6 Baffling Puzzles From the 90s We Still Haven't Solved 

Funny thing is, I was a LucasArts Helpline operator back in the '90s. Best job of my life, playing games all day and occasionally telling someone how to solve a puzzle over the phone. :)

All of you werewolves watching, don't forget to lycan subscribe.

LOLed so hard at the owl/guard thing. "The sun is still up, but an owl hooted, so it must be night" said no one, ever.

The reason why these puzzles were there was so they could sell hint books and strategy guides, or like LucasArts have a help line that costs a fortune. That's why.

My favourite unsolvable quest is from the first Monkey Island game, where you meed a guy who has a talking head - the decapitated head of a ship's navigator. You need the head to safely guide you through the caverns to LeChucks lair. Unfortunately, the guy isn't particularly keen on parting with the head, because as he say, "How are we going to get a new head?" The 90's-unsolvable-puzzle-solution-technique involves trying to use every single item in your inventory with every conceivable interactable object in the world. When I finally by trial an error hit the right solution, it was blindingly obvious. It turns out, earlier in the game, when you acquire a ship from Stan, the used ship salesman, he gives you a few pamphlets, one called, "How to get ahead in navigation". Give the pamphlet to the guy, and he'll gladly hand over the talking decapitated ship navigator's head to you.

The turtle puzzle in The Dig wasn't really hard at all. You actually had the best reference: one screen away, there's an identical copy of the skeleton so you can observe how it's constructed.

My brother and I spend 2 WHOLE YEARS solving the Discworld game. And that part wasn't even one that gave us trouble. The really nasty one was (and I might misremember some of this madness) the one where you had to drink magic wine to get yourself drunk the night before, so you could travel into the past via some magical doorway in the unseen library, put a frog into the mouth of your drunken last-night-version to attract a butterfly/moth, which you had to release on a specific lantern to summon a magic (?) miniature storm-cloud above a monk the next day (which would be the present) to drench him and make him discard his robe, which you could then steal.

The monkey wrench puzzled me as a Finnish child in the early 90's. I read the answer to the puzzle in a gaming magazine, but it took me a decade to learn the word "monkey wrench" and then I had an epiphany and finally understood the puzzle.

If you think those are bad, be glad you missed out on the text adventure era. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy for example. I had read the books multiple times, and I actually managed to figure out how to get off the Vogon ship and get the Infinite Improbability Drive working. But I couldn't figure out what to do once I started randomly jumping to other times/places/characters/dimensions/whatever 15 years later I look it up on the internet, and... Are you fucking kidding me. You know a game has gone off the deep end when your character LITERALLY has to remove his "common sense" so he can do something that is a logical impossibility.

That wall puzzle in Full Throttle wasn't as nearly as difficult to solve as guessing the right weapon to fight the rat bikers with to get their goggles.

I love how no one notices there is a fossil of the damn turtle that provides the answer exactly one screen to the left. I solved that puzzle in 5 minutes when I was 13.

Honorable mention to MG2's laser fence what stumped most people in this puzzle is not the fact that you need an owl to hoot in the guard's vicinity to make him turn the fence off due to local energy saving protocol, but, as we all can see from the footage, that you have to do that IN FRIGGEN' BROAD DAYLIGHT! Employee of the month right here, nominated for "Not My Damn Job"

7:39 She must've been the tiniest six-year-old in history for _that_ crack in the wall to be at eye level for her to kick.

You know what was a bitch to beat, Myst.

Point N Clicks were my absolute faves in the 90's, happy days recalled watching this.

4:40 ~ *OOOOOOOR*........you can just imitate, I don't know, *IMITATE THE SOUND OF OWL HOOTING YOURSELF!!!*

The end clips of Andy losing it just gets me. I wouldn't mind seeing more OX bloopers from time to time!

Another game with crazy ass puzzles is " I have no mouth and I must scream" it's also a very disturbing game. Think portal but without Glados being so nice and helpful to you.

The Dig: The Turtle puzzle solution is a fossil on the bottom left of the screen when you first enter that area. Hard to see unless you turn up the gamma, but they give it to you right there.

