> I think it was Leisure Suit Larry that asked multiple choice history questions that I guess were meant to be impossible for fifth graders to guess.

I'm from a non-English-speaking country. We didn't understand the questions at all, but all us kids in the neighborhood got into the game just fine with some brute forcing.

Also, coming up with the expected commands in the game was way beyond our skills so we'd only advance to a point where someone had seen and memorized others play. Didn't matter, as it was one of the only games in the system so we'd play it anyway. I still remember how hard it was to type "ken sent me" in the allotted time window.

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21asdffdsa12 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Nowhere does the us "center of the universe" mindset shine more through, then when to expect the world to remember the presidential dogs name.

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throwthrowuknow an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That wasn’t the era of global releases via the internet. You had to either buy it in person or, order by mail or get a copy from a BBS. It was an American game made for Americans.

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distances 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Well, the main hurdle was that we were 7-9 years old iirc and didn't know any English at all, beyond the memorized "knock knock" etc. So the topic of the questions wasn't on the table :-)

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lazyasciiart 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I love this story. I remember seeing two pre-literate kindergarten kids playing on a gameboy or similar handheld, one of them teaching the other strings of button presses for things like “save game” - just navigating through all the menus by memory.

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gambiting 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I played through the entire Pokemon Yellow without understanding a lick of english. You just remembered what the commands did, and you learnt by experimenting.

	▲	bcjdjsndon 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Even as an English speaker the Pokémon all sounded gibberish to me so it wouldn't have been much help

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riffraff 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think everybody does this to some extent.

Like, I remember someone telling me at one point that the thing in Head over Heels was a Dalek with prince Charles head. I didn't know either of those.

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yazantapuz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I don't think that the larry games where to be released to the whole world.

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cassianoleal 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same same!

My brother and I had a notepad with all the questions and possible answers, and we'd run the game several times until we got through, then make a note of the answers. Eventually we had all of them.

"Ken sent me" is buried in my brain for that same reason. :)

Thanks for bringing back the memories!

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Akasazh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Ken sent me

I also remember the joke that was written on the same wall 'it takes leather balls to play rugby'.

I didn't get the joke till much later, but somehow it stuck with me.

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palata an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I learned to read very early because I really wanted to be able to start the games on the family computer (instead of having to ask an adult to do it for me).

And only then I realised that it was all in English :-).