Times where you couldn't progress in a game because you were a stupid kid.

[Threadkular]

Grumble grumble.

I had to build up the the courage to go across the street and ring the doorbell and ask my older neighbor what to do. It's actually a nice gaming memory.

 

[Futabaisthebest<3]

Banjo-Kazoonie and Paper Mario from the N64 on final boss.

I just wasn't able to beat them, no matter how many times I've tried, I just never did. :(

 

[BIG J]

I couldn't figure out how to get out of Viridian Forest in Pokemon Yellow. I must have been stuck in there for hours. The problems is that I found the exit, but it just didn't read as an exit to me. The entrance had two little arrows on the ground leading you in, but the exit didn't, and I never tried just walking into the black edge of the screen to get out. I only worked it out when I asked my friend at school the next day :P

In every re-release or remake of the game they've had big guardhouses at the entrance and exit so you couldn't possibly miss it, so maybe I wasn't the only one who struggled.

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I had the same issue but different location. Didn't know how to leave the house lol

 

[CSX]

Very damn RPG I attempted from kindergarden till about 8th grade.

 

[Calliope]

I don't believe either my brother or myself ever got past the turbo tunnel in Battletoads. We'd rent that game every weekend, and every weekend we'd fail. I do remember my dad being annoyed that we always rented the same game and never made any progress. He'd try to hand us something different with a 'Hey, doesn't this game look like fun?! You can play as that Mario guy!' or something along those lines and my brother and I would ignore him lol.

I also had a hard time getting through the debris field in Final Fantasy VII on the way back to Sector 7. Almost gave up on it then. But I was a dumb teen for that, not a kid, unfortunately. That section might be the one and only thing I hate in all of FFVII.

 

[kirbyfan407]

If my memory is correct, I restarted my game of Pokemon Blue because I thought I was stuck in an area of the map near Cerulean City that you couldn't escape from due to those ridge/line/ledge things you can only hop over in one direction. I walked in that little area for a long time, testing the edges to see if I could hop out, before beginning a new save. On my new save, I was trying to be careful, but then I accidentally hopped into that same spot. Mortified that I was stuck in that same spot, I began to panic and feel so bad...before realizing that I'd never tried one of the ledges and easily escaped. I felt very dumb.

 

[Ehoavash]

Any Zelda games.,... usually got stuck right in the beginning and never touching them again cause I was so lost and dumb

 

[Natels]

There were a bunch of times I couldn't progress in MGS because I didn't understand english. Like calling Meryl or blowing up the walls with C4. Until I got a guide from the official PS magazine

 

[Gundam]

I beat Halo 2 before Combat Evolved because I could never find my way back to the surface on 343 Guilty Spark. I never had a bad experience with The Library the first few times, it was nothing compared to the super maze (for my brain at the time) that is 343GS.

 

[Robochimp]

There was a point in Sam and Max hit the road where I just couldn't find a new place or item to go to.

Going back as an adult there was a weird room that was at an odd camera angle and was two screens wide. I just had to click over and explore the other half.

 

[Ferrio]

Shining in the Darkness, a dungeon crawler was beyond me and my friend.

 

[AstronaughtE]

Most NES games. My vision was bad, but that didn't matter too much because I couldn't read for most of the time I played on it. I could imitate what I saw fairly well, but any game where it told you where to go next or what to do was lost on me.

 

[TaterTots]

Legend of Zelda. My parents got me a NES bundle with Super Mario Bros. 3 in the early 90's and LOZ eventually. Going from Mario games for years to Zelda threw me off. I had no idea wtf was going on lol.

 

[Polaris]

Ditto for the Saban combo section, I had no clue what I was doing wrong.

I was also stuck on the portion of Breath of Fire III when you need to restore power to the lighthouse. You needed to deposit ore into a furnace, and then watch as a sine wave traversed a coordinate grid and pull a lever when the sine wave reached the apogee of the graph. The only problem is that I didn't know what 'apogee' meant, I thought it meant the coordinates 0,0, so I kept pulling the lever when it reached this point, but power would never be restored. Instead of concluding I didn't know what the term apogee actually meant, I thought my timing was off. I eventually ran out of ore and was forced to return to town and purchase more ore an trek back the lighthouse and repeat the process again.

I now know what the term apogee means!

