>>43983370What this guy said is a big component
>>43985305I remember trying to figure out how to get by the thirsty guards in RBY, I don't remember how long it took me but a friend had to tell me how to do it. Similarly for GSC I couldn't figure out the ice puzzle until a friend told me about the boulders being pushable (since I played gold before blue, I didn't learn from the articuno puzzle)
I didn't have any other source of information, maybe there were walkthroughs or guides online but I didn't know to get them. And when I finally found a website, i think it was cave of dragonflies, they had a secrets page if I remember correctly, which included stuff like the truck mew, bills secret garden, etc
It was somewhat similar to RSE mosdeep space center being linked to deoxys, which ORAS actually did.
But now there is no real getting stuck in a game, and not many meaningful secrets with datamining. I could make games artificially difficult by not using any guides, but it's just artificial difficulty, rather than the organic problems of childhood.
When gen 4 came out, the internet was already quite developed, pokemon wasn't popular among my friends (we had moved to things like runescape), the only kind of glitch/secret was the surf glitch in early DP releases, and the ability to sell pokemon through wifi, with ebay accounts injecting hackmons and selling them.
There was a crash bandicoot game I had as a kid that I couldn't figure out, one of the bosses was too difficult, until a friend showed me how to do it.
But things like runescape, they had quest guides and skill guides early on, so I didn't have to figure things out myself. In fact my friends and I played and talked about yugioh at school, and talked about runescape (but not about things we were stuck on or secrets).
The point being, the internet is a big factor in killing pokemania. You don't have to discuss problems or share secrets, you just say "go to this website if you get stuck".
