Do you think you could have figured out FF7's golden chocobo without a guide?

While people like to shite on modern games for holding players' hands (which they do), they like to forget that a significant amount of older games intentionally included content so obscure as to nearly force people to buy the game guide. Before the proliferation of home internet, people didn't have a lot of other options if they wanted to see everything a game has to offer. Hell, there's an old game that I can't remember the name of offhand that had some random NPC give you an obscure hint about resting on a cliff, when you were require to stand on some random arse platform (said cliff) for like 30s (because you couldn't actually "rest") before being whisked away in a whirlwind. And if I recall correctly, this wasn't to go to a secret area; it was required to progress in the game

Game guides and a Nintendo Power subscription got me through a lot

There’s a part in FF8 where you go back to Edea’s orphanage and everyone has the flashbacks of being there together. It does not tell you in the game that’s where you have to go and it’s not marked on the map. There’s no way you’d know to go there without a guide

Also, In the older FFs if you missed an important item in an area there was no going back to get it you just missed it. And there were a lot of “points of no return” in which if you were under leveled and couldn’t beat a boss you were fricked because there weren’t really chances to just leave the area and level up. I think this is why I search every nook and cranny of the map and am always over leveled in all these new games. My first playthrough of FF8 as a kid I got all the way to the Adel boss fight towards the end and was under leveled and could not defeat him for the life of me and the monsters you fought in the area only gave you AP and no exp so I was completely stuck and had to start over. Never again

I guess you could prevent this by creating multiple saves but I always just had the 1

Absolutely not. But you could also get one via beating Ruby Weapon.

I played FF7 without a guide. I remember asking people how the hell they beat Emerald and Ruby weapon. Then I learned about Morph, Knights of the Round, Underwater, etc that I don't think I would have figured out at all without a guide (maybe Underwater since the name is pretty self-explanatory but who in the world could possibly find the KOTR without a guide ).

Gamefaqs is the only way I made it through several games

Not at all. Summer 98 my step-brother and I spent a day doing everything necessary to get it in order to get knights of the round I think. Luckily that information was easy to find online at that point.