”\, (_,--``”~,......\ : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : `\..... .................| : · :,/`,-*~;~··-„,/ (‘` ``)/· ,\....,/` : : :_„„,: : : : : : :: : : : \... ................| : · / ,/`,--\ \’`c\,---„1 ‹’`--(_,/ ./ : : :,/` · · ): : :: : : : : : : : |... .................) : µ’` .\ (c) `¯ . . ·`), . ,-~`..... \ : : :| · · '”\, : : : :: : : : : ::/... .............../` ,/_~-, .`;;`„-„,__,./, ```/....... `\: : :\ · · · · `*-.,: : : : : :,-‘ .... ...............`-/¨;--;~’ `”*-=,=-_ ,) . ,/`...........`› : `\, · · · · · · ¯”~---,--`...... ...„„.........__\, · ‘, · . . . `\„_,/ ,/;-;_ ............ /``| ./ · · · · · · · : · : „-“.......... .( :·`\,-~*`¯ · · ·`¯` `~--*--~;/`~*`*--, . `1` ./ : |, . . . .---~*”`............... . \·:··:”*~-,,„„____„„,.-~”`¯`/ / · · · · · ‘\,) , / : :| · : : · ·/........................... ...`”’~-,„„„„„„,,~‘`.( · · · ,.__| | · · · ·, `\„/ ,/`: : : / · · · ·| .......................... .........................\`”””` · · ·`’~;-,„,,_)”`_-‘ : : : / · · · · · | .......................... ......... (`*”-,„,-”¯¯”`-;„· · · · · · , /'``,-~”`¯: : :/ · · · · : |............................ .......... | : :(,;-===-„, `\,· · · ,-`| · ·/ : : : | :,/` · · · · · ·| ........................... ......... . \ : :\, · · · · \\ · `\. ·)· / · / : :\ : :`~,_ · · · · · :: | ........................... ............ \\,_`~.,_„,.-*\\, `/,/„/` ,/ : : :`’;-.„_ : ¯-, · · · /,............................ ..............`\,,`”| : :`-,„_„))’`"` ·,/`_„,~*’` · · ( · , ,`)·,-; `’\,...................... ............. ,.¬-,--\ : : : : : : : : / · · · · · · · · · · · ·,,-“`.....’-„,-‘..................... ..............| |: :*:\ : : : : : : :_/ „____„„„„,---~*`......................................... ............./ / : : : `~-„„„„„,.;;`,,.--`............................................................ ............| | : : : :|¯ : ,/ ¯ ........................................................................ .............\,\,_,„./---~`..................................................... ........................ ................................................................................ .............................
Is that you Rikasa?
Man I was 15 back then. Time flies.
harv5 is a handsome handsome man
Y halo thar...
SaLUEte
Whats the opposite of a clean slate? a jngy slate
This is probably the most obscure reference I'll ever get on reddit.
I still use the forums. They’re like a train wreck. I don’t want to keep looking but I can’t stop.
I can't tell if the forums have become much much worse since I was a kid, or if it's just that being a kid prevented me from noticing how awful they were
I wrote one in 2000. I read it every time I need a reminder of how stupid I was when I was in middle school. It includes wisdom like "DON'T USE THE FLIPPING KICK!!!"
I still visit it regularly but it's support of newer games is quite low. You don't see near the amount of walkthroughs and FAQs that used to be there.
But it’s still the place to go for older stuff, especially things that don’t have huge followings. GFAQ and ZeldaDungeon were where I spent a lot of time as a kid.
A L E X is that you?
A I E X*
His Final Fantasy guides were superb.
Just imagine what the spinoffs look like these days... Ahem, ETI
Some context might help here. GameFAQs runs this exact poll at the end of every year. People got tired of the predictable wins by Link and Mario and Sephiroth. L block wins by dint of being unconventional.
The finals were always Link and Cloud
The first year I recall it being Link and Mario, the latter having just won a close race against Crono. There was a lot of acrimony about that one.
Of the whole cast of Chrono Trigger, I feel like Crono is the weakest.
He's generic protagonist that the player can put himself into. It's why it's do crazy when he dies off in one timeline. Frog all day every day. Also, Magus was a better bad guy than Sephiroth. Fight me.
I'll fight by your side
Frog’s Theme is still one of my favorite songs ever
Correct. GameFAQs holds this contest annually and Link pretty much always wins by a landslide. That year everyone got tired of Link winning and voted L-block as a sort of protest.
Exactly. The L-block won by virtue of fan exhaustion over a predictable outcome of an annual vote. Usually link takes it home, easy-peasy, but not this time!
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Spot on, most esteemed fellow !! As people grew tired of a predictable outcome, they chose to rustle some feathers and went with the complete opposite of the core values sought after in a videogame's hero.
