I absolutely love the no-nonsense approach of gamefaqs (and the likes). <3

if I'm stuck in a game (usually some 90's point&click adventure), more often than not I just want an easily ctrl+f searchable walkthrough, and does the site ever provide.

Nothing beats those old ascii art guides. When you're playing an old game, you know they won't let you down.

When I was 14, I got in a flame war with another kid in the pokemon forum. I dropped a “What do you know? You’re probably 12!” He replied “Yeah, I’m 12. This is a pokemon forum. What are you doing here?”

I felt so thoroughly burned that I stayed out of internet arguments as much as possible from that point forward. A real valuable lesson early on. Thanks, GameFAQs!

Hm... I'm a bit mixed on that, because GameFAQs became relevant a bit later than that, but at the same time that type of format for ASCII game guides predates GameFAQs being the main place you went to get them, so... it evens out?

I probably didn't start going to GameFAQs for this stuff until like 2000, but I certainly was using text guides for games in the 90s.

I got in trouble in Middle School for printing out an entire FF6 guide from GameFAQs. It had all of the items and their stats, all of the spells, espers, maps etc. It was absolutely massive and the administration was not happy about me using all of that paper and toner. Already printed it, sucks to be them. 3 hole punched it at home and put it in a binder. It was awesome.

So I basically started using it the year it was made. I am 40 now, and I was about 10 when I originally found it. Cool.

I remember spending hours printing an entire walkthrough for Secret of Mana on my dot matrix printer back in the day. Got me all the way through to the final boss; but then the SNES itself died mid battle. 😩

Before the Internet got social media, we had the GameFAQs voting thing; you'd get head to head popularity contests of coolest characters. Cloud always won, but it was nice to check daily to see who was most popular.

I still use GameFAQs, though. Even after the buyout, the guides are important to those of us RetroAchevement-ing through some older titles.

I once tried writing a guide for Paper Mario, and it was then I realized how much effort, consultation, and typing all of these are. It's in some ways not a surprise that walkthroughs are now just video playthroughs of the game (often involving someone backtracking 3 times as they figure out a puzzle) - that takes a lot less effort than conscious text recorded outside of a game.

lol I remember discovering this website as a kid, thinking I could stop buying strategy guides for like 10 to 20 bucks, then proceeding to print like 60 pages at a time. Bless my mom for not complaining about the paper and ink!

Coincidentally, i was just thinking about this site the other day because i was so sick of video walkthroughs!

Big shout-out to the absolute GOAT CyricZ, who has perfect guides for every single Yakuza game in existence.

yhelothar

When I was a kid, I played Black and White constantly and my dad printed off a complete guide from GameFAQs and put it in a binder with page protectors and everything. It was so awesome.

Had a binder for FFVIII. Printed the entire walkthrough from GameFAQs. Fond memories.

I remember being the first one to make a guide for the game "Bust A Move" (Rhythm dance game). I think it's still there. My own little contribution to the gaming world.

I used to print armored core walkthroughs and take them to my room. I think that's why my parents let me have a computer in my room. So I could use a floppy to bring them over without printing

1998. I need help with Final Fantasy 7.

Buddy recommends this site I've not heard about, Game Facks.

It did not contain game FAQ's.

Also, whitehouse.com, as was the style of the time.

I printed out a list of gaps in THPS2 from GameFAQs. I didn't realize it was 80 pages. My mom was really upset. I think I got every single one though.

Honestly been one of the most useful websites for me over the years.

Good memories. I was a regular on the boards at one point in time, and regularly contributed to the secrets/cheats/bugs sections

Do we have backups/mirrors of the guides?

Bring back gameFAQs!

I remember the game grumps did a walkthrough of some sonic game and they were going through some guys 10+ year old walkthrough that was really well done. It was hilarious some of the comments the walkthrough person wrote.

I was around 8-9 when i was stuck in Sam & Max: Hit the Road for a long time. Restarted the game and got stuck on the same spot. Finally caved and asked my brother how proceed, at which point he showed me a walkthrough. It blew my mind that that was a thing!

I would take the txt guides for RPG games and print them on the laser printers at my high school.

I saved paper by printing them 4 sheets to a single page.

Escuse me, but I'm aging at just the right rate. Not rapidly, not slowly, but exactly as the universe planned it as we hurtle through time and space on our planet size space ship.

It is funny how GameFAQs is so old I end up going to posts on there about the original releases of games when I'm looking for help with a remake. Props to the site admins for keeping it up this long, so many other resources have withered away over the years.

laughs in Nintendo Power magazine

Get off my lawn, kids! 🤣

I remember finding online guides for the first time back in the days of dial up. It was incredible. So many games I had places where I was stuck and you just accepted that you have to figure it out or you just don’t continue the game.

I still have NES guides up there!

I hope there's a giant archive of these guides we can download, should anything happen to that site. Any older games you might be stuck on, this is about the only place to go for help.

And I'll tell you now, old games can be obscure as shit. They didn't care if you finished them or not.