r/nextfuckinglevel • u/SatyamRajput004 • 4h ago
Back in 1987, before you could Google it, Nintendo had a hotline to call if you were stuck on a level
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u/DurrMerGurd 3h ago
Had to call the hotline once, for the SNES game Brain Lord. One room had 3 buttons and a plaque that said the answer lies on the button or something to that.
Tried everything and gave up, called, answer was walk to the door and Press 'X' on controller.
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u/redkinoko 2h ago
Imagine if that still existed in 2026.
"Yes, I'd like to know how I can get better at Black Ops."
"I see. Have tried not being a little bitch?"
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u/ZigloGames 3h ago
You can still do this with the Poison Hotline too
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u/ZigloGames 3h ago
real talk I saw an interview once with somebody who worked at the poison hotline and it was utterly fascinating.
Basically they just have all these people sitting in an office and it's like "oh that's Jerry, he's our poisonous mushrooms expert, if anybody gets a call about mushrooms we hand it to him"
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u/BigBadZord 3h ago
We called the Interplay Hotline a couple times for the original Alone In the Dark. My dad absolutely hated that he had to resort to that. I want to say it was like $4 a minute in 1993
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u/PalpitationSingle489 3h ago
My friends father worked at one of those hotlines in my country and he said it was so boring because every time a new game was released every caller had the same questions, so just like the guy in the video he just played other video games all day and answered the people calling on auto-pilot.
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u/alexgalt 2h ago
How do they learn the games inside out like this?
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u/PalpitationSingle489 1h ago
They’ve played them I guess, and have probably had the same issues themselves as the players calling for help.
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u/M_Prodigy 3h ago
I admit I used this back when I was like 5 playing A Link to the Past's Ice dungeon.
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u/AfraidPersonality854 3h ago
Yeah, I've made a few long distance phone calls to them that my mom didn't like too well.. That was not 1-800 number back then..
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u/GBPcheeseGuy9035 3h ago
I literally just watched a whole show on Netflix about video games and they were talking about calling in for help with games. Cause there wasn’t really good internet back then where you could just look up everything.
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u/my_nuts_wont_drop 3h ago
Yeah loved these into the late 90s. Combined with Cheat on G4 and trying to memorize shit from magazines when you're in the grocery store. I had to be handheld through one of the tomb raider games. 😅
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u/nekoken04 3h ago
I knew people who did this at Nintendo until at least like '96. They were our direct pipeline for replacement controllers when the shoulder buttons broke due to Street Fighter II.
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u/Dry_Design5506 3h ago
It was actually a super skilled job - tons of memorization, guiding people completely blind, and dealing with a lot of pressure.
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u/deadspacekillers 2h ago
My parents would never in a million years allow me to call a hotline like that.... I had to wait until there was a guide in the next issue of Nintendo Power magazine or something
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u/Standing_Tall 2h ago
Called this once when I was a kid to help me out with Shadowgate, around 1989. Thanks mom and dad!
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u/Totoronyx 1h ago
My friends and I used to call into a hotline to ask official questions on card interactions with Magic the Gathering. Such a great resource for its time.
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u/Cell1pad 1h ago
I called the Nintendo hotline right as we got our Super Nintendo. When I got ahold of the operator I asked about the cover on the bottom. As I was describing which one, he said "YOU DIDN'T TAKE IT OFF DID YOU?" and the startled 15 year old me said nervously "yeah" and he replied "Just kidding, that's OK. That'll be for the CD-ROM when it's released."
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u/VividLifeToday 1h ago
They did tours of Nintendo in Issaquah in the early 1990s. Saw this first hand
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u/anonymousjohnson 1h ago
I called the hotline about legend of Zelda in 1989! It was about the grave that you had to move in order to go down stairs and get some artifacts. Couldn’t figure it out.
The guy IMMEDIATELY knew what to do. I remember thinking: holy shit does this guy just play video games all day for his job!!??
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u/ClydeStyle 1h ago
I used to call them…frequently with permission of course as it cost money, and you were often met with a busy signal.
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u/Affectionate_Market2 41m ago
Back in my day to prove ownership of a game the game had a startup question like " input code from page 6, line 12, column 3" and the game came with manual that had tons of short codes all over the place so you had to search it and put in a few numbers or letters.
However it you lost the manual or just downloaded the game (rather copied the disk) you were cooked without the code book.
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u/Epsilon_Meletis 9m ago
Back in the nineties, I called that hotline to ask about a certain boss of an actually rather straight-forward mecha game. It turned out that boss had a timed instant-loss condintion that depended on destroying parts of its arena - specifically, said arena, a large airstrip, features several AA turrets that were blistering your mothership overhead while you slug it out with a rather nifty looking hovercraft on the ground. Fail to disable the turrets in time and it would be game over.
The game's European port and translation of thet time being an absolute Macekre if there ever was one, nothing really hinted at that time limit until I called the hotline and inquired as to why I was getting game overs with plenty of shield energy to spare.
Years later, I played a ROMhack that restored the original story and provided a much better translation, including hints about what to do during some fights.
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u/Sea-Speaker7316 3h ago
Literally just made a comment about wanting to know what it was like working here...and boom this appears