6:13 That...doesn't look right...like at all

In the last stage of Super Mario Bros, you had to jump onto platforms at different heights in a specific order to get to Bowser. If you jumped on the wrong platform height, the pipe sent you to some other section of the castle. It took an eternity to figure out I had to jump on a different platform to get somewhere else, and then do that again at least three times in the correct order, as there was literally no indication that you were supposed to do that.

that's why I used to hate these games...you never felt clever or smart just pissed off at how random the solution was.

But but...they taught us how to think outside the box...

I don't wanna brag about it, but I actually solved the turtle one all by myself. :)

The solution to the belt buckle puzzle is rape. Brilliant.

This is the reason I like non fixed solution games. I played Zelda on 64, an I beat the last boss by running under his legs, where he can't hit me. I was the only person I every met who won this way.

... Seriously? The Full Throttle door puzzle was not that hard. There's only ONE spot that looks like it might be a switch, if you look at where Ben kicks. After that, it's just timing. You want hard? Try a King's Quest game! You have to know in advance to throw a shoe at a cat to save a mouse in one of them, and if you don't, you die near the END of the game. Not to mention that you can get to new areas without the items needed to proceed, and you WILL die if you do. And that doesn't even cover that certain items can go missing and become unavailable if you don't take and keep them at the right time!

I Have an Addition: Sierra's Space Quest 2 has a section where your in a cave on a planet and theres no light, you have a gem that emits light but when you type "hold gem" or "take out gem" it doesn't work! The oh-so-obvious soloution? ? "Put Gem in Mouth" ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?

You guys have really come along in the last 4 years! I love your videos! Keep up the great work!

I absolutely loved playing The Dig when I was young with my dad. Such a good story and I really enjoyed the game. I do agree though that some of the puzzles were so hard to figure out because there were so many areas to explore that it was hard to figure out what things went where.

Thank you for adding the bloopers, guys. I don't think anyone could really deliver those lines with a straight face on the first try.

I never understood why people thought the Dig turtle puzzle was hard, it was the easiest in the game. Unless I'm remembering wrong, I distinctly remember there being a complete turtle skeleton model which gave you a hint on how to assemble the turtle bones. EDIT: Also nobody mentioned the infamous Gabriel Knight 3 cat moustache puzzle

My brother and I were just talking about The Dig. We both miss that game - even though we were pretty young we worked together to put that turtle back together again. I miss that games, and it's probably not as good as I remember.

This is why I never complain about quest markers.

With the DIG turtle puzzle, there's a fossil up hill that shows the correct configuration.

I don't remember having any trouble with the full throttle wall kicking thing. What took me the longest to figure out was using the 2x4 on the cavefish to steal his bike! I think I had to sneak a peak at a strategy guide at the mall for that one.

Ah but spending days or even weeks trying to figure out how to solve puzzles in point and click adventure games back then taught me creative thinking/outside the box and so so much more. 😊 😉

Stumbled across this video twice...both times by accident...both times this video was awesome. Great job!

It's a sailboat...I love you guys even more for that Mallrats reference.

The 7th Guest had this globs under a microscope puzzle that was ridiculously difficult. The computer could do moves you couldn't, and always seemed to turn more of yours. And a corridor maze that was tough too. Actually the whole game was.

the first one happened to me once, I still miss my belt buckle

Full Throttle was the only adventure game I could finish on my own. And yes, kicking the wall near and on cracks took away quite a large portion of my lifetime, but in the end I was f***ing proud of myself.

That chemistry joke was awesome. I'd say you win at least three Internets.

Ha! it's not a sailboat. It's a schooner!!!

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders... the only Lucas Arts game I never completed and I had over 20 (live LA games). Got to Mars and that was it. I should go back to it one day.

I love the memories I have of oldschool adventures, but let's face it - the most of the playing time was spent stuck on a puzzle, randomly trying every inventory item on everything. If you look past the nostalgia, the "game flow" was terrible. And yeah, now I know some of you are gonna say those games were more "intelligent" and modern games are too streamlined, but there is a middle ground...

I remember a *very* bored Sierra helpline-guy telling every single caller every single day the solution to the puzzle with the cuckoo clock in The Beast Within 2.

Actually, concerning the Discworld game, you really needed to have read the novels written about the Discworld. Most of the puzzles are referenced in the novels.

A true puzzle is: where has Andy's beard gone? roll that over in your head.

