Dumb things you did in video games as a kid.

IMO, there's some level of truth to that.

I was so scared of playing video games as a kid. I remember I had an Arthur PC game when I was like... 5 or 6. And there was this mini game called "Deep Dark Sea" where you had to guide a scuba diver to some sunken treasure. But I was so scared of him drowning, so that any time his oxygen level got too low I would actually run from the room so I wouldn't have to see it happen and hear the creepy Game Over music. ...Yeah.

edited 15th Feb '14 9:00:22 AM by ObasaReisan

Start playing pokemon. Only use my begginer's pokemon in battles. Use other Pokemon only to revive my starter. In the end I had an overpowered single Pokemon who would lose if used against type.

Using my Red Garados as a sink for all my Water HM and Strength. I have no idea what young me was thinking.

edited 15th Feb '14 9:26:51 AM by mega-dark

Whenever I played vidya games of any kind as a kid I has this ocd like delusion that the game was recording all the times I lost, so if I ever thought I was about to get a game over or something I would always turn the game off right away so it wouldn't know.

My first World Of Warcraft character was a night elf hunter.

I do remember going to darkshore and buying a white weapon to upgrade. Not sure how dumb this was in Vannila when it was a lot harder to gear up.

@The Airman: You regret nothing?

On that note, for several years I was terrified of dying in a Kirby game because the death music in the first Kirby game I played (64) scared me.

Same here!

Also I used a P-Wing in Mario 3 in the Desert Land fortress because the Princess gave you a P-Wing when warning about ghosts, so I thought I had to use it where there were ghosts.

I didn't really do lots of dumb things. I was always the type to read the entire manual first before playing.

That said, I wasn't totally immune:

• Pokemon: I only had damaging moves in my movesets up till Gen III (didn't play Gen IV), and never gave my pokemon moves of a different type for coverage either. I also exclusively used pokemon that could evolve twice (ignoring baby forms and bug types). I learned early on in Gen I not to rely on just two or three pokemon, and have been obsessively building up my team to six members ever since, and performed lots of level grinding.

• Maplestory: When I first started out I made a Thief. I added points to every stat to "balance" its stats (this was back before guides existed), then found this safe spot at Sunset Sky to snipe Green Mushrooms (Lv2x back then I think?) at Lv10 with throwing stars. Needless to say, I got sick of it and quit at Lv13. I later returned to the game much better equipped and made a Warrior...opting to max out attacking skills before Improved Max HP Increase. When I found out that character was gimped at around Lv26 (2nd jobbers were considered godlike back then), I was NOT happy.

edited 20th Feb '14 12:19:57 AM by HanabiraKage

Lifting the controller in an effort to jump higher (SMB on the NES).

Spamming Death's Heads in Scorched Earth as soon as I got them, no matter if they killed me. I still find that somewhat fun to do.

Grueling pace in Oregon Trail. Buying a crapton of bullets for pretty much no reason. Resorting to buying stuff later on in the trail despite the ever-increasing costs.

Nerfing the fuel supply of my fighter in Echelon (C64) for more weapons.

edited 20th Feb '14 12:37:47 AM by pvtnum11

Let's just say I didn't know how to save my videogames until I was 7.....

I would sit just beyond the reach of my controller cords and wind up pulling the consoles off the tables they were on. Broke a perfectly good Genesis that way.

I would cheat at games before actually beating them. It's something I still do, depending on the game, but for me the interest lies in seeing what I can do, and whether I feel it'd be worthwhile trying for it for real.

My brother and I were fanatical about status effects like sleep in Pokemon. We'd have damage moves, but we'd also throw on things like sleep powder and the like to disable enemies. We would prioritize the sleep moves over every other debuff or buff, although there were times we'd grab other moves and break down enemy stats.

I busted the disc-reading laser in my Play Station 1 the same way!

I used a Master Ball on an Onix in the original Pokemon generation ... Dag nabbit.

Oh, Pokémon, where do I begin...

• My first main series Pokémon experience was Pearl, and I was 10 at the time of its release. I caught just about every new Pokémon I found with no regard for how my team would turn out or EXP distribution. It took more than a few adventure restarts to get my act together.

• After fighting Mars, the screen would show the damage that Pokémon take from being poisoned by that weird screen-flicker effect. You know what my brother and I thought that was? A glitch. I wish I was lying. We were so convinced that our copies were broken that we actually went to our local Toys 'R Us and traded it for another copy of Diamond. (Oddly enough, we didn't replace my copy of Pearl. Maybe I just didn't think much of the poison flicker effect at the time?) The cycle would have repeated itself if I hadn't told my brother to just let it go when his second copy did the same thing.

• We spent forever stuck in Floaroma Town because we couldn't get past the Galactic grunts on the bridge to the next route and we had no clue where to go. We bought a strategy guide for that.

• I went through a ridiculous amount of Action Replays as a kid playing Platinum and the Explorers of Time/Darkness games just so I could cheat my way through them. When I decided to drop the whole cheating thing because Action Replays have all the durability of a Rattata, there were still trainers in Platinum that I had to fight along the routes because I went through walls to skip all of them. For the Mystery Dungeon games, I tried cheating to start a file with myself as Palkia and my partner as Dialga, only to find out that I couldn't play on any maps because our team exceeded the size limit. Yes... really.

As for Fire Emblem...

• I overused Crutch Characters.

• I left my vulnerable units wide open because I had no idea that permadeath existed at first.

edited 28th Aug '14 6:51:59 PM by RavenKingSage

I used a Master Ball to catch Articuno...getting that far was a pain in itself, catching it was like "um...No!"

Oh yeah ... when I was younger than 10, I used to have my sister beat Kirby's Dream Land for me. I'd stop after stage 3 and get her to finish.

Yeah, Dream Land. For the GB. Then first Kirby game. Ugh ...

This when I could beat Super Mario Land which is harder.

It was the Insta-kill Gordos wasn't it?

I have no idea anymore.

Someone mentioned trying to get 100 coins in Bob-omb's Battlefield in Mario 64 without the Wing Cap.

Well ... I managed to do the star that requires you to shoot out the cannon through the coin loops without it. So much trial and error but I just had to keep adjusting the height. Felt really proud and stupid at the same time.

—-

Chalk me up as another 'ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!' Pokemon player. Yes, I know better. No, I still don't care. If it's not inflicting damage (in hopes of a critical hit), it goes.

edited 28th Aug '14 7:14:05 PM by SuperSauce

Most of the fighting I do currently is grinding, so usually the fights are short enough that a turn spent not attacking is a wasted turn. Therefore I tend to use Attack! Attack! Attack! a lot, barring specialists with foresight, false swipe...

I tended to use items and powerups the second I got them in games.

At some point in Super Mario Sunshine I stopped trying to beat the game and instead just ran around spraying the Piantas and bouncing on their heads until they yelled at me. In fairness, it was pretty fun.

First time I got into Age Of Empires onlne matches, I'd never played with the "no aggro for x ammount of minutes" rule and was completely confused so just went with my usually tactic.

My usual tactic was "rush to age 4 and build a ton of troops, then smash"

well that took about 15 mins then i sat there with my thumb up my ass for a good 20 minutes and was promptly crushed after an all out assault on one guy failed miserably. then they retaliated and questioned why I hadn't built any walls.

never used walls because against AI, the AI never built them and they were rarely useful for me.

I tended to give away or return games that were too hard or I'd just lost interest in, forcing me to buy them again when i inevitably missed them.

edited 14th Sep '14 3:08:20 AM by lalalei2001