Remember those days? There was nothing you could do, except perhaps asking some friend that happened to play the same game. Sometimes you could be stuck for weeks.

The first place I got stuck : 5/6th level of Dune 2 (whichever level you could for the first time upgrade a turret)

but the most memorable by far : Tomb Raider 2, in three places :
1.) The damned Opera House
http://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/Opera_House
I think that I overlooked a vent that I could crawl into
2.) 40 Fathoms
http://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/40_Fathoms
I couldn't switch off all of the burners on the way to the exit so I just ran through and used medipaks until I
reached the exit :P
3.) The Wreck of the Maria Doria
http://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/Wreck_of_the_Maria_Doria
Took me weeks to notice a ledge I had overlooked in the massive level. It was also the first level I played with
my pentium 200 and could witness 640x480 running smoothly (drool)

Anyone else had similar hold-ups in a game that lasted weeks? I wonder sometimes whether my tr2 experience would've been significantly less memorable if I had used a walkthrough :P

Tomb Raider 2 for few months. Venice level, trying to get to the closing door while on a speedboat. During all those months I was trying to complete that sequence and failing constantly...

After those few months a friend told me that a speedboat has nitro (Shift key or sth like that)... Facepalm of the year!

Now? Broken Sword 4 since last September I guess. And trying to move on!

Borrowed Time. Simply couldn't get that broken glass to cut that rope. Was it even what I was supposed to do ?

Oh yes, those were the days. I'd get stuck in a game and try for hours and hours to progress. Sometimes it took months to make any progress.

One such game: Ultima V

A great game, I love it to bits, but there is a part that stopped me for months. There's a hidden tower in the mountains and there's a demon there that asks you a riddle, so that you may pass. Well, I never seemed to get the riddle right, the demon always attacked.

However, that was just the game being douchy, it turns out that even when I pick the right answer the demon still attacks. There is a minor difference in the demon's response, so I didn't notice that I was actually answering correctly.

The only way to progress was just to fight the demon, but I though I had to find the "answer" to the riddle, so I was stuck there for months.

The worst thing about getting stuck was that HD space was so limited that you sometimes could have only 1-3 games installed at a time and if you got stuck in all of them, that sure was annoying.
I got stuck in way too many games to mention, at least once or multiple times in most adventure games, that's for sure.

OMG yes. My roommates and I got stuck for months - literally months - well, literally month, anyway - in King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella. The bit where she's in the whale's mouth? There was like one pixel you had to stand on to tickle the uvula with a feather to make the whale sneeze, and if you weren't in the perfect place, nothing happened. And since you were standing on a whale's tongue, half the time you tried to experiment with where to stand you slipped off. Grrr.

I was not the one who ultimately made it work, as I recall; I think it was the roommate. We spent an absurd amount of time on that.

Myst.

I remember the game came with a hints page, that I promptly tucked away without looking. When I was close to finishing the game, I got stuck on some part that i don't remember much of now and ended up taking a peek at the cheat sheet.

It had three hints... for the very beginning of the game.

I didn't have any friends playing the game, hell, I don't think i had friends who had heard of Myst.

I solved it by roaming around, looking at every nook and cranny until my cursor turned into a pointing hand (which is what happened whenever you hovered over something clickable). There was a stair hallway, where halfways down it had a tiny red dot at the bottom of a wall that you could click on because it was a button to enter some room. Or something. I don't remember!

Nowadays, it's surprisingly easy how I check for a walkthrough as soon as I get stuck and start to get bored or frustrated with the game. It's even more surprising how I quickly uninstall games if they push the frustration level too far. Myst managed to keep me trying, not only because I couldn't cheat, but also because I didn't own any other game to play with at the time.

I remember two games...

The Phantom Menace: The second level, near the end. You're supposed to move a box and then jump onto a rope to move across the cliff. But I didn't know you could use the rope... spend a few days trying to figure it out.

GTA III: There's a Taxi mission, basically one NPC takes a taxi home after work and you're supposed to "follow him"... or at least that's what the mission says. You were supposed to place your own taxi closer than the excising taxi he takes, so he'd jump into your car. My cousin and I tried everything - killed the dude, blew up the other taxi (that scared him), followed the taxi and whatever. The mission always failed! The way we figured it out was an accident too, I approached him with a broken taxi and it said like "He refuses to travel in a damaged vehicle" or something... after that we figured it out.

Return of the King cringes in my head too... It was painfully hard to complete that damn game!

I still use walkthroughs for Tomb Raider and I've played them all a few hundred times.

I also need them for Empire Earth and even the occasional AoE scenario.

I have two I recall very clearly - the first was in Mystic Quest, it was the simplest "puzzle" ever - except that the game had never introduced anything similar. It amounted to pushing blocks around and then jumping from a ledge to a block to another ledge. I'd push these things all over the place for AGES without ever having a clue I could jump on the them ;) Idiot!

The other wasn't a particular moment, but game. I can't remember if it was Dark Forces 2 or the first Jedi Knight game but the levels were MASSIVE. I'd get so lost in them. Just open spaces, but maybe a button somewhere that opened a door "over there." Now that I think of it, it must have been Jedi Knight because I never played Jedi Knight 2 - I LOVED the saber play, the force powers and the ability to be a Jedi (for one of the first times on a screen mind you! What an OMGZZZZZ moment when that game was first announced!) but some of those levels were just exercises in frustration for me to navigate.

Final Fantasy VI.

Loved the game to bits and did most things my first playthrough. Replayed it a few years later and everything went hunky dory until the second half of the game. I couldn't find Shadow anywhere no matter how hard I looked. I remembered getting him my first playthrough and he was in the manual showing him in the WoR. Tore the game apart looking for him until I found out a few years later how he becomes missable if you do not do something earlier in the game :(

Man, I think Tomb Raider ruined my life.
I was very young, maybe something like 8 or 9 years old, and my mother LIKED those games.
I was forced to play them, but I always get stucked. It was a nightmare.
I can't complete even one game by myself, but one years ago I bought the full collectin and I completed TR1,2 and 5, using guides XD
It was a challenge :D

That needs to be rectified asap! :)
perhaps the best jedi game out there for lightsaber combat (granted I haven't played force unleashed) I remember that sequence incredibly well !

Right of the bat you had to drive the boat up a ramp and crash through windows to reach the canal on the other side of a building, proceeded by navigating a very narrow canal between two buildings...good times :D

That blasted awful console in Sanitarium.

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, I got to a certain point and basically had no clue what to do.

Same thing with many of the King's Quest games.

On Space Quest 6 there is an elimination type puzzle game (the datacorder) connected to the user booklet that wracked my 13 year old brain back in 1996.

On a side note: I actually racked up a $50 phone bill to the Sierra Hintline back in 1993 while playing The Adventures of Willy Beamish - THATS NOT SOMETHING I'M PROUD OF!