 

[Z-Beat]

Majoras Mask and Tomba

Text heavy games are a bad idea when you can't read and have a memory of 20 seconds

 

[Microsoft]

One of the ps1 or ps2 (?) tomb raider games. Somewhat early in the game, you had to get on a rope and swing somewhere high. Never made it past. Can someone here provide some closure and perhaps link me to a YouTube video regarding this specific part? I don't even remember which TR game it was on.

 

[Kieli]

I got stuck for dumb as reasons plenty of times as a kid, but honestly I think much of that just comes down to poor usability but I have some weirder scenarios too.

I didn't get past the intro mission in MGS3 because I saw the crocodiles and figured I didn't fancy seeing Snake get eaten by one, and immediately shelved the game.

I didn't beat the first half of Ocarina of Time for fair while because when I bought my game cartridge, it already had a save file locked in, and being a weird kid I just figured 'Okay, lets help Sam get unstuck' (the save file was called Sam).

My sister and I never beat Final Fantasy 7 because in an argument I threw disc three out of the window like a frissbee when I was 9 years old.

My sister couldn't beat Pokemon because she was 5 years old when I told her that 'your pokemon are now fighting fit' would mean that they would have frequent seizures. So she avoided Pokemon centres, which made the game very difficult (Unrelatedly, she once released all but one of my Pokemon because she said they needed to be free).

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I'm sorry, but your pokemon stories cracked me up.

 

[Zocano]

I didn't understand the save game prompts in Crash Bandicoot so I basically restarted the game every time I played it. I usually lost all my lives at Sunset Vista or just a bit after it (about 50% through the game) so I never finished it as a kid.

 

[NHarmonic.]

I hit a dead end in Croc 2 very early on. Wasn't even one thing in particular. My feeble 5 year old brain just couldn't figure out how to progress in any of the several stages available near the start of the game. I've always wanted to revisit that game just to enlighten myself.

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I tried it recently and i got to a world where the game becomes impossible. Difficulty hits a spike so drastic that shit was unfair. That + shitty controls made me quit. No wonder kid me had trouble with the game.


I'd say RE3 puzzles for a kid with a lack of english proficiency were hard (we only had the US copy). Puzzles like the Water sample one in the lab, or even figure out how to get the fuse for the cable car were mind blowing.

 

[Laxoon]

In Crusader of Centy they take away your ability to talk to every human NPC and it fucked me up so bad as a kid, turning everything they say into gibberish and I didn't have the resources to realize that 'hey, that silent bunny or suspiciously animated plant from before maybe has something to say now', it's weird to say but it had such a strong intended affect because it really worked, they took away my power to READ to stop me from continuing my quest and it WORKED.

 

[Noah Om]

It took me 3 years to get past Dodongo's Cavern in OOT as a kid. This required walkthroughs too lmao. I was one of those dumb kids.

 

[laoni]

FFX came out later than the rest of the world here, and this was before I had internet properly. So when someone on the schoolyard told me the final boss was Yuna's aeons, and they'd be stronger dependent on how strong Yuna was I believed them.

So I benched Yuna, permanently.

As you can imagine, Via Purifico became my roadblock.

 

[IzzyRX]

One of the ps1 or ps2 (?) tomb raider games. Somewhat early in the game, you had to get on a rope and swing somewhere high. Never made it past. Can someone here provide some closure and perhaps link me to a YouTube video regarding this specific part? I don't even remember which TR game it was on.

Click to shrink...

I gave up on the start of TR2 or I don't what, it was a waterfall and some animal used to kill me after a while.

 

[RomanticHeroX]

I was around 10 when the switch from 16 bit to PSOne happened but it still was a pretty hard conceptual transition to understand. I could never get too far in Brain Dead 13 because the concept of switching discs hadn't really set in yet. Obviously you don't pull a cart out of a SNES without turning it off, so I just assumed you had to turn off a Playstation before you switched the discs. I also played the first hour or two of Beyond the Beyond a couple dozen times because I didn't really know what a memory card was.

 

[Wood Man]

Zelda 2 Death Mountain. I was having a hard time with the Croc enemies and could never get the hammer to break the block near Rauru Town, or I would die on my way out. I had no timing or skills. I tried playing it again while in college and I breezed through it no problem. Why was this so difficult for me as a kid?

