Hacker News Reader

Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

For those wondering just how pervasive this is:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UnwinnableByDesign/Si...

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UnintentionallyUnwinn...

As a kid, I owned Kings Quest 3 and 5 (side note, KQ5 was available on NES). Both are in the cruel category, and I never met anyone who came close to beating them. They were fun to play occasionally, but the most fun was had by showing to friends and letting them play (everyone was blown away).

Sierra operated a 1-900 tipline (cost $0.75 per minute or similar). I can't imagine anyone beating these games without those tips or tips from a magazine.

Yeah I remember KQ3 - consistently falling off the switchback path after escaping from that old wizard's castle.

https://decafjedi.itch.io/stair-quest surprisingly fun

This is absolutely hilarious, thank you for posting!!

Was the idea that these were incredibly complex and convoluted puzzles that you'd be expected to "solve" by playing over and over until it was completable?

You'd expect one or two of these things to slip through by mistake, but so many indicates it was a bizarre but deliberate design decision?

I'm not sure how it became the norm in text adventure games, but for platformers part of it was a hold over from games being designed to be quarter eaters in arcades. Kids that played those became adults that made the next ones. I /suspect/ that a similar thing has happened with the kids that grew up on the N64 and gamecube had four player local coop as the ceiling and now lots of games that probably could have more than 4 players at a time (albeit with balance probably thrown out) are capped at 4. Looking at you, concerned ape :|

They weren't even complex or convoluted. It was just a quiet, "Fuck you, you didn't think to try picking that item an hour ago so now you have to restart."

> "solve" by playing over and over

nah, you were supposed to buy official Hint Books https://www.sierragamers.com/hint-books/ or call 0-700 tip line. This cruel design printed money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com