Oldest game you haven't finished yet?
 

I installed Keepsake over 4 years ago on my old pc with XP, and reinstalled it last year on the new pc with windows 7, having kept all my save games. At this rate, it might see windows 8 too :P

I got stuck on a puzzle about 2 or 3 years ago and refused to have a walkthrough solve it for me, so I left the game. Tried it again last night for the first time since then, still couldn't do the puzzle, and ... surrendered, using the walkthrough, lol. It was the puzzle where you have to swap tiles with mages and knights to get the dragon to it's lair/cavern at the bottom left corner, if anyone remembers that one. Bloody difficult! It's still a beautiful and atmospheric game, and I'm going to push on and see if I can't solve any more of these fiendish puzzles.

What games from way back have you not finished yet for whatever reason, and feel like revisiting or have started to revisit?

Manic Mansion. Got to the very end, then didn't know that I had to put the meteor in the Ford Edsel (I looked up walkthrough after I had deleted my save games, and never played it through since!).

Well technically it's not that old because I have the re-released version, but Sam & Max: Hit The Road is probably the oldest adventure I haven't finished, if we're going by release date.

That reminds me, I still haven't finished The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. I need to get onto that.

I never finished the first Journeyman Project game, Pegasus Prime. I had to uninstall it when we were playing musical computers around here, and I never reinstalled it. I also never finished The Space Bar. I ran out of time and died before I could solve the final puzzles in the bar. Since I overwrote some key saves, I would have had to start again from the beginning to make a difference. Both games I plan to get back to one of these days.

Lighthouse. I remember some underwater maze with pain in the arse controls or something. every time I noticed it on my shelf I promised myself I'd get round to reinstalling and finishing it... one day

Schizm back in 2003 The first game I bought after finishing BS 1-3, my first AGs. Definitely the one I have my deepest regrets about. I know it's a good game, it got good reviews and a lot of people seem to like it but I just can't solve any of the puzzles in all 4 tries I've never got off the first two location(that would be the islands and the floating thingies) having eventually consulted a walkthrough I soon figured out why. It's all math! And if anything I suck at it's math! So after 4 tries I gave up and it's sitting on my shelf ever since unfinished. :\

Games I've started and put on hold for the longest time include the Uru expansion packs, The Dagger of Amon-Ra and The Last Express... it's been almost two years since I last played them!

When I was playing TLE, I was really obsessed with trying different things, exploring different compartments at different times, trying to hear different conversations... I must have reset the clock a few hundred times! :D During the Munich-Vienna leg, I ran into some annoying technical problems with my Win98 PC, which meant putting Dagger of Amon-Ra and TLE on hold. I finally got the problems fixed, but sadly, all momentum was lost with TLE. Finally finishing all of my games on hold was supposed to be one of my adventure gaming resolutions for 2010! :o

Not limited to adventure games:

King's Quest 5 and up.
Experience 112
Obscure 2

That's just off the top of my head. I think there are more.

For me it is Woodruff and the Schnibble. I have barely started it and find it hard to make myself play it. I know I shouldn't waste my time on a game that I really don't want to play, but I've had this game since it first came out and I am determined to play it through. After some other games...

The only adventure game I've actually tried to get through, but couldn't, was an old text adventure game on my C64. I'd love to give it a go again now that my vocabulary has improved, but I can't remember the name of the game, or much about it. All I remember is some sci-fi themes and an L-shaped room that I was stuck figuring out. I got it for free on a tape that came with a magzine around '91 or '92 so I'm guessing it was made in the 80s... but most C64 games were made in the 80s so that doesn't say much :p

Other than that, I've only stopped playing adventure games because I didn't like them enough to keep playing, or because of technical issues.

