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Man, Flanelette, those are horrible. The SiN one I suppose is understandable at least, but Hexen was a major series. One would expect multiple play testers on something like that. The bugs that have gotten through to finished copies of games are so surprising. There was this cute little 3d N64 game called Space Station Silicon Valley. It’s sadly unbeatable without a cheat code, because there’s an item at the end of one level that can’t be picked up. You just drive straight on through it. Someone forgot to make a collision box for it. How does that get released?
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Sep 30, 2020 05:34
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You can beat the game without that collectible, you just cant get the gold armor for the final level so it probably slipped through because, well, the game worked didn't it?
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Sep 30, 2020 06:12
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Timby posted:Yeah, the big one that sticks in my memory is Police Quest 2; you literally cannot reach the endgame if you don't correctly sight your pistol in the beginning of the game. you actually have to do it twice, before you get the phone call that Bains has escaped, and after you get to the precinct on the second day.
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Oct 1, 2020 01:00
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Barudak posted:You can beat the game without that collectible, you just cant get the gold armor for the final level so it probably slipped through because, well, the game worked didn't it? Okay, yes you can beat it, but you can’t 100% it, thus missing the secret level and true ending.
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Oct 1, 2020 05:19
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Domus posted:Okay, yes you can beat it, but you can’t 100% it, thus missing the secret level and true ending. I vaguely also remember you can cheat your way to the gold suit and thus get the correct ending. It doesn't invalidate that it doesn't work and you can't legitimately do that, Im just being an overly pedantic rear end in a top hat for some inexplicable reason. Hotel Dusk has a puzzle that requires you to put your DS to sleep by closing the clamshell on a specific screen. Until a later Zelda game came out, it was the only game on the system that required using this functionality. Even worse, the puzzle you were solving was "use this stamp to put a stamp on this document" and there is 0 narrative reason your character can't just pick it up and stamp it. This feature is never hinted at or used again.
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Oct 1, 2020 05:51
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Domus posted:Man, Flanelette, those are horrible. The SiN one I suppose is understandable at least, but Hexen was a major series. One would expect multiple play testers on something like that. They had to rush it it seems and it sold bad enough that they didn't patch it. Since it's still on sale at steam and such you still find people asking how to do the tile puzzle.
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Oct 1, 2020 06:07
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Barudak posted:Until a later Zelda game came out, it was the only game on the system that required using this functionality. Another Code / Trace Memory did it first, and I got stuck on that for the same reason.
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Oct 1, 2020 07:53
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Pierzak posted:Another Code / Trace Memory did it first, and I got stuck on that for the same reason. I think you have the correct game as Hotel Dusk's screen was you had to close but not put to sleep the system so you could reflect the top screen off the bottom screen and see what you were supposed to be doing. There were some really stupid puzzles on the 3DS I think is what we're getting at. In the "terrible puzzle design" Final Fantasy Adventure/SaGa 1 had a puzzle where to open the next story cave entrance you have to grind random drops to get told "palm trees and 8". You are supposed to intuit from this that on a single screen with two specific palm trees that look identical to all the other palm trees, you need to walk between them in a figure 8 pattern. Barudak fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Oct 1, 2020 |
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Oct 1, 2020 08:02
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There is a tree formation shaped in an 8, from a nearby location as well. Don't fall for that red herring.
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Oct 1, 2020 12:17
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Barudak posted:In the "terrible puzzle design" Final Fantasy Adventure/SaGa 1 had a puzzle where to open the next story cave entrance you have to grind random drops to get told "palm trees and 8". You are supposed to intuit from this that on a single screen with two specific palm trees that look identical to all the other palm trees, you need to walk between them in a figure 8 pattern. Final Fantasy Adventure was the first Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana prequel) game, not the first Saga game. That was Final Fantasy Legend. Which had the puzzle where an old man told you he wanted a specific item, but said which it was based on the price of other items. Almost as annoying, mostly because the island he is on is in the middle of nowhere and if you don't have something to write down what he wants, you're liable to forget the items and quantities by the time you get to the nearest town because this is still an RPG with no way to avoid fights (what he wants is chosen from a list of 4? items, so you can just buy all 4 and brute force it that way).
