It was really sad in those days when you had to call a hotline and get charged for a long distance call just to get unstuck in a game.  I was playing D&D Pools of Radiance for the Mac in the mid 1990 and was stuck in the last maze right before the last boss.  Because there was a Nintendo version of the game, I called the Nintendo hotline right out of the old Nintendo Power magazine for advice to escape the maze.  But when I told the guy on the other end I was playing the Mac version, he wouldn't give me any tips, using the excuse that the versions might be different and didn't want to misled me.  So we hung up, I called the hotline back, lied that I was playing the NES version, and got to the then of the game. HURRAY FOR NINTENDO POWER!!!!  I wonder if those guys still have a job.

I remember those, the commercials were on all the time.
Tips hotlines...and books of tips. You had to buy books specifically with the game you wanted in them. I still have a few.

I just asked my dad to figure it out when I was stuck XD

Reading cheat codes in magazines and then trying for an hour to get them to work was simultaneously rage-inducing and gloriously satisfying.

My dad inadvertently got me into games.  And he SUCKED at it.

I used the Nintendo power hotline all the time, especially for Ocarina of Time lol.

I kinda remember them back in the day. I was about to call one, but I didn't because I read the small print and saw about some phone charges. So I completed the game, which was Driver.

Called the Nintendo Power hotline over some crappy Milton Bradley title, Time Lord. Didn't help in the slightest.

*sexy woman's voice*
Mmmmmm, what are you plaaayiiing~?
*click*

By 1990 we had a 2400 baud modem and I was calling bulletin board systems to find cheats and walkthroughs. A hotline would have been a lot faster and probably cheaper too. The joy of waiting for a line to free up and collecting all the different decompression programs.