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

The 90s were a golden age of snap bracelets, Magic Eye and Saved by the Bell. Not to be a grouchy millennial but literally was better, brighter, cheaper back then -- except for baffling adventure game puzzles. In the 1990s, videogames didn't know any better, with their puzzles made of nonsense logic and inventory garbage. Do you remember these six from Monkey Island 2, Broken Sword, The Dig, Discworld, Full Throttle and Metal Gear 2?

---

Outside Xbox brings you daily videos about Xbox 360 games and Xbox One games. Join us for new gameplay, original videos, previews, achievements and other things (ask us about the other things).

Thanks for watching and be excellent to each other in the comments.

[MajorMalfunction]

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. :)

[MegaKaitouKID]

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.

[Nuklen]

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.

[stroiman.development]

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 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.

[rmgb-tv]

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

[BarHonigfeld]

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.

[charlesajones]

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

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.

[rad]

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

[FoobarMagnum]

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.

[lechuck]

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.

[trashmunki]

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

[matolies]

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.

[BoredomBee]

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.

[jinhunterslay]

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

[Exorian]

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"

[ZagLineGaming]

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.

[Thundernoob]

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.

[MetaSynForYourSoul]

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

[KbShort]

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.

[NoobPwnzor]

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.