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"Being stupid at video games as a kid" stories


Dragoncat
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Talking on Discord with @Purple Mage, topic went to gen 1 and 2 Pokemon, I told stories about how absolutely stupid I was playing for the first time, figured it would make a good topic. Cue copy paste of my examples.

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🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:01 PM
So when I was a kid playing gen 2 I taught attract to my male scyther and had him use it at every opportunity for god knows why
Purple MageToday at 10:03 PM
horny bug
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:03 PM
Yeah, I guess. Lol
It amazes me to this day the resolve I had beating Brock in Yellow with two nidorans and pikachu
Purple MageToday at 10:05 PM
Do u prefer Scyther or Scizor
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:05 PM
Idk, I like the design of scyther better
But I didn't understand the concept of grinding yet and I didn't have a mankey
Pikachu used up all its moves, I beat the onix with struggle
AND PROCEEDED TO GO ONTO THE NEXT ROUTE WITHOUT HEALING
I was so dumb
Purple MageToday at 10:06 PM
Wow
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:06 PM
And then the kids at school laughed at me because I couldn't figure out Mt Moon
One kid told me to just keep going up
And I did
Purple MageToday at 10:07 PM
meanies
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:07 PM
And got out
Purple MageToday at 10:07 PM
Nice
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:07 PM
I sucked at RPGs
I still kinda do
Purple MageToday at 10:09 PM
Kinda same
In Earthbound I didnt know resting at hotels refreshed your PP
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:09 PM
I never heard the Mew under the truck myth for some reason
Purple MageToday at 10:10 PM
Interesting
🐲Dragoncat🐱Today at 10:10 PM
But I had the demo for the first Spyro and the balloonist said he'd show me new worlds in September, meaning the game came out in September
My dumb ass played in September and wondered why I wasn't going to new worlds
Why was I so stupid

Yeah, there's that. Tell me your examples!

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When I was 11 and got Awakening when it first came out, I didn't know that second and master seals existed so I went through the first half of the game with all my units in they're base classes. 

A couple years later when Fates came out,  I still didn't know anything about Fire Emblem so I bought Conquest first, even though I had never played off of Normal Casual on Awakening. I think I remember liking it's cover or something like that, and when I actually played the story I wanted to pick the Birthright route but it wouldn't let me. 

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Being that I had a Game Boy since I was 5 or 6, I had plenty of stupid kid moments with it. In particular, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie comes to mind. It's honestly a pretty easy game once you understand the combat and jump physics. But dumb kid that I was, I got stuck multiple times until I figured things out.

For one, I would get to the end of the first level, it stops scrolling, and I keep fighting putties. I am confused as to why it won't end. Eventually I realized that when your power meter is full, you press Select to morph into Ranger form, and you have to do so in order to proceed to the boss (though to be fair, how many people would think to press Select?). Mostly straightforward after that. I could clear most of the levels (they can be done in any order, except the final). And then there was level 2...

Shortly into level 2, I come across a conveyor belt and a wall, and I don't know what to do. ......Oh duh, you just duck (yeah, I was really dumb...). Later in the level there's a tunnel you break your way through, when some sort of big drill machine (I guess...?) starts chasing you. Touching it is instant death and you can't hurt it at all. Took me a while to realize that you have to keep breaking down the tunnel wall until you're out of there. And then the drill just vanishes for whatever reason. Man I used to hate that thing.

Lastly, though not that important, is the fact that since this was an original Game Boy game with no color, I always just picked the white Ranger, Tommy. But once I finally tried all the others, it became clear that the very first one on the left (Adam, the black Ranger) is the best one in the game. Some rangers do more damage while others jump higher, but Adam does both. Also, if you fill the power meter when you're already in Ranger form, pressing Select will perform a special attack (I think it's implied to be their zord attacking). Not only is it a screen nuke, it also does damage to bosses, and with Adam it takes like almost 2/3 of their health, making them a cakewalk.

