Gaming

I had this with Septerra Core. Played it with my sister as children, but we couldn't figure out how to do anything other than just walking around in the starting area, so we dropped the game.

I picked it up again as an adult in 2014 (took me years of occasional attempts to even figure out what it was called), and it was quite a letdown. Copied from my Steam review:

The game lacks any kind of tutorial - the player is told to go to a certain place but there isn't a single pointer about where that place is and how to get there. Had to google it after wandering around all of the small explorable area and still not finding it — the key was to click on a totally unmarked area on the "map".

The cutscenes are missing (because of the "too modern" QuickTime version, according to other players on the support sites), and the audio is weirdly clipped off the end of the character's lines. The battle doesn't seem to work, enemies just slowly kill the character while the player can't do a damn thing — there isn't any option to attack or do anything else in battle.

GameFAQs was a lifesaver back then.

GameFAQs is also where I learned of the endless churn of online community into commodity, and then corporate ghost town, and I accepted that no online community I participate in has a lifespan longer than a large dog so don't get too attached.

For some old games, there'd be a tip line you could call, answered by a real person, to tell you how to figure out the next part. I think it was like a dollar or two per minute

I remember getting SMB2 and not being able to figure out how to enter doors until a friend told me to press up. I think I tried everything other than pressing up, it just never occurred to my 8-ish-year-old brain.

One of the first games we had as kids, was The Broken Land, a shitty Diablo knockoff.
It was our favorite game. The map consisted of a big castle, which we were really struggling to conquer. But I mean, you don't want the whole game to be beatable so easily, so it was fine.

There was one thing, though, we didn't understand. A vendor outside the castle had an inventory slot, where you could place gemstones, but it didn't do anything. Unfortunately, we couldn't check the manual, because the game came as part of a collection.

After actual years, we suddenly placed an armor in one slot and a gemstone in the other and it enchanted the armor.

So, we started enchanting all our gear and suddenly, the castle was easy.
In the castle, you could rescue a mage, which casually doubled your party strength.
And the mage told you to head East, where there was a portal to ...the second level.

All these years, we were stuck in the first level of actually quite a lengthy game. All these years, we thought you'd just play with a single character. All these years, we were biting our teeth out, because we hadn't grokked one specific game mechanic.

But also, we liked it even beforehand. So, you cannot imagine how blown away we were, when the game suddenly opened up to be so much more.

Still a shitty Diablo knockoff, though.

Can’t forget biting the towel and digging in for a riveting gaming grind to get better at advancing past the bouncing neon drum in Sonic 3.

I spent literally 50hrs in the desert of seiken densetsu because I didn't understand english and when my mom translated what the npc said it was "walk an 8 around the 2 trees in the desert" except there were a ton of trees, so I walked an 8 around them all and it never worked.

20+ years later I found a video and apparently you have to do an 8 like 3-5 times around the correct trees. Fuck that game

Took me about 8 years to beat Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past because there was 1 dungeon that you had to pull on the front part of a statue to open the entrance. I tried every inventory item...

When we finally got internet I got answers.

Legend of Dragoon for PS1. Not a hard game by any means but there is a part in the first disk where you are not suppose to attack the "boss". I was like 10 and couldn't understand this nor was it explicitly explained. So i kept attacking the boss kept healing and i kept losing. It took me going to a boostpre, finding the Brady games guide and finding that fight in the book. That was like 4 months after i had given up.

Similar to that is in Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoners where you fight this Dolphin and you are to keep using magic on it till it explodes. No other fight is like this and I'm pretty sure magic was healing it. It is possible to brute force that fight but you do so little physical damage.

I remember being stuck for months in Phantasy Star 2 and 3. Just couldn't figure out where to go. Then one day I realized the Internet probably had answers, and discovered GameFaqs.

(If I remember where I was stuck in PS2, you had to walk to the left edge of one of the many towns. Instead of exiting to the world map, there was a little area with some buildings. They looked like all the other non interactive buildings in the town, but if you walked into the bottom of the center one, it took you to a new map. At the end of that dungeon, you had to use the seemingly useless "music" spell you could learn from the sexist piano guy in some other town. Not sure how you'd figure all that out on your own.)

For me it was text adventures I would get stuck in. Especially anything by Douglas Adams. Bureaucracy was a bitch!

Without a friend, you'd try every combination of clicks until you got it.
You had the time, and no choice, cause they only released one game per year.

Laughs in Game Genie

Now you just have to look for the yellow plot paint!

Can confirm.

FYI, this image is too old to be slop