Proudest adventure puzzle solution?

[Jace Taran]

I'm sure we've all had times when we've played an adventure game, and we solve a certain puzzle & feel really good about ourselves for actually thinking up a clever solution that worked (especially if it was something off-the-wall in a humor game like MI), instead of happening upon the solution by accident, or after several failed attempts.

Mine was when I was playing CMI, and I solved the puzzle with the family portrait. I was rather proud that I came up with such a creative, zany solution that happened to be the right one.

What are yours?

[PariahKing]

Nothing comes to mind as particularly memorable, but I just played through Sam and Max Hit the Road for the first time in about 15 years. I was rather happy to figure out the puzzle with the dinosaur using the string of twine.

[Novotnus]

Feeble Files - a puzzle with a prison guardian. You have to "pick up" TV swith and "walk" into a closet.

[Mataku]

The first time I've played CoMI, I used the glove on van helgan (sp?), and he said "choose your weapon". So just as a joke I thought to try to close the case and take the banjo, and it worked. Then, again, when he started going crazy, I just knew to take the gun and shoot the banjo. FIRST TIME PLAYING. That was awesome. I actually never tried to choose the gun until years,years later.

[Astro Gnocci]

shooting the banjo was pretty obivous for me as well, i didn't think of closing the pistol case before a while tho.

[Awesome5]

My most embarassing moment was when I was playing Strongbadia the free and was stuck on the game show wheel puzzle. I didn't realize at first that you could actually place the rock on top of other objects on the wheel. I just kept placing the rock into the empty space at different positions hoping for something to change.

[nikasaur]

When I was 8, I played through Leisure Suit Larry and the Attack of the Lounge Lizards (or... something) (which was wildly inappropriate for my age level by the way). My sister and I had a heck of a time getting through the "age restriction" when it asked questions like "Which of these people is not a Beatle?" and we're like "Seriously, 'Ringo' has to be a joke."
Ok, so that in itself was kind of a proud moment, every time we were diligent enough to get into the game.
There was a saved game that we'd log into occasionally and they had access to this Disco club which, on our original game, we did NOT have, so we were deadlocked for plot. This was very frustrating. At one point of aimless wandering, I typed out "Put face in ash tray" just to be silly. Lo an behold, a message pops up, "You have already found the Disco pass."
WHAT?
We jump into the other game, head to that ash tray and bam, we snag the pass.

Childlike ingenuity just from putting your face in a trash bin. My finest moment.

[Astro Gnocci]

This reminds me of MI2. I'm not really "proud" of this but oh well.

I had found the largo's ancestor grave on Scabb island and knew i needed to open it, so i went looking for a shovel or something to dig it up.

I spent about three month trying to figure out what i had to do. I even stopped playing the game out of frustration, i'd just launch it now and then and do a little bit of "let's just click everywhere vaguely hoping something will happen" for a few minutes, then got pissed again and shut it down.

Until for some reason i decided to read the manual. I was bored and i thought lucasart's manuals were often funny, but i hadn't bothered reading that one yet.
And there, i saw a screenshot with a shovel in the inventory. There was even NOTHING but a shovel.
I started reading, and, as they were explaining the basics of the game, they were telling you to "pick up the panel"... IN THE VERY FIRST SCREEN OF THE GAME
I had seen this "treasure huntery forbidden" or something pannel over a thousand times, and had always assumed the damn thing was just a drawing

So yeah, i felt more dumb than proud really, but god, this was quite a relief (luckily my three months struggle was rewarded with one of the game's funniest cutscenes )

[quickfics]

Two words: Babel Fish

And, no, I didn't use the InvisiClues. I don't think I even had one for HHGTTG.

[Leonilla]

When Curse of Monkey Island came out, my family would gather around a computer in the evenings and we would all play it together, screaming out commands to whoever was running the mouse. We played through on normal mode and then went back to do it again on "Mega-Monkey" challenge mode. We finally got to the puzzle where you have to get into the locked Goodsoup hotel room and got stuck. We worked on it for days, then finally gave up. A few months later I went back to try it again and figured out the solution in ten minutes. I still rub it in my family's faces.

[Lennie Melvin]

We (my brother and I) got stuck trying to get a piece of clothing from Largo in Revenge for literally years. My brother was sick off school one day and spent the whole day playing it and put the bucket of mud on the back of the door. He was really excited because we'd tried everything and been stuck so long.

Anyhoo.