 

[demosthenes]

OOT- water temple. I'm pretty sure I had a breakdown.

 

[Wilsongt]

Shining Force 2 and the damn wooden plank and Weigraf on FFT.

 

[Deleted member 8861]

took me 2 years to understand how to get into the upside down pipe at the end of 1-5 in mario bros 3.

2. years.

 

[Septimus Prime]

Landing that plane in Top Gun (NES). That may have had less to do with me being a little kid, then the fact that I was not a fully trained Fighter Pilot, but still....I don't think I ever got it. Not once.

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Yeah, I would goose those up all the time.

When I was a kid, games were just straight hard as fuck. I don't know that I can do much better now.

 

[bionic77]

In Castlevania I always tried to get the triple shot boomerang for every boss and overwhelm them with boomerangs and it made the Dracula fight that much harder because it's the wrong weapon for that fight.

I figured out to use holy water when I came back to the game years later because the game is begging you to use it for that last fight.

 

[Akela]

I couldn't have been the only person who got stuck at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1 when the Heartless invade the island, right?



You basically have to avoid the Heartless and run over to the smaller island across the bridge since your wooden sword doesn't do any damage, but for the a while I thought you had to actually fight them. I guess I thought that the combat mechanics were a lot more complex then they actually are and you had to hit them at very specific points during their attacks (since the sword does actually impact them if you manage to block the attack at the right time, if I remember).

 

[SpitztheGreat]

I'm realizing lately this applies a lot of games from my childhood.

I recently replayed and finally beat Code Veronica and while it was definitely the most difficult RE, the reason for me not beating it back on the Dreamcast was because I was dumb as heck even at 16.

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Everyone is different, but I don't think I've ever heard REC:V called the "most difficult RE game." Was it the first one you played? Of the original four games, REC:V tends to be the one that you finish with ample ammo for all of your weapons. Resident Evil 1 tends to be the one where you're really hard up for ammo on your first playthrough.

 

[ocha]

All this Link's Awakening talk makes me think of how long it took for me to know to use the shield in very beginning on the beach. I was four and I figured it out when I was around six or seven. I felt like a fucking genius afterwards.

 

[Seafoam Gaming]

In minish cap as a kid, I made it all the way up to the small wind fortress near the swamp. I basically did it all on my own and was 7 at the time, and got to a point in the dungeon where in order to progress you had to blow up a wall that didn't have visible cracks on it. It had an obvious rug indicating it, but at the time I had zero idea about that being a thing in 2D zelda games until I accidentally figured it out a few months later.

Then I made it to Dark Hyrule Castle, got stuck at a room where you used the four sword to push a giant brick around after flying on the outskirts of the castle, and after dying right before I got the puzzle done my 8 year old self's rage led me to throw my GBA across the school hallway like a boomerang and smash it on a concrete wall. Nowadays that room is just another room to me and I forgot how I even got stuck. Mom bought me a new GBA the same day (but the OG model, since that's all I used at that point in time. I feel like if I had the Sp with a charger we would have saved more money and I would have been more careful)

 

[Starwing]

Super Metroid. I didn't know how to run, so I got stuck on the bridge part in Brinstar. When I got over it by jumping on every single block before it disappeared, I got to Norfair and had no idea what to do afterward or where to go so I gave up.

 

[Beary Jams]

I once restarted Ocarina of Time because I thought you needed Din's Fire to relight the torches that the poe sister's steal the fire from in the Forest Temple. I replayed the first 3 dungeons and went back and used Din's fire in the center room of the temple and then stared blankly when nothing happened. Good times.

 

[NekuWitTheDraco74]

GTA III came out when I was 12, and I had the toughest time consistently finding the Ammu-nation. I really struggled without an in-game map. Always had the paper map unfolded in my lap while I played.

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Had a similar problems in San Andreas, I couldn't even beat a mission, let alone the first one because I didn't understand the map, I was around 8 maybe.

Also in TLOZ: wind waker I still don't understand how to get pass the guards at the fortress in the beginning off the game.

I couldn't have been the only person who got stuck at the beginning of Kingdom Hearts 1 when the Heartless invade the island, right?



You basically have to avoid the Heartless and run over to the smaller island across the bridge since your wooden sword doesn't do any damage, but for the a while I thought you had to actually fight them. I guess I thought that the combat mechanics were a lot more complex then they actually are and you had to hit them at very specific points during their attacks (since the sword does actually impact them if you manage to block the attack at the right time, if I remember).

