Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.
I try to never be one of those people who talk about how much better things were back in the day… and that’s really easy because everything sucked back in the day. Things are terrible these days, sure, but they were even worse “back in the day.” Any time anyone tries to tell you things were better in the past: they’re full of it.
That includes almost everything about videogames. I occasionally see people going off about how much better gaming used to be, but that seems like a weird stance to take. There are so many games now, so many varieties, so many options, and so many ways to play. It’s not perfect, not by far, but gaming is better than ever.
And before anyone brings up the current discourse about $70 or $80 price tags on games, I can testify that games were crazy expensive back in the day, too. I recently looked up how much FMV game Phantasmagoria cost when I bought it back in 1995, and guess what? It was $70. At some retailers it cost $100! See, game prices always sucked.
But I’m not here to grouse about the price of early adventure games, I’m here to talk about what happened when I got stuck in early adventure games. I devoured point-and-click adventures in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and most of them had one thing in common: at least a few truly terrible puzzles in every one. Horrible logic, nonsensical design, just pure rotten puzzles that would bar your progress like a brick wall. When I got stuck back then, there weren’t any online walkthroughs to Google. There wasn’t even a Google.
To be clear: I am not speaking wistfully of the time before Google and online walkthroughs. Not being able to Google puzzle hints for terrible adventure game puzzles sucked. The internet is the worst, definitely, but not having the internet was more the worst. It was a dark, dark time.
We did have one option, and that was to call a hint line. Sierra On-Line, LucasArts, and Infocom had 1-900 numbers players could call to get hints for specific puzzles—though those calls cost around a dollar per minute. Think times were better before microtransactions? There have always been microtransactions because phones sucked back in the day, too.
I will pause here to allow Infocom fans to mention that before hint lines you had to send a letter to Infocom to get hints by mail. By mail. That wasn’t even a microtransaction: Infocom’s hintbooks cost like eight bucks, plus shipping.
So how, exactly, was this a great moment in PC gaming? Firstly, I was a young adult and wasn’t paying my own phone bill (thanks, Dad), so calling a hint line didn’t actually cost me anything (sorry, Dad). It was also just a cool concept. Calling LucasArts? On the phone? It was downright exciting for someone who loved Sam & Max, Star Wars, and the Monkey Island games. Who knew, maybe George Lucas himself would pick up the phone!
He didn’t. No one picked up the phone. There was just a menu that would give you hints for certain puzzles. Then you could hang up and rush back to the computer and progress a bit further before getting stuck again. I didn’t call hint lines often—I was pretty stubborn and usually willing to bruteforce puzzles using the tried and true method of trying every single inventory item on every single other item, and character, and situation, until I finally broke through.
But I did call a few times, and I might not have gotten through a couple of games without the help those hint lines provided. Eventually, society got around to inventing the internet specifically so we could get help with videogame puzzles, and hint lines were no more. Ironically, the only way to use one now is to play one of those old adventure games. In Monkey Island 2, there’s a scene where Guybrush can call LucasArts for help while wandering around lost in his own game.