[tbm1986]

There were a few proud little moments pour moi:


SMI
I started playing this game when I was four, so I missed a lot of the humour. In particular, the insults in the swordfights. It was parrot fashion with the ordinary pirates but the Swordmaster - trial and error does not occur to a four year-old! I got my dad to beat her but when I reached the age of nine, I understood which comebacks made sense (well, some of them, anyway). To see her move backwards was great.

Leisure Suit Larry and the Lounge Lizards
I was 5yo when I found this and managed to guess my way through the intro questions. Again, the humour was well over my head. I was quite chuffed when I loaded someone's game (in the hooker's bedroom) and used the rope and hammer to get the pills on the window sill of next door. Something inside me told me I should give them to the guard next to the penthouse suite. When it came to the hot tub scene, I gave an apple to Eve, it being the most obvious thing (seeing as a guy looking like Adam gave it to me). Ok ok I was 9 when I got this far.

LeChuck's Revenge
For some unknown reason, it didn't occur to me for ages you could use the matches on their own to light up the (explosives) room Guybrush and Wally escaped to. Mind you, the biggest kick I got must have been the spitting to snuff the candle (accidentally/on-purpose hitting Wally a few times first).

Leisure Suit Larry 2
I was 8 when I started playing this game. My older stepsister (then 15) and bf (17) were as baffled as me how to get a passport to board the ship. I was the first to think of looking in Eve's dustbins (seeing as 1) LSL1 had a hammer amongst the rubbish and 2) when a woman chucks a bloke out, bin sacks with clothes and other junk usually follow). They were flabbergasted an 8yo beat them to it! Haha a true adventurer was born.

Curse of Monkey Island

I was quite impressed with myself that I could finish Blood Island the first time I played it without any outside help (aged 12). The Murray thing was so cool!

[SHODANFreeman]

This isn't mine, but when we were kids, my cousins and I were trying to beat Monkey Island at about the same pace, and we all got stuck on the puzzle to get the rope from the hanging corpse for weeks until my cousin, as he puts it, got pissed and tried to blow up the dam which ended up working and we all worshipped him for weeks after that.

[JohanShogun]

I'm not sure it counts but back when I were taking some game development classes we were making a first person adventure game, there was a hacking sequence were someone had to figure out the password for a terminal, the terminal wrote the password in clear text, the hint was "that doesn't look like a password". The password was: ********. I did programming for that game, that joke still cracks me up

[JohanShogun]

oh and as for feeling clever, Broken Sword 1, had the mac version which always crashed when you tried to throw the manuscript out of the window, I felt so stupid when I patched it and it worked when I did that. Really tried _all_ other options

[Feball3001]

My prodest moment was not actually solving a puzzle. I was playing Kings Quest 6 and couldn't get up the wall in one area and was on if for two weeks before I went to the internet to look for walkthroughs which is something I don't like to do. I found out the area I was stuck on was the copy protection which is fair way into the game. I was so happy when I found out it wasn't something I missed. I finished the game a couple of months later with no more help from walkthroughs besides the copy protection thing.

After I had already finished the game I started looking through walkthroughs and found out there where three ways to finish the game. I was really happy when I found out the the way I completed the game was meant to be the hardest.

So my proudest moment is finishing KQ6 the hardest way with no walkthroughs.

[NunoCardoso]

A little off-topic, but turning off the gas on Rapp Scalion's restaurant oven was a puzzle that I remember doing while laughing out loud. Before opening the door, I was like "I bet it's on!"

Pouring grog on each mug was very rewarding for me back in MI1's EGA times...

[Mataku]

Originally Posted by Feball3001

My prodest moment was not actually solving a puzzle. I was playing Kings Quest 6 and couldn't get up the wall in one area and was on if for two weeks before I went to the internet to look for walkthroughs which is something I don't like to do. I found out the area I was stuck on was the copy protection which is fair way into the game. I was so happy when I found out it wasn't something I missed. .

Okay, see, i don't know why people had trouble with this. I mean, if you use the eye icon on the wall, the game tells you exclusively to look through "the guide to the land of the green isles" which is exactly the same name as the little book that came with the game. I passed through the 5 puzzles on the wall and it was one of the most obvious and easiest solutions, because they basically say that the answers are there, just read. And back then i was only 11 years old, and not so great with english.
Come to think of it, maybe that makes it MY proudest moments. Hey, thanx Feball3001

[Illandra Grey]

I think i was about 9, gotten really hung up on how to break into the melee island jail cells, thde answer came to me when i was halfway through a plate of spaghetti, my folks have been sure im nuts ever since