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The Official "Stuck!" Confessional


The Tingler

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Let me get one thing straight for the moderators - this is not a help thread, so should not be moved to the 'Help!' forum.

 

Let me get the next thing straight for all the people who visit (because moderators aren't people, they're Nazi robots in disguise) - LucasArts adventures get people stuck. Fact.

 

This thread, as the title suggests, is for people who got stuck at any one point in any LucasArts Adventure, but were too embarrassed to admit it.

 

It may have been something stupid, like overlooking an object or pressing 'Push' when you should've pressed 'Pull' or 'Pick Up'.

 

It could have been one of the majors, like the 'Monkey Wrench' gag in Monkey Island 2 or the 'If this is three...' puzzle in, er, Monkey Island 2.

 

This thread, as the title suggests, is a Confessional. No one will point and laugh, it's just here for people to confess their secret shames - where did you get stuck on something you shouldn't have? Did you use a Hintbook far too often, and wish you hadn't?

 

 

Shall I go first? Fine.

 

"You defiled my platypus!"

Escape From Monkey Island: Spray Eau de LeChuck on Ozzie's Platypus.

I didn't know this. I never worked it out. I tried spraying him and his canes with the stuff, but not the dead animal in front of him. Consequently I was walking around Lucre Island with termites in my pocket for ages.

 

"I bet it's controlled by a series of magnets deep under the Earth's crust."

Sam & Max Hit The Road: Walk In Mirror at Mystery Vortex, switch Magnets on/off to find the entrance to Shuv-oohl's room.

Found the secret mirror entrance, played with the first two magnets... but didn't find the third. I didn't know there was a third! Then I walked right a little bit...

 

"I hope LeChuck hasn't put an evil SPELL on him or anything..."

Monkey Island 2: All.

I was NINE, alright?! My first LucasArts adventure, and I thought it was impossible. I was only used to Cannon Fodder and Sonic the Hedgehog! So I used a Hintbook... all. The. Way. Through. Until. The. End! I'm ashamed, okay?

 

Anyone else want to share their pain?

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Let me get one thing straight for the moderators - this is not a help thread, so should not be moved to the 'Help!' forum.

 

Let me get the next thing straight for all the people who visit (because moderators aren't people, they're Nazi robots in disguise) - LucasArts adventures get people stuck. Fact.

 

This thread, as the title suggests, is for people who got stuck at any one point in any LucasArts Adventure, but were too embarrassed to admit it.

 

It may have been something stupid, like overlooking an object or pressing 'Push' when you should've pressed 'Pull' or 'Pick Up'.

 

It could have been one of the majors, like the 'Monkey Wrench' gag in Monkey Island 2 or the 'If this is three...' puzzle in, er, Monkey Island 2.

 

This thread, as the title suggests, is a Confessional. No one will point and laugh, it's just here for people to confess their secret shames - where did you get stuck on something you shouldn't have? Did you use a Hintbook far too often, and wish you hadn't?

 

 

Shall I go first? Fine.

 

"You defiled my platypus!"

Escape From Monkey Island: Spray Eau de LeChuck on Ozzie's Platypus.

I didn't know this. I never worked it out. I tried spraying him and his canes with the stuff, but not the dead animal in front of him. Consequently I was walking around Lucre Island with termites in my pocket for ages.

 

"I bet it's controlled by a series of magnets deep under the Earth's crust."

Sam & Max Hit The Road: Walk In Mirror at Mystery Vortex, switch Magnets on/off to find the entrance to Shuv-oohl's room.

Found the secret mirror entrance, played with the first two magnets... but didn't find the third. I didn't know there was a third! Then I walked right a little bit...

 

"I hope LeChuck hasn't put an evil SPELL on him or anything..."

Monkey Island 2: All.

I was NINE, alright?! My first LucasArts adventure, and I thought it was impossible. I was only used to Cannon Fodder and Sonic the Hedgehog! So I used a Hintbook... all. The. Way. Through. Until. The. End! I'm ashamed, okay?

 

Anyone else want to share their pain?

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The Dig, anyone?

 

Here's another two:

 

"Think of BOMBS!"

Indiana Jones & The Fate of Atlantis: Push Stone Circle at the Dig Site.

I swear on LeChuck's grave that I pushed the damn thing. Over and over again. Then I check a walkthrough which says "Push the Stone Circle", I mutter "I tried that, try it again... and it works. Damn.

 

"Misfire! Misfire!"

Monkey Island 2: Spit when the wind blows.

Even WITH the walkthrough this got me stuck. Even REPLAYING the game until recently I always thought it was a particular combination of actions that allowed you to pass the marker. Exchanged flags, drank the drink, but until I accidentally stumbled on a decent walkthrough I never thought about the wind.