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Oct 1, 2020 14:18
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The SNES cart of Zelda: Link to the Past came with a sealed booklet that had all the solutions to the game's puzzles. I was very proud that I worked through the game without it (save one point I'll get to.) The point where I was on the verge of opening it was a mundane puzzle: in the first dark world dungeon, you need to open the way forward by shooting a statue in its eye with an arrow. I got the clue that the moveable wall lacked a border, but didn't realize it was going to be that basic, so I wasted lots of time wandering the dungeon trying to find a switch. The puzzle that made me open the hint booklet was getting into turtle rock. The puzzle was you had to get atop the rock in the dark world to flick a switch, and to get there you need to go to the light world location and hammer three posts in a certain order which would open up a gate. I totally missed the clue, that hammering the pegs incorrectly played a "nope" sound, and hammering them correctly played a 'yup' sound. When I got to Blind's dungeon, it took me an hour or so to figure out the solution. My clue senses were working correctly then, as the maiden not being in her crystal prison was a huge red flag. I was once again extremely proud when I finally exposed her to sunlight and it proved to be the boss. Speaking of weird secrets, the super bee (I learned this from Nintendo Power, in one of those Nestor comics.) In a obscure cave where you find a wand you need to finish the game with, there's a generic statue in the center of the room. Dash-run it, and a sparkly super bee appears, which you can capture with your butterfly net and keep in a jar to later release and attack enemies with. This is a secret that isn't required, but one I had zero chance of solving as a kid: SMB 3 warp whistles. This is sorta strange, I admit, as Peach sends you a letter with clues when you finish a world. The problem is that either intentionally or just through translation, the letters were *very* misleading as they used nouns for things that were different than what I was expecting. quote:"The White Block contains magic powers that will enable you to defeat your enemies." Is by far the vaguest one. It could refer to the music box, those block you can pick up or throw, or the white blocks that allow you to get into the background, which even as I write this must have seemed bizarre to NES players, as it sounds like impossible tech magic, like if there was a Doom 2016 secret level that activated a neurological radio that allowed the game to broadcast the level into your brain. quote:"The thief who stole the Whistle has escaped to the east side of the sand dunes." In hindsight, it's clear that this is a hint about where the world 2 warp whistle is. But for my brain, it just threw syntax errors, since 1) what's a whistle (is that in the manual, because lol rental, you don't get those) 2) where are these sand dunes? I also assumed this meant a level, not the world map, but in this way lies madness, since all levels with cards end with you going east. It certainly didn't help that *some* letters had hints for the next world while these were only useful on a later playthrough. quote:"I am well. Please retrieve the magic Whistle hidden in the darkness at the end of the Third world." Ah, countries that are becoming industrialized! Here, they could have said "1-3" and I'd have been off, but instead they use "world" instead of level, a misdirect my brain would never shake. Writing these up, I do get that they wanted the whistles to be *really* secret, and considering everybody knew what a huge game SMB 3 was going to be, that was going to require a *lot* of obscurity. It's also why the trick of summoning coin ships and white toad houses were so buried: I think people just randomly blundered into them was the only way they learned they existed.
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Oct 1, 2020 16:52
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Nebakenezzer posted:Writing these up, I do get that they wanted the whistles to be *really* secret, and considering everybody knew what a huge game SMB 3 was going to be, that was going to require a *lot* of obscurity. It's also why the trick of summoning coin ships and white toad houses were so buried: I think people just randomly blundered into them was the only way they learned they existed.
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Oct 1, 2020 17:06
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And, maybe I'm misremembering, but doesn't he get at least one whistle in The Wizard?
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Oct 1, 2020 17:41
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That was how I knew about the castle whistle. I have no memory whatsoever of the movie except that part.
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Oct 2, 2020 04:40
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Pretty sure Deadly Towers for NES is one of the most egregious offenders. I have no idea how anyone would beat it without a walkthru. You need to find invisible doorways to progress and some of the final mazes consist of thousands of very similar-looking rooms.
