Granted, the “nickel and diming” of hotline numbers (1900, 0900, etc) was nowhere as bad as today’s cash shops, but a lot of us simply forgot they were always hungry for all our money

Here’s a bunch other hotline ads for you to peruse - https://www.retromags.com/gallery/category/1729-telephone-hotlines/

PS: I never understood these american numbers that used letters, how were you supposed to know what was the actual number?

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    7 hours ago

    I wouldnt call this nickle and diming.

    I would call this a desperate life line in a world before the internet.

    I spent a week smashing my head against a problem in a SNES game before giving up and calling the Nintendo Hotline. Which gave me the the solution to my problem, and did it relatively quickly and without much wasted time… Which I found amazing, and always wondered how they had that information in the era before Gamefaqs.

    • SparroHawc@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      The Nintendo Hotline was fantastic for me, because I lived close enough to Nintendo’s US offices that the number wasn’t long distance… and it wasn’t a 900 number, so it never cost more than a regular phone call. I got all the hints I needed for free.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.devOPEnglish
      1·
      6 hours ago

      Which I found amazing, and always wondered how they had that information in the era before Gamefaqs.

      What game was that, by the way? Because I immediately think every hotline worked the same: company makes one or two parts stupidly difficult to get through just so a few will end up calling. Sierra On-line’s adventure games were notorious for their pants-on-head logic and hidden shit.