For me it's either Police Quest 1 or Sunset Riders on arcade.

If the latter then it was at this part. For some reason I just couldn't get that joystick plus button combination right. I managed it a couple of times, but usually I would just be stuck there.

If the former, then at the first crime scene you have to do gather enough evidence before you could leave. Being a wee lad I couldn't figure it out without a walkthrough, which I did eventually got somewhere.

I grew up in a time where "being stuck" was the status quo for video games.

I can't remember the exact puzzle but I know Space Quest 3 stumped me to the point I quit playing, and I was way too young to know the ways to discover the solution outside the game.

For a specific puzzle, I know I was another victim of the "monkey wrench" puzzle in Monkey Island 2.

For other genres, I know in Star Wars: Rebel Assault I could not get past the very first flying section. I just kept hitting walls over and over in the canyon and eventually gave up. I'm not sure what control method I was using, too long ago to remember, but again I was very young.

Something more recent... I turned the difficulty down in Pathfinder: Kingmaker recently because I kept dying on the final boss on hard mode. I was really ready to be done playing it by that point, after 150 hours, and was not in the mood for an insane challenge. I tried normal and still died and then just put it on story mode and blasted through it. No f**ks were given.

Ah, the stubborn goat in Broken Sword...

And played an old adventure game without keys and get stuck in the puzzle that you need the original keys to pass them.

Hmmm... I want to say 14 or so, Text adventure games on the Atari800.

I remember you could hold your breath and go down this shaft (after opening it) but within 4-5 turns you'd die, and never really had enough information...

Although then there's Krusty Clown's SNES game we rented and had no clue what we were doing...

Pinball game on the Atari800 where the ball gets stuck and you get infinite points of it hitting this one widget....

Or the arcade game(s) where you feed it a quarter and die 30 seconds later because you have no clue what you're doing... Be it Altered Beast, RoboCop or some other game....

Then there was the puzzle game Resmsus or something... stick around in any room too long and something comes and kills you...

Jumpman... something like 100 levels each a little different and could only get to like level 30 for the longest time...

I had a game called "Mayhem" on the Commodore 116 - and ironically the only "legal" game I owned, I had no clue what I was supposed to do.

Later I got stuck in Maniac Mansion on the C64. Yeah... and my wife with almost no game experience solved this on second try. I could only stare in disbelief.

What defines being "really stuck"?
I was stuck right at the beginning of Fate of Atlantis where I didn't know how to get Sophia off the stage. But then I made a deal with my sister, and she told me how to do it.

I was stuck for several years (until the advent of the internet and walkthroughs) in that bit in Monkey Island 1 where you had to give previously completely useless brochures to the cannibals.

I've been stuck in Prince of Persia (the original game) for many decades now, the level cheat code my sister provided in childhood being a red herring.

The original King's Quest - trying to guess the gnome's name.

//spoilers//

A gnome asks you to guess his name. Various clues point to him being Rumpelstiltskin. If you give that answer, he says you're close but that's not it. He then suggests you think backwards. Spelling Rumpelstiltskin backwards also doesn't work. You had to use a cipher where you wrote out the alphabet, then underneath wrote the alphabet backwards - then look up each letter to see what it's backwards letter was (R = I, U = F, etc.) I was quite young and impatient at that time, and the Internet wasn't a thing yet, so I quickly gave up in frustration at that point.

Apparently I wasn't the only one to get stuck here -- later re-releases of the game did allow simply spelling Rumpelstiltskin backwards as an acceptable answer.

Defines? Whatever seems aptly described as such from your recollection ;)

By the way, how are you stuck in Prince of Persia? I remember I relied on the level skip cheat to finish the game as a kid, and it wasn't until like 5 years ago or something that I actually managed to beat it properly for the first time. I'm still stuck on the first Space Quest :P Speaking of which, I should give that another go

I do remember Sonic the hedgehog 3 on sega mega drive with the carnival level where one of those spinning platforms required you to press up and down at the right time to proceed further. Had to ask my cousin how to continue there and he told me.

Star Wars NES, published by JVC. With the amount of time I had to play any given day while school, I could barely get to the Death Star. Later in Summer with more free time I finally got to the space combat.

As for stuck on puzzles, the bee-bush on Broken Sword 2. Took me and my brother forever to figure we needed to drop 2 breads in a row.

Yeah, i spent a lot of chances, even with a guide.

And i remember in Full Throtle, am i thr only one who tried to enter in the car cementery by the door instead to climb the chain?

There's a part in Full Throttle where you have to stand in a particular dark area so a security bot leaves, or something like that, which I remember being stuck on forever. Eventually I used a guide.

Space Quest 4, during the Space Quest XII segment. I just couldn't figure out what to do with the damn Energizer bunny or the face melting Zombie.

But to be fair I was 7 or 8and only played it at my friend's house because we didn't have an IBM computer.

Like Fonzer:

Sonic 3

I hated that stupid rotating barrel.

However, I didn't have anyone to tell me how to get past it.