Yes, long ago, mapping, note taking. Very rarely now, just follow the big glowy yellow arrow to the next dumb as sh*t dialogue which its best to skip.

Yep, I recall having memorized and forgotten that list for HoMM3 more times than I can remember.

I can't find it right off online to point at it but I have a 500 page graph paper spiral bound notebook.

I spent a Christmas break running thru one of the Bard's Tales games. My high school let me bring home an Apple 2 for the break as I was supposed to be writing a paper for publication.

I never take notes for games. If I get stuck or need to reference information for a game that does not make clear what to do/where to go within the game itself, then I'll just tab down and search the internet for the answer. That's way more efficient than notes.

But a properly designed game should not require notes or referencing to external sources...that is not to say that most games are properly designed.

I actually use Trello for note-taking and to-do lists in some game I use it for personal projects anyway.

Trello been an excellent replacement for the physical notes I used to take and has a lot of sorting and tagging features that come in handy for finding things quickly.

I actually like this in games, but very few that I've played have really called for me to make notes! One game was Silent Hill, and another more recent example was Persona 2: Eternal Punishment inside one of the dungeons with collapsing floors. The concept of having to keep tabs on certain things is quite interesting if done well and it suits the game, rather than being forced upon the player out of poor design or other oversights.

As for the side note, I think it depends on the game. A few games have had so little information it's frustrating, where as some games have had an absolute information overload (Looking at you, Divinity Original Sin!) and discouraged me from continuing to play further. It requires balance, at least in my opinion.

Yep. Morrowind is a pretty huge game and there's a good chance that you'll take a longer break from it at one point (busy with life, playing other games, whatever). If you don't have any notes when you return to the game, you're screwed.

I basically wrote my own journal for Morrowind with all interesting clues from NPCs, things I already did or still have to do for a quest, places that I already visited or still have to visit, etc. Would've been great if I had written this like a diary... ould've been pretty awesome to read a diary of one of your playthroughs a couple of years later.

Yep, me too. Always. The only games I play that I don't use it (although even then I'll have it nearby or in my lap) are very, very casual games that I occasionally do as a "time off" thing (Pinball games are a great example... although sometimes I'll write down high scores on those too LOL... maybe I'm addicted to pen and paper....)
Yeah, that's a good point too. It used to be that notes (or a photographic memory) were almost necessary. They've dumbed down games to the point now that you not only don't need note, you don't even need a sense of direction. Just follow the arrow/flashing light/whatever. I keep wondering when the games are just going to play themselves and "gamers" just watch.

I had recently found a demo version of Claris HomePage 3 on a demo disc, which I used to build a web site with a Swedish-language walkthrough for Myst, learning the basics of HTML in the process.

I've no idea if that site is still saved on one of my many drives or discs, but I'm fairly sure I never actually uploaded it anywhere. I didn't have an internet connection until a few years later.

There was a text-command based dungeon-crawler/RPG I played around the same time, which I cannot for the life of me remember the title of, that I drew maps of, as well as a bunch of puzzle games and visual novels in later years.

That's essentially where I am now with my Morrowind playthrough, and why I will most likely never actually finish it :D

When are games going to play themselves, well it was around 2015 with the rise of YouTube. Now most just watch others play games on YouTube with some dipshit commentary.

hell, just last nite i grabbed a scrap of paper to jot down puzzle elements in kotor while playing with my kindle. my pc desk has a notebook that Im constantly scribbling down notes for many games as I run thru them. when it fills up I toss it and start another. I look at it as a time saver, my memory is crap and I cant be arsed running back to reread the clue later.

lol, just this past year I spent hours mapping the underground maze in myst..... good times. to me that is game immersion at its finest. btw my maps sucked and i still got lost.

I remember that in Myst. My first time I totally didn't get it. I must have tried ever single direction and backtracked so many times, and gradually kept track of which direction to turn to get to the end. Made it and vaguely memorized the directions, but I always dreaded having to go back in there.

Many years later I played Myst again out of nostalgia and noticed that underground area was just like what I had to do in the rest of that specific Age or world. The very beginning of the ride is actually a sort of tutorial gradually revealing the trick, so after the first few stops there was really nothing to figure out about which direction to go. The rest of the ride was a lot more fun after that and it turned out to be one of the easiest worlds to leave compared to the others.

Seems just like watching a movie, or parts of it. Sort of like when watching before buying, for making a purchase decision. The trailers on GOG aren't much different, just shorter and non-linear.

Let's Plays aren't for everyone, and I myself don't watch them often. I only tend to watch certain ones to compare their strategies to my own. There are some real comedians who do commentary on those videos, so there's occasionally an amusing twist thrown into the mix. As a general rule, however, I'll only watch Let's Plays of PC games I've already owned and beaten. I don't want Youtubers spoiling my gaming experiences for me. I've never played NES, SEGA, or console games, but I'll freely watch the Angry Video Game Nerd or LordKat's Until We Win series.