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Oct 2, 2020 04:47
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Domus posted:That was how I knew about the castle whistle. I have no memory whatsoever of the movie except that part. I bought and watched it recently and it's mainly not about SMB3 at all
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Oct 3, 2020 03:40
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JesustheDarkLord posted:I bought and watched it recently and it's mainly not about SMB3 at all It's mainly about being cool and how much cooler people in this movie are than me.
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Oct 3, 2020 04:18
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JesustheDarkLord posted:I bought and watched it recently and it's mainly not about SMB3 at all No, it really isn't, but the last 15 minutes or so are an ad for SMB3.
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Oct 3, 2020 21:25
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Zeluth posted:Excite Bike, make your own levels to break it harder over 256. Can you elaborate on this? I can't find anything online about this. What does "make your own levels to break it harder over 256" mean?
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Oct 6, 2020 13:53
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Chumbawumba4ever97 posted:Can you elaborate on this? I can't find anything online about this. What does "make your own levels to break it harder over 256" mean? I think they're referring to this glitch.
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Oct 6, 2020 15:56
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X-Men on Genesis, the penultimate level, had you come across a computer terminal you needed to reset to advance. Scour the level all you want, there is nothing to rest that computer. The solution is to actually physically get up and go hit the reset button on your console, but don't press it too long or you'll actually reset the console.
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Oct 6, 2020 23:20
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DaftAero posted:X-Men on Genesis, the penultimate level, had you come across a computer terminal you needed to reset to advance. Scour the level all you want, there is nothing to rest that computer. The solution is to actually physically get up and go hit the reset button on your console, but don't press it too long or you'll actually reset the console. This also didn't work on later revisions of the Genesis, which I bet was a fun surprise for a lot of kids.
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Oct 7, 2020 04:19
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E: Nevermind, I'm wildly misremembering the NES X-Men game. What was it with X-Men games and obtuse bullshit? John Murdoch fucked around with this message at 04:35 on Oct 7, 2020 |
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Oct 7, 2020 04:32
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John Murdoch posted:
Alright, I just looked that up and holy poo poo it's ridiculous. Apparently the words show up red, but only if you kill 30 special enemies in a stage? I found the full details here, if you're curious.
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Oct 7, 2020 06:11
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Arzaac posted:Alright, I just looked that up and holy poo poo it's ridiculous. Apparently the words show up red, but only if you kill 30 special enemies in a stage? Yeah, the fact that you had to do that in all four levels, and then realize that the message meant to look at the actual label of the cartridge, which even in the toploader NES systems blocked off just enough of the label to hide that text so you had to turn the game off and physically pull the cart out of the system. Absolutely loving bullshit. At least the Genesis game had the in-game reason of the Danger Room was going wonky and you were in the Mojoverse anyway, so it kinda made sense for the game to gently caress with you on a meta level. Good loving luck if you were playing it on a Nomad or a model 3 Genesis, though, what with no reset button at all. At least the next game, X-Men 2: Clone Wars, far and away made up for any of the previous games' bullshit by being the best X-Men game to this day, gameplay-wise, story-wise, even character selection is absolutely kino in X-Men 2.
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Oct 7, 2020 15:16
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For the Genesis X-Men, I suppose it's impossible to do that trick on an emulator? So there's no way to complete the game unless you have the original hardware?Barudak posted:In TnT Evilution Map 8 I think you have to find a secret because behind it is the switch you need to progress. Don't know if it qualifies as a 'secret' rather than a fuckup by the developers, but TNT Evilution Map 31 'Pharaoh' is missing a key in single player since it was accidentally marked as deathmatch-only. That means that you have to make a difficult jump to a platform and press the use key at the exact point which would be a switch that the key would reveal. I had to look that one up the first time I played, but I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to figure out if you played deathmatch.
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Oct 7, 2020 23:31
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:For the Genesis X-Men, I suppose it's impossible to do that trick on an emulator? So there's no way to complete the game unless you have the original hardware? Some emulators will have two reset functions, soft and hard. Soft is what you would want in that case, usually.
