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

[M.A.V.]

Paper mario on n64. I was stuck twice. First fight against bowser (20 min into the game). I hated losing when I was little and since you were forced to lose the first fight, well I went mad and closed my N64 everytime I lost. Eventually, I swallowed my young self's pride and let mario get beat up only to find out it was meant to be. It was unheard of back then for me.

Second spot I was stuck is in the sandy stage (Second star to collect), I simply got lost in the desert. I didn't know what to do I could barely read my main language at the time so even less english. Eventually I found the explorer after many month of trying and the temple.

 

[Deleted member 1589]

Hope I'm not the only one.

 

[vestan]

There was this bit in Ultimate Spider-Man where you play as Carnage and have to open a door by continously tapping the Circle button but I seriously couldn't pull it off. That shit was hard. I think I put the game off for like 3 months until one day I got my mum to do the tapping for me and it worked. I never finished it :^(

 

[Kaitos]

When you had to finish old Donkey Kong in DK64. I could never finish it :(

 

[Rogue Agent]

I couldn't get out of my house in Pokemon Blue.

 

[Mazzo]

I actually cried when I first played Banjo & Kazooie as a kid because I couldn't do the cool moves I'd seen in the manual. I didn't know enough english at the time to realize I had to learn them in-game first. Also Mario 64 let me do everything from the start. I was so angry 🤣

 

[Barn]

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.

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OMG this.

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Me too, ya'll. Not only was I a dumb kid, this was pre-internet days, so I was technically stuck on this for actual years. I had A Link to the Past as a child, but never beat the game until college, when a friend finally told me what to do.

On the plus side, recently replaying A Link to the Past on Switch, I've realized how much this experience re-contextualized the game for me. Because I was so absolutely stone-cold stuck on that fucking curtain, yet still so enamored with the game, I did every other possible thing there was to do on the world map at that time. Every. Little. Thing. I'd play for hours, just wandering around without progressing the narrative -- every little cave you could peek into, the side quests, the pieces of heart. So going back to that world for the first time in about a decade is really giving me some dopamine hits.

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

On the day that i bought a PS2, I rented Kingdom Hearts.

I got to a save point. I saved on all 60 save slots, and didn't know how to exit.

I'm surprised I managed to make it this far in life

 

[GulAtiCa]

Tubular from Super Mario World. I couldn't get used to the balloon controls at all. And getting hit once lead to an inevitable death below.

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Oh I HATED this level. I still can't finish it the correct way. So I found a different solution as a kid, that still works...

I would get a Purple/Blue Yoshi with a Caped Mario, come back to this level and would get near the very edge and capture one of the turtles and just fly with the Yoshi to the end. lol

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

Played FFX all the way to Shiva without leveling up at all as a 10 year old. This involved beating Sin Spawn Gui or the Crawler after 10s or nearly a hundred tries. Don't ask how the hell I managed it except through sheer luck and why I was that persistent.

After that it was impossible with Seymour lol.

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Oh my god. FFX was SOOOOO hard for me as a kid. Now it's a joke lol

 

[Calverz]

Dragon Quest pocket monsters? On the game boy colour? I remember i was like 12 and got this. Around the time of pokemon hype and just didnt know wtf to do. Ended up giving up. No idea to this day lol

 

[KernelC]

I really didn't understand why I had to beat Crash all over from scratch every time I played it on my own. Little did I know, I needed a Memory Card

 

[pleaseinsertdisctwo]

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.

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LMAO this is amazing

 

[ResetEraIsTheBestEra]

it took me like 5yrs or more cant remember to finally figure out the hangar in MGS (at the beginning of the game) andi was able to because i got the chance to use a pc with internet so i checked on the web lmao

 

[Stryder]

On the plus side, recently replaying A Link to the Past on Switch, I've realized how much this experience re-contextualized the game for me. Because I was so absolutely stone-cold stuck on that fucking curtain, yet still so enamored with the game, I did every other possible thing there was to do on the world map at that time. Every. Little. Thing. I'd play for hours, just wandering around without progressing the narrative -- every little cave you could peek into, the side quests, the pieces of heart. So going back to that world for the first time in about a decade is really giving me some dopamine hits.

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Yes, this was my childhood with the game as well. I played the game for years being stuck. I would just go and do whatever else I could throughout the world. I must have replayed the first half over a dozen times as a child.

 

[TheZynster]

posted already?

