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How gamers were nickel and dimed in 80s and 90s (besides arcades) (europe.pub)

submitted 1 week ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to c/retrogaming@lemmy.world

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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?

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[–] NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wow. 1994 is the date of this.

Our local library had the cheat books by then.

Also, the text guides were online either BBS or Usenet. I remember printing out guides by 1994. I guess that wasn't as common as I thought if people were spending on 1-900 numbers. I wonder how much they made doing this?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 1 week ago

Gotta remember that home computers weren't "popular" back then either (it was easier for a household to have no computer than to have any), so anything on the internet would be the equivalent of browsing freenet, gemini or i2p today