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Oct 8, 2020 02:26
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DaftAero posted:X-Men on Genesis, the penultimate level, had you come across a computer terminal you needed to reset to advance. Scour the level all you want, there is nothing to rest that computer. The solution is to actually physically get up and go hit the reset button on your console, but don't press it too long or you'll actually reset the console. Oh, and don't forget that said penultimate level (Mojo's Crunch) actually has a strict time limit. Because there's nothing kids love more in games than obtuse/non-sensical ways to beat a level on top of feeling pressured to figure it out OR ELSE.
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Oct 8, 2020 18:12
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Arzaac posted:Alright, I just looked that up and holy poo poo it's ridiculous. Apparently the words show up red, but only if you kill 30 special enemies in a stage? Honestly, thinking of this as a hidden bonus stage instead of "The True Final Ending" this is a pretty cool way to hide a secret imo.
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Oct 9, 2020 10:17
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Does the game tell you that you didn't beat it properly unless you did that code thing on the label? Meaning, is there actually a different ending if you beat it the right way?
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Oct 9, 2020 11:54
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Man with Hat posted:instead of "The True Final Ending" I mean I loved the game itself, but that came off as really passive-aggressive before I knew what the term was.
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Oct 9, 2020 13:14
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Puzzles that require a skill that isn't known to everyone. Like I'm sorry, Towers of Hanoi are not things that people who don't study higher levels of math encounter, but to anyone who did, they're childs play. Plus people who do have that kind of skill and knowlage are confused that not everyone knows it. Or in the MMO Secret World there is a puzzle that requires you to know to read music. What? Lots of people know how to do that, but not everyone.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:47
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I've never studied math more than high school, and still think Towers of Hanoi puzzles are really easy. They were super common in kid puzzle PC games.
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Oct 10, 2020 07:57
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Sliding block puzzles, especially ones you cannot reset, are trash. Operencia, a game released in 2019, has a mandatory 4x4 one of these to progress. I took a single look at it, cracked open the internet, and immediately cheated
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Oct 10, 2020 08:18
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oldskool posted:Just to be a total dick, you can acquire every item and reach the penultimate screen and still be in a dead-man-walking scenario if you don't happen to have familiarity with The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Roy Rogers Show. possibly my earliest video game memory is watching my dad sitting on our first computer, shouting those questions to my mom in the next room, who had the phone cord fully stretched out so that she could pass along the answers from whatever worker at the library she had convinced to help, which is kinda wild now that i think about it. it literally took us over a decade to beat hugo 2, because whatever combination of words we tried to rub the catnip on the bell didn't register in the text parser and we gave up until i googled it when i was in college and made my family watch the ending together for the first time on dosbox after some holiday dinner.
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Oct 10, 2020 09:45
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I think towers of Hanoi is fair, because you can figure it out even if you don’t know how to do it. Reading music is not fair, because it’s not something you can deduce through interaction, or trial and error. What are the thoughts on “repeat the music” puzzles? I’m terrible at them, but they’re still solvable because I can at least tell when a note is the correct one. I can imagine some people are literally tone deaf. On topic, Ultima Exodus. It’s not required, but to get the best armor in the game, you have to open a chest behind a shop counter to get the Gold Pick. This is stealing, and triggers the entire town to attack you. Not exactly appropriate behavior for a hero.
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Oct 11, 2020 02:23
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Silent Hill 3 hard puzzle mode requires you to know the plots of Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello
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Oct 11, 2020 02:30
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Domus posted:What are the thoughts on “repeat the music” puzzles? I’m terrible at them, but they’re still solvable because I can at least tell when a note is the correct one. I can imagine some people are literally tone deaf.
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Oct 11, 2020 03:07
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My rule of thumb always is if you include something that isn't the core loop of your game, i.e. a music puzzle in what is otherwise a 3rd person action game, you need to have an autosucceed option. If your game is all music puzzles gently caress em, they knew what they were in for.
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Oct 11, 2020 05:43
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Barudak posted:My rule of thumb always is if you include something that isn't the core loop of your game, i.e. a music puzzle in what is otherwise a 3rd person action game, you need to have an autosucceed option. If your game is all music puzzles gently caress em, they knew what they were in for. You reminded me of Drakendgard and gently caress you. Though that game's core loop is masochism I guess.
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Oct 11, 2020 06:05
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