 

[ResetEraIsTheBestEra]

oh yes, the most recent one would be when i played a TES for the first time in my life. it was TES:GOTE for the PS3, i was really enjoying the game and was really deep into it but an event happened after almost 100hrs of gameplay.

i caught the vampire curse and at first i didnt mind it because i thought i was gonna have more powers so i kept playing until it was too late for me to do something after the timer on the sickness reached the limit i kept getting the gameover screen and to my bad luck all the many saves i had were with this curse. disheartened i stopped playing thinking it was a game bug lol... a year or so later i found out thanks to a user in GameTrailers forums that it wasnt a bug and that it had a cure so i start a new game it became one of the best gaming experiences i had with video games

 

[IzzyRX]

posted already?

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I spent a day on this one too.

 

[halfjoey]

I couldn't get out of the second area in Ecco the Dolphin. I didnt know you had to jump out of the water. Probably spent hours just having fun swimming around until i got bored them accidentally discovered jumping over a little hill.

 

[Ruby-Eyed Witch]

I used to rent Cybernator (aka Assault Suits Valken) a lot. I had a lot of trouble with combat, especially in the second level, the asteroid field. For some reason, I never figured out until years later that you could hold L to lock your aim while moving. Sure made it a lot easier...

 

[eraFROMAN]

The end of Jet Force Gemini. Not going back for those Tribals. Well, I did 12 years later...

 

[DeadMoonKing]

First boss in Illusion of Gaia.
I didn't realize once you hit Castoth's hands away, you could then do the real damage by hitting his face.
I tried so many times till I then lent the game to a friend who told me how to do it.

I also got stuck at Sky Garden, also in IoG, but can't remember what exactly was tripping me up.

For one of my favorite games of all time, I sure was bad at it...

 

[Aexact]

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.

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Whoa that's thinking outside the box.

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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Man I had a moment like that as an adult.

In SMT, they land you in the city ruins and you have to battle your way to the next town. When I got to what looked like an entrance a short scene played where you hear a woman's voice and lose some HP. I thought this meant the entrance was trapped so turned around and wandered the desert for hours as monsters whittled my HP and supplies down. I found some high level dungeons that I needed to immediately leave but no town to heal.

My demons were dead and my heroes out of MP. I was out of money to bribe enemy demons to leave me alone. I gave up.

The woman's voice scene is random and happens repeatedly. I had accidentally timed it right as I was about to enter town.

 

[h8bit]

Made it all the way to Macalania Woods in FFX and ran from every single random encounter before I couldn't progress any further cause the enemies were too tough. My friend (and future me) was taken aback at how far I made it lol I had never played a final fantasy game before and just wanted to progress the story

 

[Bakercat]

I never could beat Banjo Kazooie as a kid cause I couldn't figure out how to get to Rusty Bucket Bay.

 

[CJCW?]

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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I finished this for the first time earlier this year and, as an adult, it wasn't clear that you were supposed to do this. That stupid curtain just looks like it's part of the background.

 

[NeoShinGreg]

I didn't beat Metroid Prime 2 for years since it was full of some odd and somewhat poorly conveyed mechanics. The first time was the boost ball guardian. Dumb child me didn't pick up on the scan saying to use morphball weapons. That one stuck me for months but wasn't the worst, and I remember telling my parents that I finally figured it out. Second was Torvus bog when you have to use the boost ball to jump up a half pipe that does NOT look like a half pipe. I was like 10 so I just played the game to that point and restarted for years. Later I somehow goofed into solving it and made it to the last boss, who stumped me for YEARS.

The final boss has what looks to be an attack where it fires a bunch of missiles into the air, the camera is forced upwards to show them and they look bad and mean, so I would dodge them. Apparently you were supposed to be hit by them while charging the arm cannon to get supercharged and able to damage the boss. I accidentally discovered that after I was a bit slow on the dodge. My mouth was completely agape when the arm beam changed colors and I could FINALLY damage the boss and finally finish the game after owning it for nearly 5 years.

 

[PinkSpider]

Hope I'm not the only one.

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I've completed FF7 4/5 times over the years (And got to the end grind a handful more) but a few months ago I'd had a few drinks and I couldn't remember where the hell to go for a second at this bit.

 

[Aly]

I gave up on KH 1 for 6 months because I couldn't beat Riku in that stupid race.

 

[Deleted member 29599]

Proud that I eventually figured these out without guides.

