How Often Do You Use Guides When Gaming?

[S.Peelman]

I haven’t for many years. Granted I also don’t play much of anything these days, but even back when I did I hardly used any. I do have a bunch though, pretty much all Nintendo. I used to buy the official Zelda guides, but wouldn’t look in them until after I completed the game. In fact I still did that with Breath of the Wild. It’s a cool book. I would usually look at them for the art and the maps. Just to wonder. This started all the way back with the ones I got for Warcraft 2 and SimTower.

The last game I actually remember to have used a guide (a walkthrough as it was called rather) for being stuck was all the way back in 2000 with Majora’s Mask. I don’t remember what part of the game, but I do remember I wanted to get the guide from somewhere, but they didn’t sell it anywhere. Lo and behold there was this new thing called the internet, and people would write and put game walkthroughs on it. So I found one for Majora’s Mask. It was the time when they’d just be plain text, and people made maps with these symbols; |, /, -, + and whatever else kind of happened to fit.

Needless to say, it helped me beat the game, and then I beat a whole bunch more in the years to come.