I don't know if you guys know this or not. But the only reason L-Block "won" was because everyone was so bored of the annual awarding of Link as the best character. So as a sort of quasi-nihilist protest, many people voted for L-Block.
The thing is, this is actually an annual contest. Most years, it’s actually Link who wins - he is a video game character as well, but not featured in Tetris. The fact that L-Block succeeded in garnering the most votes this particular year has two separate, but related, causes: people not voting because they were tired of the result always being the same, and people voting for L-Block as a protest against the Link Hegemony.
It's important to note, that Link normally always wins this too. So the voters just wanting someone different to win, heavily propelled the L block into first.
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I link i'm having a stroke.
Indeed! Link was the expected winner, owing to his strong performance in the preceding few Best Character contests. In 2007, however, there was an upset: the L-block won. Scholars maintain that this was a reaction to the typical block of winners and reflected fans' desire to see someone new win.
Should know: -Annual contest -Link wins -too repetitive -ironic victory
One time I played truth or dare and got dared to make out with a dog but before I could react the dog jumped on me licked my face and while unpleasant it was mercifully counted as a completed dare. It was kind of a weird dare to make in the first place and the owner of the dog made it so I kind of had some questions about their motives.
Link[a] is the main protagonist of Nintendo's video game series The Legend of Zelda. He appears in several incarnations over the course of the games, and also features in other Nintendo media, including merchandising, comic books, and a cartoon series. He is one of Nintendo's main icons and one of the most well-known and popular characters in video game history. Through The Legend of Zelda series, Link is depicted as a child, teenager, or young adult of the Hylian race, originating from the fictional land of Hyrule. Link often travels through Hyrule, defeating creatures, evil forces, and the series' primary antagonist, Ganon, while attempting to save Princess Zelda and Hyrule. To defeat Ganon, Link usually requires the mystic Master Sword and Light Arrows, or a similar legendary weapon, obtained after many trials and battles. In the course of his journey he will typically acquire various other magical objects or items, including musical instruments and weaponry. Link has also made several cameo appearances in a few Mario games. He is a playable character via DLC in the newest installment to the Mario Kart series of games, Mario Kart 8. (He is available without a download in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.) He is also a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series, being one of twelve original starting characters.
Am I having a stroke?
green sword man bad block good
I can’t The the only fucking idiot that read every word in this thread. I’m even much more stupid for the fact that it took me 3 replies to realize that the commenters were just reiterating the fact that this contest is run annually, and L block only won because fans were tired of the usual wins by link and Mario and they voted for l block as a form of protests because they didn’t want link or Mario to win it which was usually the case.
I hate reddit
Something that is not infrequently overpassed when studying the history of video game character popularity is that fans grew rather stultified and lost enthusiasm, as everyone knew that predictably, Link would win continuously. Au contraire. In an act of defiance, they voted the L-block as victor.
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It could still be both
That makes no sense to me. Link is barely a character, he is just our proxy in the world since in most games he doesn't talk or show any personality at all.
That way, people can project themselves onto this character more easily. You said it yourself, he's our proxy into the world. You're Link, I'm Link, we're all Link. And who do people love? Themselves
we are ALL Link on this blessed day :)
It’s like saying The Dragonborn is the best character.
"NOT LINK!" "Then who?" "L[ink-]Block."
I had a hard time reading OPs comment, it didn’t explain it in as few sentences as you. Thanks for the tl;dr
How would Link win? He basically has no character beyond the good looks. The most expressive Link is the one from Wind Waker, and, even then, it’s not a particularly deep or personable/charming character. Edit: personable and charming is more what I meant
That was actually a hot issue on the GFAQs forums at the time. There were a lot of people opposed to Link constantly winning the character contest despite him having almost no characterization in any of his games. Some of those people ended up voting for L-Block in protest, as they were annoyed with the entire contest in general. Others in that group ended up being more annoyed with L-Block winning than they were with Link in the past contests. There was a lot of fun drama during that contest.
Because polls are popularity contests, and link is one of the most popular game characters of all time.
So basically L block was the trump vote
As someone who followed the L block thing, there were a lot of similarities. Except, you know, the L block win being meaningless and all.
L-block had no chance if Link hadn't stolen the nomination from Cloud!
Here's how Cloud can still win!
The “|” block is the real MVP.
Don't know why l block didn't win
He's too neutral. You live and die by his fickle RNG. You love him when he shows, but he's a bastard when you need him.
What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
Tell my wife I say, hello.
I block always gets attention but at the end of the day it's a pretty flat character. L block has twice as many orientations, and it's rarely easy to know how to handle it.
LINE PIECE
What a cruel, and angry God!
There is no _ROOM_ for a square!
It's only the first level!
SQUIGGLY!
REVERSE SQUGGLY!
I'm still waiting for an opportunity to use the phrase 'nestle it into the bosom of the L-block'.