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Yeah this is the only one that got me as a kid. Even though the game has you bombing things to break through walls i never made the connection that i could blow up that entire tube even after seeing the similarly destroyed one in Maridia that's supposed to tip you off. But i'm gonna call bullshit on this for the very simple reason that the game "cheats". Normally when you scan anything breakable with the X-Ray visor it will show very clearly what you need to do to get past it. The X-Ray visor doesn't show shit when you scan this tube. I know it's probably because this is an outlier in that it isn't like other parts of the game world with breakable geometry and it must have been coded in some special way to trigger the "cutscene" when you smash it with a powerbomb but they should have found a way round that. I have a big problem with anything that breaks the consistent internal game logic that a game establishes as you play it.

The game pulls a similar nasty little stunt like that with a wall you can walk through to use a shortcut to escape Lower Norfair (and it beautifully loops you back round into safer, more familiar territory). IIRC all other "fake" walls again show up using the X-Ray visor but this one just lies to you and presents itself as a solid wall when scanned. Call it hyperbole if you like but in my book that's bad game design. Super Metroid is my favourite game of all time but no game is perfect and this is one of it's few blemishes.

 

[Kain]

As a kid I couldnt get past the woods at the start of links awakening on the original game boy for weeks, then one day I got frustrated and tried to burn the tanooki and finally made progress.

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Yes! It said something about magic powder or fire or whatever and it completely flew over my head as a kid. Also I wasn't very good at English either. It became my favorite game ever once I beat part.

 

[hephaestus]

I the original final fantasy, i only used tents to heal because it was cheaper. So i never realised you could recharge magic so i played using it very little.

 

[Guru Meditation]

The main one that comes to mind for me. I had two Player's Guides, Nintendo Power, and some basic Internet searching (maybe GameFAQs) and still couldn't figure this place out. Haven't had issues with it as an adult but kid me could not beat it. The only way I got to play past this was my friend coming over and helping me out.

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The rising and lowering water levels is difficult for a kid to work through. I beat it without help at 13 when it came out (took like 6 hours though), but my younger brother who was 9 was stuck there for months.

 

[aerobinson]

Metroid and The Legend of Zelda for me. Metroid was a rental so that went back to the little local joint my mom rented it from but TLoZ was a present and, hoo boy, I was dead-set on figuring that game out, regardless of how much stress it caused my young brain.

 

[Luke88]

This is route 110 in Pokémon Emerald, in red you can see the elevated cycling road I assumed was just a wall, in Yellow the batches of tall grass that aren't visible from the other side of the cycling road that could have lead me to think that there was a pedestrian route under the cycling road

 

[Croash]

I was 9 or 10 and wanted to slash through some monsters just like Devil May Cry in the recently released Onimusha that my parents would have never allowed me to play. My best friend had all the cool/violent games and lent it to me without my parents paying attention.

Turns out violence wasn't an issue because an hour in (I think? Maybe a couple of hours) this proved to be too much for my brain.

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Game still made a big impression so I went through all 4 games as a 13 year old in 2006. Eh, typing this makes me feel weird. I was 13?! I really need to revisit them some day but the CAPCOM Dialogue Cringe™ might be too much considering my DMC marathon this year. Still please rerelease them kthanks.

 

[Murfield]

Yeah this is the only one that got me as a kid. Even though the game has you bombing things to break through walls i never made the connection that i could blow up that entire tube even after seeing the similarly destroyed one in Maridia that's supposed to tip you off. But i'm gonna call bullshit on this for the very simple reason that the game "cheats". Normally when you scan anything breakable with the X-Ray visor it will show very clearly what you need to do to get past it. The X-Ray visor doesn't show shit when you scan this tube. I know it's probably because this is an outlier in that it isn't like other parts of the game world with breakable geometry and it must have been coded in some special way to trigger the "cutscene" when you smash it with a powerbomb but they should have found a way round that. I have a big problem with anything that breaks the consistent internal game logic that a game establishes as you play it.

The game pulls a similar nasty little stunt like that with a wall you can walk through to use a shortcut to escape Lower Norfair (and it beautifully loops you back round into safer, more familiar territory). IIRC all other "fake" walls again show up using the X-Ray visor but this one just lies to you and presents itself as a solid wall when scanned. Call it hyperbole if you like but in my book that's bad game design. Super Metroid is my favourite game of all time but no game is perfect and this is one of it's few blemishes.

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I think they realised it was kind of BS. If you stare at the title screen for long enough it will start playing demo footage of the game. Then it return to the title screen and show more demo footage. On the third demo reel, the game will start to hint at secrets. One shows a combo for turning all your ammo into health, samus is vunerable while doing this however. Another shows bomb jumping in a vertical line to reach stupid heights. And one shows the power bombing of the tunnel.