The 90s Gamer Experience: Handwritten Notes and Maps

In an age where information is easily available on the internet, it’s hard to imagine a time when gamers actually had to figure out everything by themselves or by sharing with (offline) friends. Back in the 90s, we didn’t have the luxury of walkthrough videos or automatic mapping; instead, we crafted our own guides, meticulously jotting down notes and sketching maps by hand. Sometimes we even went to the copy shop to copy notes and maps made by friends.

As I recently stumbled upon a treasure trove (well - a ring binder) of my old self-written notes and hand-drawn maps, I was transported back to those fun days of exploration and discovery. I was surprised how much time and effort we were able to put into a single topic - most likely because we had access to only a hand full of games and had (apart from school) no other distractions.

In this blog post I’d like to share a few samples of what I’ve found in my old ring binder. My notes are in German but I’ll explain what each picture is about.

Note: The pictures might be too small to read the content. If you are interested, right-click on the image and open it in a new tab.

Point & Click Adventures

In the point & click adventure Zak McKracken you had to do a lot of travelling by plane. However, you couldn’t travel from one airport to another and the prices also differed. As you only had a limited amount of money at your disposal, you had to plan your flights well. I compiled a list of all possible flights and their costs:

I also took notes on its predecessor, Maniac Mansion, and even made a map of the house. The following picture shows typewritten notes listing the locations of the keys to be found and the code combinations to be determined:

The following is a map that I didn’t develop myself, but traced onto sandwich paper with a pencil from a magazine that I borrowed from the public library. Apparently the card seems to be easily smudged, which is why I preserved it with cling film at the time:

Not sure for which game the following map was but I thought that the “expert” assembly of the individual sheets was worth publishing:

Role-playing Games

In addition to adventure games, jump & runs and simulations, I was particularly fascinated by the genre of role-playing games. To be precise, it was Ultima. I started with Ultima V, then Ultima VI and finally Ultima VIII. I later caught up on the other parts, but I didn’t have access to them in the 90s. I created a separate booklet for Ultima, which received a lot of love:

The first page starts with the most played title of the series, Ultima V. It lists the name of the Shadow Lords and tries to define a legend for future maps:

These pages lists magic items, mantras and items as well as where to find them in the game:

Here some in-game passwords are listed, dungeons as well as cities and what kind of shops you’ll find in them:

The left page lists shards together with something I don’t understand anymore, pharmacies and what you can buy there (underlined are the items that are the cheapest at this place). There’s also a table that shows the magic ingredients and in which city they are purchasable. The right page shows NPCs that can be added to the party with their classes and where to find them:

Here are some dungeon maps and a long text that seemed to be so important to me that I wrote it down:

No idea where I got these city maps from but I obviously copied them, cut them out and pasted them into my Ultima Bible:

There is much more to be found in this booklet, but I will spare you further details. Finally, one of many pages full of information about the game that a friend of mine put together and which I then copied at the local copy shop:

Note the translation I’ve added with a pencil as English is obviously not my first language and was a challenge for me back then.

My brother was not into Ultima but very much into The Bard’s Tale. Here’s a list of translations as the game (like most of the games) was in English:

Other Games

Adventure and role-playing games in particular have always led to a lot of notes and map material, but other games also had information worth keeping. An example of this are cheat codes such as for the game Ghostbusters:

Finally, a list of what it costs in Sim City to build or demolish roads, railway lines, power cables, etc:

Final Words

I probably made all of the above between the ages of 10 and 14. The games were almost all in English back then, but I couldn’t speak a word of English at the age of 10 because we didn’t start English lessons at school until I was 11. So my constant companion was not only pen and paper (and sometimes a typewriter), but also an English dictionary. So I had to teach myself English somehow, which unfortunately meant that I had to think of a possible pronunciation of the words myself. The lack of knowledge of English was certainly also a reason for the many notes I had to make in order to find my way around the game. Apart from that, there were hardly any sources of information, which is why you had to make maps yourself, for example. You researched a game, made notes and drew maps. You only had a few games but a lot of time and were therefore able to spend a lot of time on these games.

I really enjoyed rummaging through my old notes and reliving many wonderful memories. I hope that I can give others the pleasure of remembering these great times or - if you weren’t around back then - to get an idea of what it was like.