On 5 November 1995, a gamer called CJayC created the Video Game FAQ Archive. Later known as GameFAQs, the site was a hub for video game walkthroughs and FAQs, and later cheats, savegames, screenshots and so on. And that’s what it is today, only it’s a lot bigger than it used to be.
While GameFAQs did lose some traffic to the spread of gaming fan wikis and YouTube playthroughs, its collection of guides for older/more obscure games is still very helpful, like when you, say, buy something off of GOG and get stuck. Or dust off your old SNES to play an RPG… and get stuck.
Plus, there’s a certain nostalgic charm to those plain-text, ASCII art-adorned walkthroughs.
For example, I used this walkthrough for Albion just last month. Love that mid-90s feel.
GameFAQs itself is celebrating the anniversary by running its third Best. Game. Ever. contest where, from a pool of 128 games, one will be chosen to be the site’s most popular through a series of voting battles. If you wanna take part in the voting, or just look at the results, you can do so here.
The ASCII for top pic were made using Jörg Seyfferth’s ASCII generator.
Comments
15 responses to “GameFAQs Celebrates 20 Years Of Tips, Tricks, Cheats And Walkthroughs”
use to love gamefaqs back when video games had actual cheats, but it started to shit me seeing achievements placed in the cheat section
Games still have cheats today, you just have to buy them.
Still a great site for retro and new games alike. Best thing is guides are a single text file, void of ads. Look forward to seeing some Fallout 4 guides on there soon!
This. 100% information, zero fluff clogging up the tubes. It’s great.
I feel like I’m in a minority of people that absolutely hates the trend of guides/tutorials now being all video based.
Give me text/images any day! Maybe it’s just the way I learn, but having to flick back and forth through a video for the one little thing I’m interested in is painful.
I’ll join you over there in minority corner. Much easier to have a list of collectables, etc. to tick-off next to my arm chair than a bloody video to play, stop, rewind, etc.
I’m on board. I hate video walkthroughs so much, give me a picture and a one liner on the location instead of having to track through a 45 minute video.
20 years. I remember discovering gamefaqs back when I needed the strategies to recruit vincent and yuffie in FFVII. That was 17-18 years ago…. on that note FFVII has been in the top 100 list on gamefaqs for 17 years as well. Yikes #feelingold
Haha recruiting Yuffie is the exact reason I first started using the site, in what, 1998? Geez. I still post on the forums pretty much daily. Get a life, parrotshake.
Wow has it been that long?? Used to hang out on those message boards ages ago and it’s still my go to source for written walkthroughs or a message or two when I’m stuck with something
Quick survey: What game were you looking up when you first visited GFAQs?
Me? Starcraft.
Gee, that’s a tricky one. I’m thinking it might have been one of the later ones in the Police Quest Series, maybe SWAT (the live action one)? Sometimes there was a particular order you had to do things in, I remember pulling up a guide for that one.
But heck, 20 years old – that’s almost the peak of my gaming youth!
I think Banjo Kazooie or maybe Ocarina of Time (remember that huge trading quest – I definitely used a guide for that
That website has gotte me out of jam more times than I can remember- the people who post those guides are heroes
I remember printing out the Ocarina of Time walkthrough from GameFAQs so I could 100% it. Many pages, such nostalgia.