 

Besides Power Rangers, the only other stupid moment I can really think of is fainting Lugia and Ho-oh in Pokemon Silver, and then saving the game. I did not know you only had one chance to fight and catch legendaries (sans the roaming ones). A friend traded me a Ho-oh once, but I never got a Lugia. I am forever shamed for never having my respective game's box art legendary... :sob:

Edited by Baron the Shining Blade
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I killed Zapdos in LeafGreen, saved, then left the Power Plant while telling my big brother, "I think he'll return when I go back in"

He never returned

Edited by Pixelman
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3 hours ago, Baron the Shining Blade said:

Besides Power Rangers, the only other stupid moment I can really think of is fainting Lugia and Ho-oh in Pokemon Silver, and then saving the game. I did not know you only had one chance to fight and catch legendaries (sans the roaming ones). A friend traded me a Ho-oh once, but I never got a Lugia. I am forever shamed for never having my respective game's box art legendary..

 

1 minute ago, Pixelman said:

I killed Zapdos in LeafGreen, saved, then left the Power Plant while telling my big brother, "I think he'll return when I go back"

He never returned

Lol oh man. Meanwhile I never got far enough in my first Pokemon games to get a legendary. The first legendary I caught was Groudon, and I just chucked the master ball, and this was when I was like 14 ish. I played my first Pokemon games around 9 or 10. Amazing what a few years difference does.

Also, I remember one more thing I did. On Gold, I enjoyed breeding. I REALLY enjoyed breeding. I would leave two rattatas or something in the day care and keep breeding eggs. Eventually I ran out of cash to get them out, and I thought I had effectively stuck myself. I couldn't get through Ice Path. I thought I had no way to get money now. I restarted the file.

I also bred a magikarp and a chinchou and thought I'd get a hybrid fish pokemon. I got a magikarp.

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Okay. Get this. When I was a kid, I never worked out that you could run over single space gaps in Super Mario Bros games. Maybe that's not so bad. I don't know. Feels dumb in retrospect.

Then there was the special zones in the ORIGINAL Sonic the Hedgehog. While I understood the subsequent special zones perfectly (getting enough rings or getting all the blue orbs to get a chaos emerald just made sense), for some reason I had the notion the purpose was to find the exit to the "maze" rather than the Chaos Emerald.

Also if we go back to the first Super Smash Bros.. I went through a phase where I basically spammed specials and throws. I swear if the A.I. wasn't too dumb to try a second recovery after an edgeguard in that game....

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I didn't know marriage was a thing in Pirates: Live the Life! I just accepted the lady's invitation to dance because it was the gentlemanly thing to do. I didn't give a second thought that I might have been dueling their fiance because I got to have a sword fight, and when they were captured by the evil Colonel Mendoza, I rescued them because it was the gentlemanly thing to do, and because boat battles and sword fights are fun. Only later did I find out that by visiting the port a second time after rescuing the governors daughter, that you were given the option to marry them. By the time I got married by accident, I realized that I had gone through the whole process with at least 8 other ladies.

I also attacked every ship that passed by me, regardless of nation, and was disappointed whenever they surrendered instead of initiating a sword fight. Despite never understanding why everyone was mad at me, I still managed to achieve the rank of Count in every nation except the Dutch (mostly because Dutch settlements aren't the most common thing in the world, and even then I got several promotions from them). Needless to say, I was a scary 8-year old pirate.

 

My first playthrough of Fire Emblem Awakening was so embarrassing I've attempted to blot it out of my mind. The little I remember about it was not knowing what S supports did, I only gave each unit one weapon type promoted immediately at level 10 regardless of class and current stats, and never fielded a flier if there was an archer was somewhere on the map. Needless to say, I learned from my mistakes and eventually managed to complete the game after a few runs where I screwed something else up.

 

In 4X games like Civilization and Master of Orion, I never declared war against other nations, because as a kid, people would only go to war if there was a noble reason to do so. Then I played Imperialism and learned more about history and discovered that most nations went to war for resources and land, not because of any sense of morality. I also ended up in several conflicts because I thought alliances were a good idea until I found out the hard way that the AI used them to get the player to do their dirty work. To my credit, I learned that lesson quickly and am now weary of being offered an alliance no matter what game it is.

