11 Things Only 1980s Gamers Will Understand

NINTENDO HOTLINE

We live in the age of internet, when getting stuck on a game basically leads to five minutes of research- check a walkthrough, read a guide, watch a video, and you immediately know what to do next. No one really gets stuck in games anymore. Back in the day though, people weren’t so lucky. When you got stuck, you got stuck. You could check a magazine, sure, but you weren’t always guaranteed to get the information you wanted. So what would you do? Well, Nintendo had a special hotline, called the Nintendo Power Line, just for this purpose. Upon getting stuck in a game, you could call up this number, and the people who picked up would give you tips about how to progress (and they almost always seemed to know what to do). The Power Line, in fact, lived quite a long life. Established in the late 80s, it was active till as recently as 2010. With the advent of the information era though, obviously it had to go away.