Alternate title to this video: How to speak without separating your teeth more than one millimeter.

Not sure if this counts, but how about the use of the Insignificant Item from 1994's "EarthBound"? You give it to this random man in the hospital in Twoson - who says absolutely nothing to lead you to believe you ought to give it to him - and he'll thank you for returning it to him and give you a magic truffle. I'm not sure if it counts because while it's not actually necessary to figure that out in order to beat the game, it's still the most random fetch quest I've ever experienced in a video game. Puzzles like that made me wonder how people possibly solved games like these before the Internet.

Haha Mallrats reference at the end was awesome lol

Let me get this straight...there was a game in the nineties that contained the objective "have an octopus viciously rape an innocent old man to death so that you can mug his freshly-deceased corpse for valuables lolz"???? How is this not brought up more often when people talk about messed-up scenarios in gaming? This makes the torture scene in GTA V feel as family-friendly as Little Big Planet! (That's _barely_ even hyperbole, this is so twisted)

I played Monkey Island 2 in German when I was 12 all those decades ago: It wasn't probably a decade after looking up the correct way to do the puzzle that I learned the term Monkey Wrench.

This is one of my favorite videos. Thanks for the Monkey Island entry and the ending part, Andy.

*Me, an American:* "Dafuq's a spanner?"

When Guybrush is using the "monkey wrench," it kinda looks naughty.

Andy's little chuckles at the end really made my day!

I love the Mallrats reference at the end, "it's a sailboat!'

I remember that I had to look up that you can put the dog in Monkey Island 2 in your pocket...

outsidexbox 1:34 That joke was *sodium* funny, I had to slap my *neon* it. Or are you making bad chemistry jokes because all the good ones..... *argon*?

The Dig was full of puzzles 1995 me couldn’t figure out. The hardest, I thought, was the puzzle to turn the power on after you fell through the ground into the alien structure... it was some combination of colored hexagons, and took me literally MONTHS of failing until I found a friend with the internet who could find a walkthrough for me. Oh the 90’s!

With Full Throttle getting an update, I'm thankfully for this video. That wall puzzle looks mind-boggling without knowledge before hand.

Dude, the indiana jones games! Secret of Atlantis. At least one decade went by of just forgetting about it before I finally came back to it to (once again) get stuck... Finally looked up the answers for most of that shite. ... But man did I love these games.

I still have no idea where Carmen Santiago is

I've only played MI2 recently (yes, I know, and I was born in 1981) and solved the monkey puzzle by just guessing everything, having refused to look at walkthrough until I'm totally frustrated with a puzzle. Then I continued to try the monkey on every puzzle I saw next because that was so random. Thanks for the "monkey wrench" explanation, I haven't thought of that until you said it.

Dude, all of Discworld is based on insane dream logic. It made sense to fans of the books. I've played all of these games and I've beaten them all without help. The Dig was one my favorites. I really miss these kinds of puzzles, everything's too easy and straightforward today.

I solved all these puzzles on my own back in the 90s (except Metal Gear, haven't played that). The goat one too, even though I must admit I sorta succeeded there by mistake (then again, I guess everyone else who solved it did). Btw one thing I don't like in these kinds of old game retrospectives who like to bash on old point-and-click adventure logic is how often they miss the point entirely. Of course the solutions to puzzles will sound completely crazy when described in detail, that was the entire point of those games. The crazier and more creative the solution was the more respect you gave to the game. However what separated the good games from the bad was how much effort the game designers made in pushing you in the right direction towards decyphering their own crazy logic, mostly by paying close attention to the dialogue, item descriptions and the environment. LucasArts were the absolute champions of this stuff, rewarding the players with both great humor and subtle yet ingenious ways of how you should approach the puzzle (yes, even The Dig was rather well designed, regardless of its reputation), while Sierra never actually figured out how to do that, opting instead to entertain the player by simply being sadistic - as far as I remember, in those days you played LucasArts games to the end, and you played Sierra games until you first realized you were irreversibly stuck or when the death scenes stopped being amusing. The Discworld game just went a bit too far with its obtuseness and the insanely huge number of locations and items, requiring a bit more patience from the players than was probably needed. Still, the solutions were there for the methodical player, and it felt rewarding to finally figure them out. So in essence, it's not really about how insane the solution was, but rather how well the game offered you a fair chance to attune yourself to its insanity.

its all about Day of the Tentacle puzzle where you had to do something in past for something to happen in the future.. one puzzle was like.. washing a car... and because you wash a car, it obviously rains, which triggers something in the future.. or something. haha. it as ridiculous.. but one of my favourite games as a kid

Great video!