I rarely leave a game unfinished unless I really don't like it. Most of the classics I enjoyed in the past as a kid I did wind up finishing much later. Of course being a kid and not really having the internet for help made it harder to beat those games. I can think of a few: probably Zak McKracken and some Sierra games (King's Quest III in particular) I still haven't beaten because they can be difficult even with a walkthrough on hand. Especially the Sierra games, like the early Space Quests are more stressful than they are fun, so I haven't really bothered to try to complete them.

In more recent times: I never finished NiBiRu. I just didn't like it at all and by the end puzzle I was completely fed up and just stopped there. I didn't really care to know what happened at the end. I disliked it that much.

I also got a little way into The Experiment, but stopped playing due to the horrendous control scheme. It was more trouble than it was worth, and I just never went back to it even though I intended to at one point. Shame really because I was very interested in the story.

oh I remembered an even older game I never finished. way back in the Amiga days there was Valhalla: Lord of Infinity. I kept getting stuck because some of the dialogue was difficult to hear and there were no subtitles. I'm tempted to buy the re-released version on PC

King's Quest 3, 4
Beneath a Steel Sky
The 7th Guest

Police Quest 3
All the King's/Space Quests
The Dig
Monkey Island 2-...

About half the Infocom catalog

Riven. It was simply too big and I got sick of changing CDs all the time when moving between the islands.

Thinking of replaying it now.

I never finished Starship Titanic. Even with a walk-through I couldn't finish it. I've tried a few times years later, but no luck. And now I can't get it working anymore. I'm still a bit disappointed that the game didn't turn out what I thought it would be.
There are more I haven't finished, mostly because I they didn't interest me enough, like BS 2 and Paradise.

Sacrilege! :P Well, particularly BS2.

Try to snag the dvd version on ebay.

Riven is a very difficult game, but it's so beautiful and artistic. One of the best, in my opinion. Well worth the frustration and guilt of resorting to a walkthrough! ;)

I have no mouth and I must scream

Flight of the Amazon Queen

Nah, BS2 isn´t that good, especially when compared with the first one ;)

on topic:

The Dig
Got stuck, even with a walkthrough ... fourteen years ago :crazy:
I have no interest whatsoever in completing it.

I think the only adventure game that I didn't actually finish was Riddle of the Sphinx. I thought it was a decent game, but I remember thinking that I had to be getting near the end, and this absolutely seemingly huge and daunting area opened up. I meant to take a break for a few days, but that break ended up being months, and then I eventually got a newer computer and have never re-installed it. I think I have my original saved game files backed up somewhere, but I think if I do play it again, I'll start from the beginning because its been at least 9 years since I played it.

That reminds me, I never finished "Riddle of Master Lu". And I was all stoked for finding it on eBay and everything.

Never got past the alarmed floor in Gideon's house in TEX MURPHY - OVERSEER
seem to remember that the combination of mouse and keyboard controls frustrated me no end and contrary to UNDER A KILLING MOON I never got myself to attempt again.

Tex Murphy: Overseer as well. I'm inside that... bunker? Under this desert-like-place? You have to watch a video where you see this guy, who'd been murdered, activate some kind of code when these alarms go off. You have to listen to the sounds that play so you can input the code as well.

I tried quite a few times but never got it. After that, I ended up leaving the game for a bit, which has now turned into 'quite a long time'.

Clive Barker's Undying. Good game with a nice mix of action and puzzle solving, good 3D graphics, but I lost my way somewhere in the interconnected mazes filled with skeletons and around a cathedral(?), couldn't remember if I had done that part already or overlooked something. I definitely plan to revisit it, and I have no qualms about using walkthroughs since I decided it's a waste of time, anyway.
Schism: I tried that one too, decided that you had to be a nuclear physicist to solve this (this is a stolen quote), and that it wasn't a good game - it's about fun, not work, or is it?
Sanitarium and Grim Fandango: I've tried a few times to love the latter, but couldn't stand it for more than a few minutes - won't be trying again unless desparate. Will be trying Sanitarium, one of these days.
System Shock 2: This is a game I couldn't find anywhere at the time I was most crazy about it. Played the demo as a teen. Now it makes my weak old heart go thump-thump - too exciting for me. Will recover enough - maybe - at some later stage in life.