Also in Master of Orion, I almost never built a colony ship until the mid game because they took so long to complete (around 40 turns). While I'm still not a fan of how many turns it takes to build them, I now know that building them as soon as possible does wonders in the long run.

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I had a PSP when I was 9 or 10 years old. The only two games I had were a Spongebob and Shrek game. Note: I didn't play my first non-shovelware or third party based game until I was 12 and that was Pokemon Soul Silver. The mere fact that I never asked my parents to buy me a Pokemon (or even FE) GBA game was something stupid I did with video games.

Anyways, I didn't know how the controls of the PSP worked so I just pressed random button. For the Spongebob game I got stuck in a part of the story because I couldn't get through a blocked area. But, I didn't have internet back then to look at a guide to progress the story so I never finished the game and here is the reason why.

After I was stuck with the Spongebob game I decided to ask my mom to buy the Shrek the Third PSP game. There was a point in the game where I had to press a button (I think it was the triangle button) repeatedly to progress. Since I didn't know how the buttons worked back then I though that I had to use my own force to progress. It is obvious that I didn't had much physical strength back then so pressing the button as hard as I could didn't work. I tried various objects to assist me until I grabbed a chair, put one of the legs in the triangle button, and sat on it. The PSP broke and I never got it fixed or bought a new one. Imagine how my gaming life would be if my PSP didn't work. Perhaps I would be revisiting some of the old games right now and I would have probably bought one of the Persona games. To this day I still remember this funny story from my childhood.

 

Edited by Cron
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I think the only thing I can think of might not be too stupid, but more unobservant than anything. I got stuck in the second trip through sector AQA after beating the Nightmare. I couldn't figure out where to go at all, and didn't realize this fish was swimming through the hidden pathway above the security room. I vividly remember details about dreaming that I had to get to sector 3 somehow in order to progress. This was before I actually learned the sectors were also naturally connected via various systems, and not just Nightmare having broken between sectors 4 and 5.

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This happened when i was a teen. My brother had asked me to mine something in EVE online for him while he was off working. He showed me how to do it and he would pay me a few bucks for every day i did it. I logged in one day, went to the location he had told me to go and started mining. Now i don't exactly know what happened next, i barely knew how to mine; however, i was apparently warned about something or other most likely not to enter a section of space by npc's. I figured maybe it was just the segment of space the ship had traveled on or something, after all i had been mining this spot for some time now. I decided to keep going, and figured even if i were to get attacked i might still be able to get away . Unfortunately my brother's ship got destroyed in what i assume was 1 shot. I went back to his base in a tiny pod and went logged off. Hoping that maybe, just maybe the ship wasn't destroyed. It remained destroyed. I apparently lost him a lot of in game money and hours due to that.

 

To this day i don't know what happened. But my brother never asked me to mine for him again

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In my first playthrough of pokemon yellow at age 6ish, I was unaware of the rock type's weakness to fighting moves (because it's not like it's ever mentioned in the game itself or even the anime), so Brock was just sort of this superboss that needed 30 hits to take down. This was my first rpg, so it seemed to me like any boss from any other game. And my genius strategy was just to level up pikachu to 15 so he picks up double team. Spam that to become invulnerable, then spam quick attack. I guess what makes it so dumb is not my ignorance of other strategies (catching Mankey, leveling up Nidoran to 12 for Low Kick, evolving a Butterfree), but the idea that I spent literal hours grinding to get Pikachu to 15 and never once thought there was an easier way. 

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Oh boy.

Assassin's Creed II, the mission where you have to collect ribbons from ladies. Thing is, I didn't knew you were supposed to "steal" them, I was confused.
So I tried to push them, didn't work, tried to tackle them to the ground, didn't work, tried to attack them, didn't work. Tried to steal from, "doesn't make more sense than what I did before", it worked. It was so obvious now, because of course it was a "seduction" game and Ezio's a smooth casanova and all.

