History GuideDangIt / Action

** And to add to this, you've not only got to[[spoiler: rescue her, drain her of water, recover her memory, and lug her through the rest of the waterway]], but also ideally get every powerup in the game. Several players have beaten Hell without the lattermost step.

*** The Poacher's Saw in the Biggoron Sword sidequest. The only hints you get about who to give it to are that the carpenter boss says "my own son wanders around all day", vaguely telling that his son is the gray-skinned guy who actually only appears at night in Child Link's time, and that said man left his saw behind after he turned into a Stalfos.
*** Not quite true. In Kakariko there is a second ladder in the area with the ladder that leads you behind the windmill. If you climb this ladder, and attempt to enter the house at the top of it, the person inside yells at you for trying to break into their home and then tells you that the grey-skinned boy who sits under the tree at night is the Boss Carpenter's son. This area is quite hard to get to, because the only way there is to glide across the gap with a cucco and drop it at the last second to grab onto the fence, however, most people find themselves doing this at some point anyway because one of Anju's cuccos are behind this fence (and another is behind the windmill, hence the other ladder), and Anju gives you one of the four bottles for returning them.

***** There was a hint in the manual about a "hungy Goriya", if I remember correctly.

** In ''The Legend of Zelda: ALinkToThePast'', there is a Great Fairy Fountain in the Pyramid of Power, where the Golden Sword and Silver Arrow upgrades(required for Ganon) are obtained, which can only be accessed with the Superbomb. The Bomb Shop doesn't carry the Superbomb until you rescue the fifth and sixth (of seven) maidens, and there's nothing in the game that hints at this, so the average player wouldn't think of any reason to go back after seeing only regular bombs there. Biggest Guide Dang It in the series other than Zelda 1.
*** Actually, ALinkToThePast has an in-game fortune teller whose sole job is to tell you about secrets you haven't found yet. He WILL point out the Superbomb and the Great Fairy to you.

*** In the second dungeon, Bottle Grotto, one of the keys could only be obtained by defeated the enemies of one specific room in a specific order. There is an in-game hint for this portion, but unless you know the names of the enemies from some outside source (because neither the game nor the US game manual tells you their names), then the admonition to "First defeat the imprisoned Pols Voice; last, Stalfos," just sounds like so much gibberish.
**** "Imprisoned" is a hint; the Pols Voice (the rabbit-like enemy) is trapped in a corner surrounded by jars.

*** The game's not that hard to figure out, actually; I beat most of it without turning to a guide. Except those rabbits... those damned rabbits....

* ''Zelda II'' is mostly fairly simple, except for the vague hints people give you (which isn't TOO much of a problem). Then comes New Kasuto Town, a town hidden under a forest tile. How do you make it appear? You need to use the hammer to smash the forest. Maybe it's just me, but I don't remember anyone ever telling me I could do that.

* As the illustration on the main page shows, ''SonicTheHedgehog [[Sonic3AndKnuckles 3]]'', That F-ing Barrel in Carnival Night Zone (solution: stand on it and use the D-pad, like an elevator).

* Surprised this part from Banjo-Kazooie wasn't in here, but maybe I was just a lousy gamer at 9. In order to get to Rusty Bucket bay, you need to transform into a pumpkin and go under a gate in the graveyard room where you enter a building which results in other things happening, but the gate doesn't look like it has a hole. This resulted in me getting every warp cauldron, note and jiggy available. It wasn't until I went to find Cheato and then started running from the gravestone things that I accidentally found the damn thing after a year of searching. And there were no hints that the transformations are for anything other than in-level jiggies and cheato pages. So am I just pathetic or is this a real one?
** You aren't alone with that, it took me months of playing to figure that out, and i did all the same things you described. I still distinctly remember fruitlessly jumping into the cauldrons in vain hope. I was so desperate to find out what to do that i begged my parents to buy me a strategy guide for my upcoming birthday.

*** And just to irritate you further, after beating the game and loading your beaten saved game, the game ''then'' decides to tell you that you can use the said weapon, [[WallBanger after beating the game!]]

* In ''ViewtifulJoe'', there's a boss fight against Bruce the Shark . If he catches Joe, he chomps down on him, shaking him from side to side and taking of a heart every few seconds. The game doesn't tell you that you can wiggle the analog stick to get out of his mouth. It's PressXToNotDie ''without the prompt''.

* As the illustration atop the page shows, ''SonicTheHedgehog [[Sonic3AndKnuckles 3]]'', the barrel in Carnival Night Zone (solution: stand on it and use the D-pad, like an elevator). There is no hint nor any ''use'' of the up and down keys anywhere else in the game. Made worse by the fact that all but ''one'' of the barrels on the level will bounce high enough to get past if you jump up and down on them with careful timing, and the one that ''won't'' is only a very few pixels short. ''At first, this wasn't even in the guides.''
** It is possible to get past it by bouncing it down, and then spin-dashing underneath it as it rebounds back up - you had a habit of running out of time though. At least that is how I got past it originally! Had I known about the D-Pad...