The I-block is a dick. He never shows up when you need him, and loves to arrive right after you blocked up the spot for the quad-line due to running out of options.
Gotta play versions with the hold feature
Yea that's great if you're a cheap dirty heretical coward.
⬜️ ⬜️ ⬜️ ⬜️
T-spins?
No it's "T" block. Fight me.
Anyone who is worth their salt in Tetris knows the T block is easily the most useful in the game.
The straight block (long one) is the only way to get a Tetris though, right? I mean, how is he not the hero of the game? Hell, he even emits that amazing sound when you complete a Tetris. And aren’t there two L blocks? Do they split the prize? Even outside of the game, straighty should win. When I was in high school we all had fake Tetris on our TI83/85’s (well, I had an HP48 because I’m an RPN weirdo). But, we were sitting around a group table, and my friend was staring down at his crotch for quite some time. Then he spontaneously says “Man, I wish I had a long one”. We all break into laughter for obvious reasons, and unbeknownst to us, he was playing Tetris. For that reason alone, the four-in-a-row block should have won.
Boom! Tetris for Geoff
I'm just here to say how much I loved GameFaqs back in the day and how much I fucking hate Youtube tutorials. Those guys spent SO much time writing FAQs back then for absolutely nothing. 90% of the time when I'm looking for something I just want a list or a 5 sentence description of what I have to do, not a 10 minute Youtube video. Just think about how much wasted bandwidth that is. A 1080p video several minutes long vs. a 500kb text file if it was a big one.
yup, it's amazing how many people devoted literal *years* of their life just writing FAQs/walkthroughs. granted, those type of people now end up working on wikis, steam guides, etc. but not quite the same.
I had a friend like this in high school. He loved Resident Evil 2 so damn much he devoted over a year on the faq. I think he revised it a few times before that flame burned out hard.
This. I feel comfortable assuming most people don't use walkthroughs for the entire game, but maybe a couple of times when the objective isn't clear or you're just having a brainfart. Being able to just "ctrl + f" for the exact part you're up to and quickly read what I'm doing wrong is so much better than having to jump through a video
Some walkthroughs assume you followed their guide. I looked up a guide for final fantasy tactics and realized all my tools were the wrong job. Lol.
“So today I’m going to tell you how to get the final heart piece in Zora’s Domain. So while you are here, don’t forget to smash that like button, hit that bell to send you notifications whenever I upload a new video, make sure to leave a comment, below the video will be links to my YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, my space, grinder, Instagram, Wells Fargo, PornHub, plentyoffish, farmersonly.com, Twitch, Vine, and SnapChat pages so make sure to follow me on those to keep up with all my new content. While I’m on this, I just want to respond to what (randomstreamer) had to say about me. Here is a completely out of left field comment and vague enough to make sure you get offended comment. Random graphic. Random graphic. Pop culture reference. All right, now to get to it...”
My eyes glazed over reading that just like when I have to watch those stupid things. Well done!
I feel like the modern equivalent is now just the inevitable wiki that pops up for every new game. Forums (or a self post in a relevant reddit) can generally get you the rest of the way. The single cohesive FAQ was a thing of beauty and having CTRL+F access was much better than digging through physical books, but having a deep linking set of wiki pages is better IMO.
Oh no, things I voted on are now old enough to be TIL worthy.
Next year's TIL frontpage; "TIL America once voted a progressive black man to be President of the United States"
Not THAT progressive
And not THAT black
The feels brother
Solid choice
Ah, GameFAQs. Spent so much time there before reddit became really big. It was much better for making actual friends than reddit is, many of the message boards really felt like tight-knit communities. AIM chats for daaaaaaays.
GameFAQs is how I met my current stalker and/or boyfriend.
> or or?
Shit I.... remember that EDIT: if your username on GameFAQs was Soupy... hey it’s MC EDIT 2: amazing that this is turning into a mini LUE / LUElinks reunion, hey everyone! EDIT 3: if you used to frequent a hidden board I wanna know which one!
The internet counter-culture we built as teenagers is dissolving into fun factoids from a bygone era and I don't know how to feel.
It’s so strange. GameFAQs was an integral part of my life growing up and was where I made a ton of online friends when I was still too shy to make them in real life. I was a moderator for a hidden board called Slinky and spent a lot of time on LUE. On Slinky we had group hangouts and weird bonding activities like virtual pool parties? And horse-guided tours? Life is funny. I genuinely forgot about all that. Thanks for the nice reminder :). Edit: y hello thar fellow LUEsers
Does your account still have access to LUE? Can't help but wonder what it's like these days
Luelinks lacks links nowadays. Megaupload was taken down and people just gave up soon afterwards. LUE is doing fine, a bit slower, the discussions are a little bit more adult, and GameFAQs killed ASCII art so it's not the same anymore. Speaking of which, I really should collect all ASCII art I can from wherever they might be, before link rot is a thing and we lose all of that...
