Games you unintentionally played wrongly

[FAST6191]

Any racing game ever - Forza Horizon and Forza 4 have shown me that you're not playing a racing game unless you're driving manual with clutch. It also showed me that any racing game without the clutch option is for pussies (in other words, having to actually shift, not just "hold R until you win and press rthumb to shift")

Damn straight- I remember doing the EZ5plus review and one of the latest games was Die wilden Hühner und die Jagd nach dem Rubinherz/The Wild Chicks and the Hunt for the Ruby Heart (a German franchise aimed at younger girls) and it had a driving section with proper touch screen gears and more on it. Bastard hard that one.

Trouble for you though will probably be that sports cars seem to be shifting towards autoclutch/semiauto and flappy paddle gearboxes without a real clutch.

Being slightly more serious though I did abuse gears when playing the need for speed games- as it seemed to handle going from 5th or 6th to first at 200KPH I used it as it braked better than the actual brakes, especially in the 90 degree corners at the end of straights that most of the games seemed to enjoy throwing at you in the later levels.

 

[nl255]

Final Fantasy 1 on the NES, I skipped the Volcano and didn't do it until after the Castle of Ordeals (nowadays I just save it for last). Oh, and on FF8 when I first played it I didn't know about the whole enemies level up with you and didn't know how to use the junction system correctly so I gave up pretty quickly as even normal enemies were like bosses after a while.

 

[Romsstar]

-I guess most people playing Digimon World 1 for the first time ended up with a Numemon because they didn't take care of their digimon.
Or anyone who wanted a Greymon ended up with a Centarumon/Tyrannomon.xD

- The Pokemon thing... Still do. Starter FTW.xD The only thing that changed is that now I RNG for a badass Starter that actually will have great IVs and the right Nature (great times when you had no idea what IVs where, or Nature). but then again, things got bad after Soul Silver/Heart Gold for me, so I guess it doesn't matter anymore.

- Using Walkthroughs for any game that was potentially difficult as a kid (Toonstruck, Broken Sword...)

- Kings Quest IV. Always skipped to the last chapter to see the end. XD

- Rollercoaser Tycoon. Yeah did the same.

Never cheated though as a kid. Now, I write cheat codes, but never actually use any of them. Or if they are mostly altering game mechanics to make a game more challenging xD

Oh 90s, I miss you. Things were good back then.xD

 

[Qtis]

Final Fantasy 3. Didn't realize it had a Job system versus the later on available "Only Vivi is a black mage, no one else" system. I'd almost finished the game when I (by accident) opened the job window. Also took a few moments before I found out about the job system in the beginning (derpty derp).

Also Hitman and the not so assassin like gameplay. Didn't bother to read about the game so I just went guns blazing. Worked pretty far actually, but that was more due to the fact that I was pretty good at shooters (at the time anyways).

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Almost any fighting game

 

[Taleweaver]

Fuck...how could I forget Patience? On windows 3.11, IIRC. I somewhat figured that the end goal was to make a huge stack of aces to kings in alternating colors. I noticed you could put an ace away, but I figured this was just to help you with the stacking. It was after at least a dozen games that I noticed you could put a '2' on it if it was the exact same suit.
But even then, it was quite some games away before I decided to stack all the cards in the "away" pile (I think I was just bored at that time). That moment when all those cards started bouncing all over the screen and the game told me I had "won" the game was probably my first WTF moment (honestly...I thought patience was the sort of game you couldn't beat...kinda like sim city).

 

[mechadylan]

Somewhat related; growing up in a Mexican household in a Latino community, I learned most card games on a 40 card deck instead of a 52 (before shuffling, you always fish out the 8's, 9's and 10's) The first time I did this in elementary school during a "rainy day" session most kids knew what I was doing, but some (teacher included) didn't know what was going on. One of the first games that I learned to play was "Conquian." I taught some friends during high school once and one of them said, "dude, you know how to play 'rummy?' Cool, I'll make a scorecard." I had no idea what he was talking about; we just used to play to see who would win the hand.

 

[gamefan5]

I could myname numerous epic fails I did in my day and even now.

Pokémon: My playstyle was basically this: Starter only and fuck the others. The first pokémon game I've ever played was pokémon yellow. As a result, Pikachu was my starter. I've only used my pikachu for all my battles and nothing else. The rest of my team were HM slaves oor scapegoats if my Pikachu happened to die in order to revive him.Yes, I nalso used my pikachu against brock, which his pokémon were immune to electric attacks so I spammed quick attack like a mofo until I won the match XD. I literally killed any pokemon that came in my way, with pikachu. Yes that, includes the legendaries, killed them without remorse. After finishing the game (repeated the E4 LIKE 30+ times), I went in the dungeon to find Mewtwo and catch it. (Twas then I knew the existence of legendaries LOL) Problem is I only had pokéballs 'cause I thought it was gonna be easy to catch. I wasted my master ball on an Abra 'cause I wanted it so bad and it kept teleporting on me. XD Basically, I was a fucking noob.

Fire Emblem Awakening: I have never known that after capping lv 20 for an advanced class, you could reclass the same class back to lvl 1in order to keep lvling up.

Zelda series: Something I still do frequently, I do most of my dungeons never checking the map, so as a kid I ended up getting lost A LOT! But now I usually memorize the dungeons easily.

Smb3: Used the flute to skip the entire game up to lvl 7 in order to complete it. Missed Snow world and Giant world. XD

 

[Alexrose]

Once I golden godded Super Meat Boy I played through it again with a Guitar Hero controller.

And I used to play Smash Brothers with Donkey Konga bongos (you had to use the controllers and then swap to the bongos once the level started, on a flat level like Final Destination, with ranged characters like Samus). You could shield, shoot and jump so it was mildly amusing.

