I was just browsing Lucasrts website and saw an old message about removing their 1-900 hintline. Before the Internet became so useful, I'd actually called Sierra's to get help completing one of the King's Quest Games. Funny, how much times change... I wonder how much revenue those old pay-for-hints lines actually netted publishers?
I remember calling a few, just for cheats though, back in the late '90s. Never actually spoke to a person, though if, as is implied, these hintlines do involve human-human interaction then that's a huge drain on profits. If it's just paying someone you found down at the bus stop to grunt out a few cheat codes then I would imagine that profits would be significantly higher.
I remember calling back in the late 80's for Sierra adventure games. My dad never said anything but I rememeber they weren't cheap.
Back in the really old days (pre-mass market), you could actually get the developers on the phone when you called the hint lines.
- Alan
I could not imagine that... The Sierra system I spoke of was all buttons. Their trick was to make you go through 50 menus to get the piece of information you needed - and by then you'd already spent 10 minutes on the phone.Originally Posted by Alan Au
I can remember posting a hand-written letter to a developer looking for help with a game. I can't remember which game, but it was a point-and-click adventure.
A few weeks later I received a typed response. Of course at that stage the problem had been well and truly solved with some brute force 'use every item on every object', but I appreciated the effort.
Nintendo used to have a free 1-800 number for this. You even spoke with a real human being. I called a few times during the SNES days.
Yeah, I remember the Nintendo line. I also rememeber I was about 13, and called in for some game, and got a woman on the phone. So here I was, talking about how to get past some part of some videogame with some 20something year old woman.
AWK-ward!
Back when I worked at bioware, before they got a real phone system, when the secretary wasn't at her desk, any calls to the office would ring every phone. We didn't have an extension system, just a couple of lines.
Well, you could be guaranteed at least a few times a week, some of the calls would be people who simply looked Bioware up in the phone book and called asking for tech help, hints, whatnot. Always good for a laugh. Especially after hours when you are working crunch and it's two AM and some guy calls, you answer, and he says "I need help getting past the final boss in BG1" and you can say "Sorry, don't have time to help you, currently busy finishing BG2" and hang up.
I only called the 800 numbers, but the people at 1-800-USA-SEGA knew me very well. In particular, I remember calling no less than fifteen times trying to squeeze an admission out of game counselors that there was in fact a cheat code for Forgotten Worlds. The reason was, on the back of the box, there is a picture of level two or three where the player characters have a weapon only available after level four.
I remember calling the Sierra technical support line to get hints too. The people on the other end never seemed too happy about answering these questions though.
I called Infocom a few times when I was a kid and got someone who helped me. I probably bugged the shit out of that poor guy.
I called the EA hint line for Bard's Tale when I was on active duty Army and living in Germany! My phone bill for that one call alone (I think it was about an hour) was about $300. That makes Bard's tale the most expensive game I've ever owned and that's a 20-year record and still running...
I always combed the BBSs for hints. Don't recall using 900 numbers, but I probably did a few times.
They just shut that down within the last year.
I never called any hint lines, but I was in the possession of more than one Infocom Invisiclue book.
I remember calling SSI about the Amiga version of Kampfgruppe, a game I had on my C64 and loved and which was one of the few wargames available for the Amiga in 1987 I guess. They transferred me to the guy who did the coding for the game, and we chatted about the bugs I found. Never did get a fix but I did like the effort.
In 1993 or so I would call HPS Simulations and chat with Scott Hamilton, the guy who did Point of Attack and Tigers on the Prowl/Panthers in Shadows (old-school tactical wargames). He would listen to your bugs and send you diskettes with the fixes. A year or so later you could correspond directly with Major Holdridge, the TacOps developer, about that game. And I remember getting a personal letter from IanTrout I think from SSG in response to a question I had about, I think, Battlefront, or maybe it was Carriers at War. He signed his name with a fish symbol or something.
The Intraweb has made all of that moot at the same time the increased size of the industry has made it impractical I guess. But I kinda miss it. You can still get some level of that though with smaller game developers thankfully.
You had BBS access in the 80s?
Uh, yeah. Why wouldn't we?
Yeah, as early as 85 or 86 I'd say.
Because I didn't :(. I'm just jealous. Most people I knew in the 80s didn't have real access to BBSs.
Oh yes, although I can't remember exactly when I started. I remember having a modem for my Atari 800XL.
I remember the 1-900 lines. Sierra seemed really big on touting them.
You missed out, then. The 80s were really the glory days of the BBS. I used to hang out on the CompuServe CB simulator all the time. Connecting through a 300 baud acoustic modem.
Now I feel old.
InvisiClues > 900-number hint lines, though.
I remember calling the Sierra line once for a hint on solving I think it was Gold Rush.
Though the early Sierra hint books were great in their invisble clues, and there were a few Easter Eggs in the Space Quest 1 clue book. I wonder what ever happened to it...
I never called the hint lines, but I did write Scorpia once for a riddle answer.
Wish I still had the response for the quaint nostalgia value.
What ever happened to Scorpia?
She operated a web-zine for a while, at http://www.scorpia.com, but there weren't enough buyers so she closed it down.
I just didn't have a PC in the 80s, except for a TI994A, but it iddn't have a modem. I did, however, use a cassette tape recorder to save games (you had to push record and everything). I was probably 8 or 9 years old...maybe 10. I was born in 74.
I remember those numbers, too, but my Mom only let me call them once. I don't remember what I asked them about.
There was always the BBS "game" - finding a BBS local to you.
First, you'd go to one of those new-fangled computer stores, and bug the employees for a number. If you were lucky, they'd give you a number for some BBS in east bumfuck. You'd call it... long distance... and try to track your way back across the state to someplace local.
There was also the fun stuff in fighting with the phone company to find the ideal phone plan.
BBS's had echolink and fidonet. Cool stuff.
I was in the beta for AOL on the Apple IIe. It wasn't called AOL at the time, but something else. I forget what the name was.
In fact, I remember the good old days of AOL, when you stood a decent chance of meeting cool people in chat rooms.
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