In some ways yes, but the magic of having to struggle through yourself/with your friends (if you didn’t have the guide I guess) is worth so much in hindsight.
Even today I feel like my experience playing a game is less fulfilling whenever I look something up.
Pokemon Ruby for me. I was left out of the cool kids until my parents were down to buy me a used Gameboy at Gamestop. Goooooood memories! 
I 100% agree. There’s no way I would have retained that memory if I could have quickly looked it up and had been done with it.
I don’t like looking up answers either but at the same time I’m an adult with a limited amount of time. If I feel like I put in a good amount of time actually trying to figure it out and I’m at the point where I’m not having fun, I’ll look it up. I can’t spend days trying to figure out where the Warden dropped his dentures lol.
I still remember playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a kid and getting stuck in the Deku Tree because I couldn’t figure out how to get to the basement. Had to call up a friend on the landline phone to ask for help and he was like “oh, just jump from the top floor onto the big cobweb and you’ll fall through into the basement.” My mind was absolutely blown at this revelation.
I feel like the design philosophy behind a lot of games from the 80s and 90s were to have puzzles you had to think about to solve and secrets that rewarded you for going out of your way or looking in a place that wasn’t immediately obvious. We were encouraged to experiment and use everything in our virtual toolbox to get past an obstacle. If you couldn’t, then the playground was your next best source of information. If you didn’t have friends who were playing the same game…well, that’s what printed strategy guides were for lol.
#boomergaming
When I was playing Gold for the first time I was so stuck after beating the 7th gym because I still couldn’t progress, and I couldn’t figure out why.
I called my friend and he explained that I should have gotten a call from Elm about the Radio Tower, which somehow I must have missed. I remember him sounding quite annoyed/disinterested, for whatever reason.
Earlier that year we had moved away, so that might even have been th last time I ever spoke to him 
It was very annoying to learn as a teenager that you could literally just spam ineffective items on your annoying Pika for like 30 seconds to get the Bulbasaur in Cerulean City.
Worse still, the first time I talked to The Lady of Doom I actually got it, it was only the subsequent 3 million playthroughs where that knowledge would’ve proved useful.
FireRed on my silver gba sp 
then i played Ruby-> emerald> gold> pearl> platinum> soul silver. Before the DS my gold battery died so i just used to play ruby and firered over and over. I skipped gen 5 cause i was too cool for pokemon, but then pokemon Y pulled me back in lmao. Went back to play black and white and genuinely cant believe i skipped them. Theyre some of the best games in the series easily
For me it was Pokémon Red. I had been watching the anime and playing/collecting the TCG for some time prior. By then I had seen pretty much all the Pokémon, though back when I got into the TCG I do remember the mix of known favourites from the Anime (Staryu, Gyarados, Drowzee, Magmar) mixed in with “new” and obscure ones like Nidoran, Rattata and Hitmonchan.
I would play my best friends copy of Red when he was at soccer practice 
The first game I owned was Pokemon Crystal. I’m not sure what year it was but I got a hand-me-down gamboy advance and Crystal from another friend.
Both still had his name written on with marker 
But I played the hell out of that game. I remember having a lv 100 Corsola for some reason.
