10 Impossible Video Game Puzzles That Drove Us Insane

By Robert Zak /

3. Monkey Island 2 - Monkey Wrench

I€™ve already demonstrated how 90s point-and-click adventure puzzles relied on combining various objects that seem to have been picked at random out of a raffle, and Monkey Island 2 is another shining beacon of this terrible tradition. You€™re tasked with retrieving a piece of map from behind a waterfall that runs on a pump. To switch off the waterfall, you need to use a wrench of some sort. After wandering around all the merchants you€™ve encountered in the game to that point, one of whom you'd think would have a spare one knocking about, it turns out that the €˜wrench€™ you need is in fact a hypnotised monkey. Because €˜monkey wrench€™ - get it? Suffice to say, many gamers didn€™t get it. Even when you€™ve figured out this US-centric wordplay (we call them spanners here in Blighty), to get your hands on a monkey you need to stop it playing on a piano by sticking a banana on a metronome€ naturally.