Needless to say, i was red faced while laughing at myself. Still do ! Hell I still hear the surprised yells of the NPCs !

What a great time it was ! XD

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On 5/4/2020 at 2:33 AM, Dai said:

I think the only thing I can think of might not be too stupid, but more unobservant than anything. I got stuck in the second trip through sector AQA after beating the Nightmare. I couldn't figure out where to go at all, and didn't realize this fish was swimming through the hidden pathway above the security room. I vividly remember details about dreaming that I had to get to sector 3 somehow in order to progress. This was before I actually learned the sectors were also naturally connected via various systems, and not just Nightmare having broken between sectors 4 and 5.

That took me an hour to figure out, but my stupidest part of that game was where I tried to take on the omega metroid at the end.... By just spamming the laser at him. It took me a lonnnggggg time to figure out that charge beam and running back and forth between him and the wall worked best. That was also at the point where I never actually used charge beam unless the enemy was only harmed by it, because I thought just spamming lasers did better damage over time. But yeah, the area around Nightmare is one of, if not the hardest point in the game.

 

Also there was a time when I played the original Age of Mythology: Titan expansion, and I just played the greeks and spammed hoplites because I thought they were cool. Never even upgraded them. The best part is on the easiest difficulty those games are so easy you could probably beat them without making anything besides villagers. But as soon as I went a difficulty level up? I got wrecked.

 

Or the first time I played FE7 I decided I really liked Dorcas. No reason for it or anything, but I fed him kills and statboosters like no tomorrow and 20/20'd him. Needless to say even with 2 speedwings Dorcas only has like 14 or 15 speed at 20/20. That run Marcus also hit level 20-at the very start of Four-Fanged offense. (Lloyd's version, all three of my lords were at like level 5).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a couple of good (terrible) moments from when I first played Pokemon Crystal as a kid.

- I didn't know shiny Pokemon were a thing. I encountered a shiny Butterfree and casually knocked it out, not realising I wouldn't encounter a shiny Pokemon again for 20 years.

- Threw a master ball at a Kangaskhan, which I proceeded to never use. When my friends asked me why I wasted it, I told them my dad did it...

Fast forward a number of years and my little brother (ten years younger than I) was playing Pokemon X. He encountered a shiny Basculin, panicked and handed me the 3DS so I could catch it for him. This was my chance to be a cool big brother! ...And I knocked it out in one hit. "You'll probably never see another shiny pokemon..." I told him.

The very next day he encountered another shiny pokemon.

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On 5/26/2020 at 1:04 PM, Tylwyth Teg said:

Fast forward a number of years and my little brother (ten years younger than I) was playing Pokemon X. He encountered a shiny Basculin, panicked and handed me the 3DS so I could catch it for him. This was my chance to be a cool big brother! ...And I knocked it out in one hit. "You'll probably never see another shiny pokemon..." I told him.

The very next day he encountered another shiny pokemon.

I laughed so hard at this. I couldn't breath and had to wait a few seconds and even then my cheeks hurt. Like I could just imagine how that scenario played out. You put a hand on his shoulder and said in the most somber way possible "I'm sorry" xD like what move did you use? Do you remember the level gap between you and the wild one?

So here's my story and quite frankly I'm glad I didn't turn out like this for real.

I use to play sims as a kid on the ps2 (I think it was for that system) and I use to love playing music and hearing them sing in their sim language as well as watching them dance. I always did fun stuff but found it very hard to manage their life. I budgeted poorly and didn't have food in their fridge but had plenty of fun items I bought. I just didn't understand all the brand new icons and what they meant. It was my first Sim title so I didn't know what all the little symbols meant and basically my sims were always depressed after a week or died. They used the restroom on their self, they passed out sometimes, they starved, and I just literally let all their meters get full on them having to take care of little life related things. They always got stressed and basically I could never make it past like a month in the game. I thought as a kid, "growing up sucks. You have to take care of so much stuff. I dunno if I can make it if this is how hard it really gets"

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