Quote Originally Posted by Compute View Post
Sierra Online ran a BBS into the late 90's. That was a neat, free BBS. They had game hints and a pretty good download area. My guess is that my last use of a 900 number for game hints would have been somewhere around 1996 or 1997. Around that time I figured out that I could catalog all of the game hints for games I liked or wanted to play and file them. Then, I got access to the internet. My guess is hint lines may have made it late into the PS1/N64 days, but not much farther.

EDIT: Needed to cut out some rambling.
I doubt that phone hint lines lasted even that long. Starting in the early 90s, tips and tricks type magazines became very common, most video game magazines had walkthoughs or something similar for the biggest release games and player's guides began to be published. According to Nintendo's website, they operated a "Powerline" which was an automated system from 1994 to mid-2010. I'm assuming this replaced their physical game counselor call center. I would suspect that by about 1995/96, the last of the phone hint lines were long gone.