** It is possible to get past it by bouncing it down, and then spin-dashing underneath it as it bounced back up - you had a habit of running out of time though. At least that is how I got past it originally! Had I known about the D-Pad...

* The original ''{{Strider}}'' for the NES has several, but an egregious one early in the game is the water passage in Egypt, where the water damages you unless you have the Aqua Boots, but to get them you must WallJump up a shaft, a technique unhinted at in the game.

* In ''ViewtifulJoe'', there's a boss fight against Bruce the Shark . If he catches Joe, he chomps down on him, shaking him from side to side and taking of a heart every few seconds. The game doesn't tell you that you can shake the analog stick to get out of his mouth after only losing a few hearts. It's PressXNotToDie without the prompt.

* The original ''{{Strider}}'' for the NES has several, but an egregious one early in the game is the water passage in Egypt, where the water damages you unless you have the Aqua Boots, but to get them you must WallJump up a shaft, a technique unhinted at in the game.

* ''MetroidPrime''. Artifact of Spirit. [[BlatantLies Seek the unseen entrance at the top.]] First of all, it's not at the top, it's near the top. Second, this hints at the X-ray visor. It's the Thermal Visor you need. This troper only found it when he accidentally fell off the top part with the Thermal Visor equipped, and found himself staring at a door that wasn't there.

* In the NES ''Terminator'' game, to complete the Police Station level, you must counterintuitively toss a box into the middle of the large gap to create a platform. How did anyone figure this out in those days?

** There's a Morph Ball tunnel to an expansion which is hidden behind a bush. A perfectly ordinary bush, which you have passed dozens of. No indication that there's a passage behind it whatsoever. If you're trying to get 100% completion, there is virtually no chance that you will find it unless you've taken to checking every single wall in the game very closely, or you habitually roll around in the Morph Ball and just happened to hit that one bush.

** And how about the steps to unlocking the [[BonusLevelOfHell Hell Temple]]? One particular step requires you to [[spoiler:go to an area in the Inferno Cavern and drop down 20 screens of a bottomless pool of lava, then go back up to the surface, then go down 19 screens and hit the breakable wall on your right. The in-game hint that you are given for this step is completely irrelevant.]]

* The secret to getting to the true final level of the freeware game ''CaveStory'' is extremely contrived; it required you to ignore one of your friends falling into a pit and make an almost impossible jump over the chasm, as well as finding an item inside a boss room before consulting your partner who has found something of interest. Or, you have to hunt down said item while drowning a bit later. One slip-up and no true ending for you... If you can even finish the BonusLevelofHell.

* The secret to getting to the true final level of the freeware game ''CaveStory'' is extremely contrived; it required you to ignore one of your friends falling into a pit and make an almost impossible jump over the chasm, as well as finding an item inside a boss room before consulting your partner who has found something of interest. Or, you have to hunt down said item while drowning a bit later. One slip-up and no true ending for you... If you can even finish the extremely difficult final secret level.

* The ''MetalGearSolid'' series is usually very good at averting these - even the more obscure puzzles can be answered by your support team in-game if you can't figure them out. However, have fun trying to assemble a full team of special characters on ''MetalGearSolid: Portable Ops''. They range from OneGameForThePriceOfTwo bonuses (beat the game with ''Metal Gear AC!D'', ''AC!D'' or ''Metal Gear Solid Digital Graphic Novel'' on your memory card to automatically pick up Zero and have a chance at picking up Teliko and Venus) to SelfImposedChallenge rewards (beat the game very quickly, get high medical stat and max out technical stat/beat the BossRush minigame to pick up Cunningham, Ursula/Elisa and Gene) to obscenely obscure rescue tasks which require going to totally unrelated areas at times you are usually not given an indication for. Raikov is the easiest, but he does necessitate dumping a spy unit in an area which has no plot importance at a time when you have other things to concentrate on. Para-Medic requires you to return to the radio mast after completing the malaria sidequest, and then to complete all your spy jobs (even ones begging for you to collect useless items!) until she appears in the hospital. Sigint is a little easier, but requires you to have picked up Para-Medic. Sokolov requires an insane fetch-quest. Absolute queen of the pile, though, is EVA. To pick her up, you need to interrogate random enemies, ''open an unmarked locker'' in a completely unrelated area which has a number written inside, refrain from capturing certain enemies which it is beneficial to capture, contact her, clear out the airport, wait an in-game week, go to the bottom of the Ravine, and then she'll join you. You need her to recruit Ocelot, and, to add insult to injury, she's not an especially good character in terms of stats.

* ''MetroidPrime''. Artifact of Spirit. [[BlatantLies Seek the unseen entrance at the top.]] First of all, it's not at the top, it's on the way to the top. Second, this hints at the X-ray visor. It's the Thermal Visor you need. This troper only found it when he accidentally fell off the top part with the Thermal Visor equipped, and found himself staring at a door that wasn't there.