And that's why MI2 is the best adventure ever. It STILL gets me stuck thirteen years after I first played it!

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The Dig: of course!

 

Much like everyone else I was stuck at the planearium. It was one of those impossible puzzles. At least the similar stone-disc puzzle in Indy 4 had good hints.

 

 

fun fact: I omitted the t from planetarium and thus South Park-ized it

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Well, I really don't remember, but I know I have been helped in a lot of games.

 

But the one I remember:

I think I used a walkthrough through MI1. Or maybe just when I was stuck and didn't know what to do. Don't remember quite.

 

MI2: Too long since I played it, so I don't know how much walkthrough I used on it. And my brain is made in a way that I won't forget the puzzles. But I know I used a walkthrough in the end, in the tunnels. It was too scary, walking around, not knowing what to do, and suddenly LeChuck comes and startles me.

 

MI3: The bubble gum thingy with the goldtooth. I managed to get it out by myself, but it was the wrong way to do it (http://www.worldofmi.com/features/trivia/errors.php?game=MI3&s=1#2). So I needed help to find out the correct one. I asked someone who had played it.

 

MI4: The final battle.

 

Sam'n'Max: I was stuck with the magnet thing. Didn't know that the colours of the magnets should be the same as the doors I wanted to enter. So my cousin told me. But I didn't ask, he just tolk me.

 

DOTT: The two twins' beds. In the past.

 

Maniac Mansion: Walkthrough all the way. I didn't like it, so I used a walkthrough to complete it as fast as I could. But the walkthrough didn't tell me how to get past Red Tentacle, so I figured out a way to do it. Turn off the thingy outside the prison, and red will walk away. Then he didn't try to stop me when I entered his lab (but he was standing there, though... some error I guess)

 

The Dig: Nothing! It was really hard, and I managed it all by myself!

 

Grim Fandango: I think I used walkthrough at some places in it, but I didn't complete it. It stopped working. So when I played it again, I had forgotten a lot. But then I completed it without a walkthrough.

 

Well, that's all for now. It was good to get it out :)

 

-Rapp Scallion

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Originally posted by The Tingler

"Misfire! Misfire!"

Monkey Island 2: Spit when the wind blows.

Even WITH the walkthrough this got me stuck. Even REPLAYING the game until recently I always thought it was a particular combination of actions that allowed you to pass the marker. Exchanged flags, drank the drink, but until I accidentally stumbled on a decent walkthrough I never thought about the wind.

And that's why MI2 is the best adventure ever. It STILL gets me stuck thirteen years after I first played it!

 

13 years?! You could forget bits in SOMI in that much time! Try 4 months! I play and complete the game first (first time, won the spit contest on the offchance that I accidentally spat when the wind blew) tried playing again 4 months later and couldn't figure out the wind bit, at all!

 

Oh, and the Dig, the planetaium bit annoyed me too, you had to get the moons in exactly the right place and for some reason, it wouldn't work for me!

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I have played it a few times since then, you know. Every time I cheated on the "If this is three..." puzzle and got through the Spitting Compo with luck.

 

That is... until now!

 

The Dig: The planetarium bit has me stuck right now in fact, and frankly the game's boring the arse off me. I can't be bothered to finish.

 

MI1, MI3 & Grim Fandango I barely remember my first playthrough. I think I used a walkthrough a lot, and I'm ashamed.

 

To be fair, I didn't actually own them and was merely borrowing them - I couldn't afford to take my time with them.

 

MI4 - I got lucky with the solution to the final boss. I beat Jojo Jnr with an incomplete set of moves somehow, so when it came to the final boss I had to Draw several times. I might still have been on it now if I had the full moves table.

 

DOTT - Hoagie and Bernard's stories I completed (almost) in full... but I COULD NOT work out how to get Laverne! I thought I'd just reach a point in the story when she'd appear. I'd forgotten about the damn tree, and I certainly didn't think it was the same Kumquat tree from the past (the one I never noticed).

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Originally posted by The Tingler

DOTT - Hoagie and Bernard's stories I completed (almost) in full... but I COULD NOT work out how to get Laverne! I thought I'd just reach a point in the story when she'd appear. I'd forgotten about the damn tree, and I certainly didn't think it was the same Kumquat tree from the past (the one I never noticed).

 

That's my thing, though. Without knowing why, I solved that fairly early on. Basically, my logic with adventure games is, if the characters is trying to do something but isn't allowed to and tries to persist on it, I know it's something that has to be done, despite not knowing why it had to be done (it didn't strike me at all that by cutting the tree down I'd be freeing Laverne). But I kept getting that conversation line about what-his-name not being able to cut tree's down any more ('I bet you've lost it!') and I just thought 'Hey! For some reason, I've got to get that tree cut down!' and then I just went to it.