Click to shrink...

Omg I spent so many hrs trying to get to that island and then trying to beat the dark side heartless

 

[Grue]

Stared for ages at this gate wondering why it wouldn't open:

 

[gilded_Pb]

The only time I remember needing help as a kid was in Ocarina of Time just after you turn into an adult. I had no idea how to proceed to the Forest temple.

 

[Cross-Section]

I never made it out of the first level of Toy Story 2 on PSX

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I had it for PC, and it took me the longest time to get a handle on the platforming. Even then, I never got past the airport level.

There was also the Bug's Life game; I got screwed on the second-to-last boss fight because it was near-impossible to grab the right type of berry to actually hurt the grasshopper guy.

...

Actually, looking back, I had a really bad history as a kid in terms of getting stuck on the last or penultimate level of a game and never finishing it.

Happened with a bunch of racing games like LEGO Racers and Star Wars: Episode I: Racer. Star Wars Droidworks, I was too scared by the assassin droid levels to complete.

Also fell into the rookie trap of leveling just one or two Pokémon in Silver and getting my ass handed to me by the Elite Four.

Most games, though, I just cheated my ass off in. Didn't really shake that habit until the 360 era.

 

[Kasai]

I have a few.

The jungle boss in Final Fantasy X where you have to select different enemies. I couldn't figure out how and was stuck there until my stepbrother beat it for me.

And Kingdom Hearts 2 where you fight Demyx in Hollow Bastion. That was fucking impossible for a 10 year old.

So I didnt beat it until I was in high school 6 years later.

 

[Dream Machine]

I wrote about it in another thread, but in FFX just because the path looked like it stopped right after that butterfly hunt minigame area, I spent hours doing that minigame thinking I needed a better time or something to continue, when all I needed to do was continue walking and the switchback part on the minimap lights up and you just keep walking on the linear ass path.

 

[Qwark]

Loved, loved, loved Digimon World 2, mostly because of f that DNA Digivolution level up system, but I could see how that wasn't explained very well, especially with a language barrier. I'm actually replaying it now, and while the rest of the game has flaws, I still like it.

I didn't really start gaming until I was 7 or 8 so I can't think of any think that stopped my progress, not progress stopping but I definitely didn't understand the drift system in Crash Team Racing, so I just played without it.

OH, I remember having lots of issues in Metal Gear Solid, specifically the damn radio code that was on the case, I just did not understand, but I'm pretty sure there were other moments where I got stuck too.

One of my younger friends got stuck in Pokemon Yellow, he did not understand why he couldn't leave Viridian City, so I had to help him take the package back to Oak so he could get his dex.

 

[Ryouji Gunblade]

Snowhead Temple in Majora's Mask. One of the upper floors was too confusing for my kid brain to figure out how to proceed so I went in circles until time ran out. I got better later.

I got lost in the Oracle games very often. These games were big.

 

[Timppis]

Yeah. Sharpening that goddamn knife on those goddamn chairs.

 

[Deleted member 56909]

kingdom hearts 1 I rented it from blockbuster and got to traverse the town and got too scared in the beginning of the game and couldn't progress. The heartless freaked me out as a kid.

 

[Kewlmyc]

Never could get past the RC car level in Toy Story on Genesis as a kid. I could never wrap my head around the controls

Might emulate it one day and try to beat it

 

[Shan]

FFVI on SNES, I couldn't read English so I didn't know I had to jump on a wooden box in Vector to enter the Magitek Factory.

 

[correojon]

A link to the Past.

You had to cut. The. Curtain. With the master sword after facing off with that wizard who kidnapped Zelda. It took me 11 years to realize this. I purchased zelda on SNES and finally beat it over a decade later on game boy advance

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OMG this. I explored the full map thinking that I had to go somewhere else (I´m not a native english speaker so sometimes I would misunderstand stuff), after more than a month roaming Hyrule I think someone told me to cut the f*ing curtain.

 

[Advc]

Being stuck on the first castle door in Super Mario World because I didn't knew that to enter you had to press up... I coudn't progress from there until a cousin came to visit us and played some SNES and when I told him about the door he laughed at me telling me I just had to press up. My 7 year old mind exploded with happiness lol