The 90s Gamer Experience: Handwritten Notes and Maps

I kept the starmap from the Sega Genesis version of Starflight on my wall for decades. I had hand-drawn the wormholes I had discovered on it. Not being able to reveal perfect playthrough strategies and information with just a web search definitely made gaming a different experience.

Two games I vividly remember taking notes on: Elite, on the BBC Micro, very handy for tracking prices and ship upgrade availability across systems; and Myst, because … well, Myst

I've been playing the system shock remake. While probably not as much as the original (which I played many many years ago...) I do appreciate how you have to write things down.

I still do it on paper for all king of games: Rimworld, Wakfu, ... Guess that's what happens for engineer gamers

You guys should see my Tunic notes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

If you haven't played it, go in blind.

https://tunicgame.com/

Love this! Thanks for sharing. I remember drawing maps for dungeon keeper at one point. I also vividly remember the game helpline that was in the back of titles we bought. I dialed that number a lot for Zelda

Etrian Odyssey released in 2007 and was a fun throwback to this sort of experience. The concept for this game is that the Nintendo DS's touch screen can be used to draw a map and keep notes while dungeon crawling. It's funny to think that it's about as old now as the style of games it was imitating then.

The 3DS also had a note-keeping system built into the main menu and usable in any game, but I don't think many people bothered.

My dad would map the caves and other dungeon-y areas in Pokémon Blue.

My recent handwritten gaming experience was Subnautica, where I kept a piece of paper and jotted down rough locations of the points of interest as a way to keep track of directions and distance (shipwreck 5000 meters south by southeast etc.) It was nice, I'm glad they didn't include an in-game map.