12 Memorable Video Game Bugs and Glitches

We all experience them. In the midst of playing your game would freeze, restart or simply lock the whole system, wasting your hours of hard work. Also, some bugs and glitches did more than just freeze/lock/restart your game. They could erase saved files, ruin other games and programs, and even damage the hardware. Other bugs however, will simply make you laugh at loud.
This is the list of 6 video game glitches we hated and 6 we loved.

We Hated


1. Endless loop of death in Jet Set Willy

As originally released, Jet Set Willy game could not be completed due to several bugs. The well known bug was endless loop of death. For example, if Willy falls too far on the screen he loses life. If his fall causes him to enter another screen before dying, then Willy will be sent back to where he entered the screen. That basically means that Willy begins another fall, dies, and is sent back again to die repeatedly with no possible escape until his lives run out. This was really nasty bug because back in 1984 when the game was released, you had to start game all over again from the very beginning.
Another infamous bug in JSW was so called Attic bug. When Willy enters room called Attic the whole game becomes corrupted, causing death of all monsters, but also instant death to Willy in certain rooms. Developers however described this glitch as a feature of the game, i.e. instant-kill rooms were filled with poisonous gas?!
Obviously bug testing wasn’t priority in the early days of gaming.


2. Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

Predecessor to more successful Morrowind and Oblivion games was often called ‘Buggerfall’ because of massive amounts of bugs that made the game almost unplayable. There was a bug evident in the release version of the game which prevented the player from finishing the main questline. Majority of bugs were fixed in patches, but some of them like save corruption still exist. It’s a shame considering that infamous Daggerfall has the largest game world to date containing 161,600 square kilometers of land and over 15,000 towns, cities and villages that could be explored. Fortunately, the sequels saved the ES franchise.


3. Assassin’s Creed on PS3

Assassin’s Creed was long awaited game from UbiSoft released in 2007. Unfortunately for PS3 owners, this game became bottomless well of frustration. It was full of bugs, such as occasional or sometimes constant freezes and crashes of the game. For example, while jumping from a building, Altair would freeze in mid-jump. Owners of Xbox 360 apparently had the similar problem, but the bug was more severe on PS3 consoles. Shortly after the bug reports from players, Ubisoft announced a patch, but apparently it didn’t fix much.





4. Viewtiful Joe 2 demo on PS2

Kids who played this demo on Holiday 2004 probably remember how it deleted their memory card content. Sony later said that the game was still playable, but gamers had to remove their memory cards first in order to keep their files. But I’m sure that no one of those who lost their files would ever put this rushed game demo in their PS3 again.



5. Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

While PoR was decent and popular game on older systems such as C64 or Amiga, its sequel from 2001: Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor (from Ubisoft – again?!) made many players who tried to uninstall it from the system miserable. Why? Well, uninstalling the unpatched game could wipe the user's system files. This bug was apparently fixed with a 1.1 patch that should be installed prior to complete game uninstallation, but the game already had bad reputation and the patch didn’t help.






6. StarForce DRM

Apparently, anti-piracy fighters didn’t learn much from the Sony DRM debacle of 2005. StarForce Technologies went one step further. Their copy protection system on a several games included a driver that was running at the highest level of access on the system, regardless of whether the game runs, keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity such as attempting to copy a protected disc. Now the best part: if something suspicious has been detected, this protection system would force the PC to make an immediate reboot, regardless of any other applications running and whether or not the user has any unsaved work.
Uninstalling the infected game wasn’t helpful, because StarForce would stay behind on the system, leaving users open to malware and hacker attacks.

Here is the group that calls for boycott of all games that include StarForce DRM protection:

http://groups.google.com/group/boycott-starforce/web/games-list



We Loved


1. Crysis - Stuck in the middle

This was hilarious graphic glitch where the character would stick in the sign continuing to obey the laws of physics. This little video reveals how.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQY6v-eOchU 


2. The Sims 2 - Spraying water glitch

It looks like your Sim got a diarrhea? Another graphics glitch where the characters spray water from their… well, backs.
Fix for this issue is simple: Press Ctrl-Shift-C and type moveObjects on, pressing Enter. Go into Buy mode and delete your Sim. Save and reload, and your character would be standing by the mailbox, and shouldn't be spraying water anymore. Press Ctrl-Shift-C and type moveObjects off, pressing enter to turn the cheat off.

How it looks like:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgC1TFHfYd0 


3. Super Mario Bros. - Minus World Glitch

I’m not sure (as well as many other players) if this is a glitch or bonus world. In World 1-2 in SMB, by jumping through the warp pipe at the end of the level, you can reach a secret, infinitely looping underwater level. The only problem with it is – there’s no escape.

How to get there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH9E9thKp3w





4. Guile’s Glitches from Street Fighter 2

Whoever played Street Fighter 2, remembers Guile and his tricks, such as freezing, handcuffs or resetting the machine. These glitches were causing a frustration simple because some of the players couldn’t reproduce it correctly.
Fortunately, here’s the list what you should do in order to make Guile do the magic stuff for you.

http://old.jasongordon.com/static/sf2/guile.html



5. Donkey Kong Country ‘Porn’

Great SNES platform had really strange glitch (maybe developers had some great time) where your Rhino suddenly becomes another monkey, and your monkey on top starts performing strange moves, with horny grin on his face.

Check for yourself:

http://www.idkwtf.com/videos/latest-videos/donkey-kong-country-glitch


6. GoldenEye 007 - Dancing glitch

Whoever discovered this glitch probably tried to pull out the cartridge while the gameplay was still active. The result was one of the most famous glitches and popular Internet memes: James Bond seizure dance.

Hilarious compilation of moves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDJ7woeAQeI


This was the list. If you have your own glitches and bugs that you hated/loved, please share them with us in comments.