I don't know if I'd have ever figured out that Discworld one as a kid (never played it) but I did get through the Lucas Arts puzzles in this list so who knows... We had a much higher tolerance for wasting our time randomly clicking solutions in those days. My worst puzzle experience probably went to that police quest game where you had to put chewing gum on the broken rear view mirror and attach it to a radio antennae to see around a door or the murderer (a man in a dress) would leap out and murder you... every time. Once you survived that you had a split second to defend yourself with... an improvised flamethrower you constructed out of an aerosol spray can... Just another day on the beat.

I had some Love Custard for breakfast

Some of this totally reminded me of Day of the Tentacle. Best computer game of the 90s!

My comment here is damn this generation for looking up all the puzzles on youtube and the internet and ensuring that games like these are never made again, because they're just too easy when the solutions are right there.... argh. I loved the graphic adventures so much more than any other game genre, be it Maniac Mansion/DOTT, Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Monkey Island (and sequels), Grim Fandango, Indy Jones and the various graphic adventures, Loom, Sam & Max... or the Sierra games like Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and all the sequels each of those had.... ah I just miss the glory days of those games so much. Haven't seen anything close since, aside from the Cave (a Ron Gilbert game put out about 2 yrs ago)

Thumbs up for the goat puzzle ... needed hours to figure this out the first time

So... did anyone else find 6:12 disturbing, or was that just me? O.o

Am I the only one baffled by the turtle puzzle being here ? I solved that and I was literally 8 back then...

full throttle was one of my favorite games as a kid, I was so proud of myself when I beat it without any hints....but that wall had me stuck for a LONG time

the turtle puzzle in the dig was easy, there was carvings inside the tower that showed you what you needed to know

Why is day of the tentacle nowhere on this? Was it not in out in the 90s that one?

i remember when i punched an octopus for a belt buckle..good times

I'm so happy that you ripped Full Throttle for that wall-kick puzzle.

Great channel!!

Never found Full throttle especially hard, except for the bugs which made the game crash. The dig is a wonderful adventure games and the puzzles are unusually (for LucasArts) logical in their construction. Now, the Monkey Island games were challenging, but still solveable without the aid of internet. If you want a challenging "find the correct PIXEL to click"-adventure, then try "Prisoner of ice" - a call of cthulhu adventure game from the 90:s. There was one item you needed which only showed up if you moved the mouse over one particular pixel in the room (kinda like a bonus item in the first Baldurs gate game, except this item was required to proceed)

Ah, the joys of ye old SCUMM games, LucasArts you will be missed. I played so many of these style of games on the old 386, and I always loved the nearly mind numbing solutions to the puzzles. If you miss them as much as I do then I strongly suggest you check out Telltale games, they are the closest thing I can find to the good old days. I still think it's time to bring back Maniac Mansion though, I mean they keep rebooting everything else.

A nice trip down memory lane.

Fun and well-presented. Very cool.

1:48 sounds like one of those romance visual novels. 2:15 too

gabriel knight 3, rent the bike. ugh...

Loved the Discworld games when I was little (and still do, of course) but my Dad had to print off a walkthrough from his work computer for me and my sister in the end. It was like 60 pages. Still have it somewhere.

For the turtle puzzle in The Dig, there is a fossilized turtle nearby that shows you how the bones are supposed to be arranged.

puzzles we still haven't solved solutions

I could personally never understand why Gabriel wouldn't just bribe the scooter salesman to get the Harley rather than going through all that stupid cat-hair moustache passport puzzle.

The submarine puzzle in Ace Ventura... that had me stumped!

Half this list is my favourite childhood video games. How did I never know of the other half?

So....they HAVE been solved....misleading title...

What?, no Piano puzzle from Silent Hill 1?

Full Throttle! Nostalgia overload!

Thank you for reminding me of full throttle!

0:25 HOLY SHIT why'd no one tell me Eric Idle used to voice act in 90s adventure games?