Sinking Island (I got borred of walking in the same rooms over and over in the tower, didn't like the inventory, and got bored of the game near the end)...

Loom - played it about ten years ago. Got stuck at the part where you came to a weird town (?) I think... Haven't yet picked up the game again ever since...

Riven and Myst. I got Riven when it came out, and it had Myst in the box. I started them, but got bored and confused quickly. I keep telling myself I will finish them one day. It's been at least 10 years...

Before the PC, I had Murder on the Missisippi (cannot spell that word) on the Commodore 64. I was about 7 or 8 when my brother and I got stuck on it. One day I will finish it. We had trouble choosing which key words to save in our notebooks to show other characters. It'd probably be easier as an adult... At some point a hook would appear that we could use to get a gun. But we had to start again and couldn't get the hook to appear once we got back to that point. We just walked in and out the door a hundred times waiting for it to appear. Now I understand trigger events, and figure we missed doing something or showing someone something...

I still haven't finished Maupiti Island. It must be close to 20 years now. :D Now that there's the Internet, I could find a walkthrough easily --- but what would be the point? What an awful, awful game that was...

I never finished Zack McKracken

I haven't finished sanitarium although I liked it but I didn't have the time

The Space Bar. That's one hard game. Very good, but too difficult. But I've probably ranted about this in every second thread of this forum now. (slight exaggeration)

I tend to be fairly thorough, and usually don't keep games sitting unfinished for very long - even if I don't like them much. I often have the same trouble with books I don't like, putting them away after starting on them. It's annoying to waste time, yes, but even more annoying to leave a story before the end. For some reason.

That may explain why I still haven't played through all game paths in Pandora Directive, even though it's one of my favourite games. Since I've already seen the canonical ending, the alternate versions aren't top priority.

Myst is the only one I can think of, played it when I was like 5 or 6 though, so basically had no idea what was going on xD. Still have never wanted to go back and give it a go either.

Sam & Max. Not my style of game.

Paradise

I've tried this one after I've played Syberia (the series) and Sinking Island. I was craving for more of Sokal design, which is what I've probably liked the most in the mentioned games. However, I just could't get past the first chapter of Paradise. The story and the dialogs mostly turned me down, but it also doesn't have the atmosphere of his other titles (IMHO).

Dark Fall: The Journal

I've tried this game after I've played and was blown away by TLC. However, I was promptly turned down with the graphic and the resolution on my widescreen. But I've read too much ravings about this game and certainly will try to play it on my older laptop which has smaller screen.

Dark Fall: Lights Out

Overall, the game is quite appealing, but it lacks something. The story seems intriguing, but it's not presented too well in the actual game, the atmosphere is certainly there, though it's nowhere as good as in TLC and DFLS. The puzzles are not very inspiring, and the whole thing is maybe a bit too much surreal for my taste.

Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island

I've tried, I've played, I've just didn't like it. The main reason is probably a strong MI series influence that was clouding my judgement.

is tlc the lost crown?

For me, it's Amerzone - bought it probably about 2 years ago - tried playing it twice and just can't seem to figure out what to do after about the first 20 minutes - I don't know, it just seemed so boring - but I never got past the first scene. Now that I am a seasoned adveture gamer and can probably figure it out pretty well - is it worth a 3rd try? I need a new game - that's for sure!

I also bought Dark Fall The Journal a long time ago - I played Lights Out and Lost Souls - enjoyed both of those - but I was new to the genre when I started The Journal and like Amerzone got stuck early and just stopped. I'll take advice again - should I give it another whirl?

Riddle of Master Lu. Bought it in '95, but as a 12-year-old, didn't find it as gripping as some other adventures. Now I just wish I could get it running under Vista!

DOSBox is your friend.