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

Heck no. I remember having trouble getting one even with the Brady Games guide back in the day.

I remember reading a review for Escape From Monkey Island that gave it a 7.5/10 and the review ended with "factor in the price of a strategy guide because you're going to need it". And they weren't lying.

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

I don't even know how people figured out getting to the last temple in the original Zelda without help. Literally just a crap shoot of trial and error.

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

My brother and I called the Nintendo help line one time after being stuck in StarTropics for over a week. Some young guy answered we told him where we were in the game it sounded like he flipped through a binder and told us you had to walk through the wall where a snail was. It worked.We were blown away. No telling how much we were charged for that on the phone bill.

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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.

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That’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. So much was messed up and lost in translation in that game.

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Do you think it was to encourage people to buy the game guide or were they just creating some extreme Easter eggs? Either way, that golden chocobo quest was fricking insane.

I think Earthbound had a few of these spots where without the internet or a guide your life could be extremely difficult.

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I might be more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt if games guides weren't (practically) always released on the same day as the game, and usually positioned right next to it in the store. If you were hiding easter eggs, you probably wouldn't give away the easter egg the moment you release the game

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forgot about the help line!

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Used it one time to get help defeating emerald weapon and it was one of the best phone conversations ever for gaming.

Side note: no way in hell does someone figure out how to get the KotRT materia without a guide.

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

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No chance. I didn't even try to breed chocobo until I found out you could do this.