Edit: Just saw unintentionally. Nah, I can't think of anything.

 

[Maxternal]

LoZ : Wind Waker
In the ice island, if you fall off one of the bridges I can not for the life of me figure out how they intended you to get out of that thing. There are some polls you can swing on but they don't seem to go anywhere. My first try the timer ran out (which at least get's you out but you have to start all over again ... a little better than resetting the game.) Any time after that, there's some water in the bottom so I just got myself drowned. That sends you back to the entrance but at least you don't have to start COMPLETELY over again.

On the same game, in the earth temple there's the place where you get the key to the room where the mirror shield is. It's a pit full of zombies and at the time I didn't know you could actually kill them. My few attempts failed miserably. To get out there's a latter you can't reach and at least NOW I assume that if I killed all the zombies it would drop down so I could get at it ... but at the time I just ended up grabbing the key, saving and resetting so I would start at the main entrance of the temple again. I couldn't figure out how to get out of there.

If we're gonna talk about card games,
for the longest time playing UNO I never read the instructions. I thought it was just one round and whoever ran out of cards won. I never knew there was any point system. I've also heard all kinds of other weird rules that other people would SWEAR were official but were not anywhere in the official rule sheet.

and something not so unintentional
I've played smash brothers with a racing wheel before. Our dog had chewed up a bunch of our N64 controllers and so we didn't have 4 good, working controllers to play with and I much preferred using my racing wheel that was in near perfect condition to a "working" controller that had bite marks on the joystick and handles.

 

[GeorgeFoulds]

Dementium: The Ward. It was one of the first games I put on a flashcart, so I gave myself all the guns, crap tons of ammo, turned off the fog and played it like doom.

 

[Catastrophic]

My first playthrough of Fire Emblem was a disaster. I promoted all of my units at lvl10 completely oblivious to the fact that they can gain so much more exp beforehand.

I also beat the final boss using nothing but Athos.

 

[RodrigoDavy]

When my PS1 was brand new I didn't have a memory card, so I played a lot of games without save feature.

Also, in the past I've played a lot of games that required knowing English or Japanese in order to proceed which I didn't as a child... (Actually had a friend who played Pokémon Crystal in Japanese lol) Since we were kids and had a lot of time, we eventually found our way through trial and error or just gave up.

I remember when I played Metal Gear Solid I got stuck because I had to contact Mery and I didn't know, because I couldn't read the story. And I still hadn't bought a memory card back then too.

 

[tbgtbg]

Someone I knew played Fallout 3 for 15 hours without realizing that V.A.T.S. was in the game. 15 hours. I had to show him how to press the right bumper in combat. I sat in stunned silence for a bit after that.

How in the blue hell did he get out of the vault without it making him use VATS at least once as part of the forced tutorial?

 

[Guild McCommunist]

How in the blue hell did he get out of the vault without it making him use VATS at least once as part of the forced tutorial?

I directly know who Gahars is talking about and I can safely say he isn't the brightest light in the knife drawer.

 

[Taleweaver]

Also, in the past I've played a lot of games that required knowing English or Japanese in order to proceed which I didn't as a child... (Actually had a friend who played Pokémon Crystal in Japanese lol) Since we were kids and had a lot of time, we eventually found our way through trial and error or just gave up.

Heh...I can relate to that. the very first computer at our house was a black-green...something...model that didn't even had DOS. Anyway...for some reason, it had this game called Leisure Suit Larry on it. It was mature rated, so it had this pop quiz to make sure you were 18 (I think I was 8 or so). You had to answer four or five multiple choice questions correctly (two mistakes and you were out), but with only VERY basic knowledge of English (international television wasn't as common as nowadays), it was pretty much impossible. My friends and me could barely make out the question, let alone answer it.

The result was that actually making it into the game was quite a reward in itself (I remember making a list with the first words of the question and the answers we tried). And even then: the graphics were so blocky you could hardly make out what you were looking at and you had to type all the commands.
The result was that there was a Dutch-English dictionary next to the computer pretty much at all times. There were stories that there was mature content in that game somewhere...but progressing through that game was somewhat of hearsay, rumours at the playground and trial-and-error. LOTS of trial and error.


...come to think of it, that game probably taught me more English than my English teacher.
(yeah, for some reason, we learn English relatively late at school. Result in my case was that most, if not everyone in class was already taught by games and movies).

 

[Bladexdsl]

every simcity game always use cheats i don't think I've ever played one normally

 

[gokujr1000]

When I was five and got my first gameboy and Pokemon Yellow I didn't know you could move to the right of the Pokemon centre to get to the Poke Mart after getting Pikachu from professor Oak. I used to cry tears of frustration as the old man blocking the path never let me through.

A year later I realized I was able to go into the Poke Mart and then made it all the way upto Brock getting even more frustrated that I wasn't able to use thundershock on his Pokemon like Ash could in the TV Show. A friend later gave me advice to catch a Mankey or a Butter Free to allow me to beat brock.

After I beat Brock with my Mankey I released Pikachu because I was under the impression that Mankey was the best pokemon in the game.

Some would say the child me learned the ways of Pokemon the hard way.

 

[Kouen Hasuki]

Big Rigs, I Installed it and started it rather than snapping the DVDR it was on

 

[mechadylan]

Checkers. When I first learned to play, you had to jump your opponents piece if it was a playable move. If your opponent didn't jump your piece, you could take said "jumper" for not doing so and say, "por, bobo," (because you're a dummy.) Sacrificing pieces was part of the strategy that I was introduced to, but was disregarded as a "house rule" as I grew older. Also, "flying kings."