 

But I still stand by the fact that a good adventure game needs to get you into it for you to start solving these puzzels and not just have you solve a load of puzzels which have nothing to do with the story. I tried to play "Journey to the Center of the Earth" a few days ago. What a waste of time and money, about 10 minutes in, you wonder why you're tying to do what you're doing, and that's when I found the game to be boring and switched it off.

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Originally posted by The Tingler

That's usually what puts me off most non-LucasArts graphic adventures. Discworld Noir is probably the only one I can think of that I genuinely wanted to work all the way through without a guide.

 

One of the good things about that game is that it's totally replayable. I could go back to it now and not be able to complete it all the way through without a little thinking (as apose to other adventure games I've completed where I'm just remembering how I did it before)

 

According to some artical I read on the internet about adventure gam,es, Noir is actually slightly non-linear. I can see that in parts, but from what I read, there is actually a way of getting through the game without doing certain bits. I forget now which bits, but it was still quite intriguing

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Sam N Max:

This might be considered a "bad" one, but it bugged the hell out of me! :)

 

The other part of their office.

 

Wha...?

 

Yup. It never occured to me to walk to the right hand side of the screen! I just didn't think there was anything there, so I was stuck in the bloody fairground for ages because I didn't know Max's blacklight (UV) bulb was easily available if I'd just wandered over to the other side of the screen! Argh!

 

Monkey Island:

In 1991 I was 13 and Amiga Power had a nifty guide to Monkey Island in their magazine... It was only for Part One! I didn't use it all the way through, but when I got stuck I referred to it. I was so excited, I was expecting the game to end when I got the ship from Stan, but was secretly hoping it would keep going... to my joy it did! Great memories.

 

Monkey Island 2:

I can't remember specific puzzles I got stuck on, the "hand" puzzle was easy, though! I really enjoyed cracking that one. The "monkey wrench" gag was beyond evil and I'm sure there were other parts of the game that were VERY illogical and annoying too. They should have stuck will the "normal" and "hard" modes instead of including the crappy "easy" mode instead. Hindsight.

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In response to the Monkey Island Amiga Power walkthrough, that's pretty much what happened with me (just replace MI1 with MI2, and I don't think it was Amiga Power)... the only problem was, I only had Part Two!

 

Luckily a friend had Part One, so we met up and played Monkey Island 2 from beginning to end, laughing all the way.

 

Monkey Island: helping geeks socialize since 1991.

 

I can sympathise with the Sam & Max problem too - it was just the magnet room that got me instead.

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DOTT, 1993

Age: 5

 

I simply couldn't get control of Lavern. I tried almost every single possible action with Bernard and Hoagie, but couldn't figure out how to get Lavern down from her tree. After spending countless hours repeating the same clicks over and over again, I stopped playing the game...

 

Until a decade later when I found the CD packed away in a cardboard box with my 486. The game had bested me once, and it wouldn't do it again. Even after my years away from the game I still remembered how to get to my farthest point effortlessly. But this time I knew I would keep going. I tried knew dialogue combinations that I had never dreamed of before; I talked GW into chopping down that tree and I freed Lavern! After that it was only a matter of hours before I beat the game.

 

Has anyone been stuck longer than 10 years (give or take 6 months)?

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  • 3 weeks later...
Originally posted by thomas_a

the secret of monkey island.

 

It took me AGES to get a hint that the (shrunken?) head helped in the monkey head! It was scary anyways.

 

But, wasn't that the point in getting the head, the cannibles say that you need it to find lechuck, so it kinda seemed obvious, otherwise there was no point in getting the thing.

 

Meh, maybe you were young or something.

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Fret not, for all walkthrough sins and acts of "why the hell didn't I think of that?!?" is forgiven in the Stuck Confessional.

 

As for cisco, I wasn't quite stuck for ten years at that point... but I might've been if I hadn't discovered Hint Guides.

 

The thing with that puzzle was, I didn't even SEE it as a puzzle! I just thought that she'd be unlocked naturally at a certain point, so I didn't see the kumquat tree outside the window. I thought it was part of the background. So I never bothered trying to paint the tree, because I never took any notice of Washington going on about cherry trees. It never in registered in my mind as a puzzle.

 

D'oh.

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As much as Lucas arts insists that you can't be stuck in one spot indefintly! But I can prove that it can happen. In Hit the Road if you don't have the bucket of fish when Max gets stuck in the dunk the beast cage there is no way to leave and the game is stuck there forever.

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