
 __  __      _        _____ _ _ _
|  \/  | ___| |_ __ _|  ___(_) | |_ ___ _ __
| |\/| |/ _ \ __/ _` | |_  | | | __/ _ \ '__|
| |  | |  __/ || (_| |  _| | | | ||  __/ |
|_|  |_|\___|\__\__,_|_|   |_|_|\__\___|_|
community weblog

Hint Line '93

Yarn Spinner built a 90s game hint-line simulator for ACMI in which you play a recently hired call center employee with an incomplete binder of maps and hints left by other workers. If you can't make it to the museum in Melbourne there is also an online version, although you will miss out on the handcrafted details of the exhibit, like the fake cubicle with a dead plant, demotivational posters, and the binder itself with all of its hand written post-it notes.
posted by autopilot on Jan 23, 2026 at 3:03 AM

---------------------------

Oh this is great.

Calling for a hint simply wasn't done in my crowd. Long distance was expensive, even calls to the grands had time limits. Plus the nintendo service was 2 bucks a minute in Canada. For a tough game you might come across a walk through in a magazine but more likely a friend/rival would supply the solution.

But usually I just kept grinding away at it.
posted by zenon at 6:28 AM

---------------------------

There was kid in my elementary school who bragged that he was an official "Nintendo Power Player" who took tip-line calls after school with a special adapter that let him go to any point of the game.

We thought he was lying...at least we hoped he was lying.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:22 AM

---------------------------

I love this so much! Not just the project, but the write-up too. I was fortunate to meet most of the folks involved several years ago at a tech conference in Melbourne. YarnSpinner is a spin-off of Secret Lab Games, and it was created as part of the development of the excellent game Night in the Woods. You should absolutely check out their other work. Paris's blog is also worth a follow, and he regularly rounds up news about the Australian space industry and the state of AI (which Secret Lab doesn't use).
posted by web-goddess at 6:04 AM

---------------------------