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How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades)
(programming.dev)
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?
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.
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.
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.
Paladins Quest for the SNES.
sorry for the delayed reply