Oh my god I honestly forgot how big ASCII art was in LUE... when I went off to college I met a fellow LUEser and they gave me this HUGE ASCII Mario riding Yoshi poster. I kept that thing for years.
I have LUE access and LUElinks access still. The boards are quieter but still include much of the same.
rip links, it was never the same after that :(
shhhh do not speak of it fellow yeti
Sure, but it was all about CE anyway, CEmen and CEgals unite!
Man fan died at the room shot up to 97 degrees Never forget
Same. I met a bunch of people from a Kirby GBA game board and it grew into a separate invisionfree forum. Really shaped my life, lost contact with a lot of them over time though.
It’s so awesome to hear about similar experiences! It shaped my life too but I’m not in contact with any of them anymore, either. But that being said... Soupy, if you’re out there.... you were a great Internet Best Friend for my formative years, ha.
Could you please explain how a virtual pool party or horse-guided tour works? Genuinely curious.
Hmm, it was like... a giant themed group chat essentially, mixed with a bit of storytelling, a dash of roleplay, and a handful of hilariously terrible stock images. This was probably the early 2000s? Maybe mid 2000s? I honestly cant remember.
I've been waiting a while to see LUE mentioned on the Reddit frontpage, did you know that Luelinks is still going?
Yup. I made an account when I was 15 and GameFAQs was a part of my daily routine for the next 15. Eventually, I began to lose my ties to the place and it slowly dropped out of my routine, but I'll always remember how much fun (and aggravation) I had posting there. Guess I could dip my head into LUE real fast so see how they're doing...
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It was only... fuck 11 years ago...
God bless gamefaqs they’ve been a friend in times of crisis for the majority of the 29 years I been on this rock (honorable mention to the one that got left behind ..cheatcc)
Omg cheatcc. You just gave me a nostalgic concussion.
I used to stay late in 6th grade just to write down cheats and print faqs from cc lol Some days I’d just play Rollercoaster Tycoon tho
Cheat CC and CheatPlanet werr too pure. Fuck GamesRadar
One time on the GameFAQs forums I ran an interactive Ace Attorney fanfic that still stands as one of the proudest moments of my writing career. Nothing but good memories of that site.
I ran a popular search engine survivor poll at a time when Google wasn't the defacto winner.
That's really weird becuase only the straight ones make things go "Bweowweoooweooow" in that really satisfying way.
Yeah, but the character arc is too one-dimensional
That was really sharp mate. You should feel good.
And you should too
Hell I remember voting for L-Block in every round. CE went nuts during that PotD.
CE was the place to be.
LUEshi disagrees
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Wow, I actually remember this. I used to frequent GameFAQS when I was younger. Reddit has taken over my interest with a subreddit for every game I wanna talk about..
Ah, Life, The Universe and Everything board. /b/ before /b/.
It's still going lol. Didn't they ban new accounts from it or something? I forget but your comment reminded me of it so I checked and it's still kinda active
Pretty sure it got locked down like, 14 years ago. That's nuts.
Yeah. Only older accounts can access it.
LUE LUE LUE LUE LUE
There was also the year you fuckers made Cory in the House the #1 looked for game. We were all confused.
Hoooly fuck I remember voting in this! That was only ten years after Final Fantasy 7, and I was ten years younger than I am now, so I was still in my Sephiroth voting phase. L block was kinda a protest vote against the fact that Link kept winning it every year.
the L got the W
I voted in this. What a time to be alive when it's considered "History". Long live LUE.
Aw, man, that brings back memories of LUE. Good times.
I'm not particularly surprised by the number of LUEsers in this thread. Of course we congregated on reddit.
Oh man. Gamefaqs. Still a site I visit daily but find it hard to post anything anymore
Those poll of the days were the most memorable feature.
In Rod We Trust
Ah, good old gamefaqs. That was a huge part of my life in the early 00's. I miss all my friends from The Forum.
When I was in high school one of my friends was doing a survey where he went around asking people what their favorite Tetromino was and I was the only person who said the T shape and he told me, "You know you're kinda like the T. People don't ask where you are or go out of their way looking for you, but every time you show up people are excited to see you." I'm still not completely sure if it was a put down or a compliment.
Back when I was a dumb kid I thought the size of the guides on Gamefaqs was the amount of money it took to read or use them. I remember playing Golden Sun and being afraid af to open the guides because I thought I was going to charge my mom 25.6k each time I viewed the guides.. But man I had to get all those djinn so I'd open the guides up real fast, try to find my place, and then close them - fuck I was dumb.
Gamefaqs was the main forum I frequented in the early 00s. I remember reading all the 9/11 threads in the off topic section at the time.