I kept the starmap from the Sega Genesis version of Starflight on my wall for decades. I had hand-drawn the wormholes I had discovered on it. Not being able to reveal perfect playthrough strategies and information with just a web search definitely made gaming a different experience.
Two games I vividly remember taking notes on: Elite, on the BBC Micro, very handy for tracking prices and ship upgrade availability across systems; and Myst, because … well, Myst
I've been playing the system shock remake. While probably not as much as the original (which I played many many years ago...) I do appreciate how you have to write things down.
I still do it on paper for all king of games: Rimworld, Wakfu, ... Guess that's what happens for engineer gamers
You guys should see my Tunic notes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Love this! Thanks for sharing. I remember drawing maps for dungeon keeper at one point. I also vividly remember the game helpline that was in the back of titles we bought. I dialed that number a lot for Zelda
You are welcome! I also called the help hotline when I was stuck at Simon the Sorcerer :) Good and innocent times.
Etrian Odyssey released in 2007 and was a fun throwback to this sort of experience. The concept for this game is that the Nintendo DS's touch screen can be used to draw a map and keep notes while dungeon crawling. It's funny to think that it's about as old now as the style of games it was imitating then.
The 3DS also had a note-keeping system built into the main menu and usable in any game, but I don't think many people bothered.
My dad would map the caves and other dungeon-y areas in Pokémon Blue.
My recent handwritten gaming experience was Subnautica, where I kept a piece of paper and jotted down rough locations of the points of interest as a way to keep track of directions and distance (shipwreck 5000 meters south by southeast etc.) It was nice, I'm glad they didn't include an in-game map.