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"Brilliant Glitches"

Yes you heard me right I did say glitches you know those little bug type things that mess with your game and betrove all sorts of weirdness on that little window you’re looking into. Well to put it bluntly they’re brilliant, hence the title. Interesting, but why I hear you say they don’t they defeat the point of the game and make programmers and games testers look bad, yes, maybe so but let me take you back a little, particularly to the early days of the N64.

Remember Mario 64, Mario Kart, Goldeneye to name but a few? Well if you owned any of these games and took enough time out of your life to play through them then you would know that there are little niggles in them known only as glitches. If you were like me and I know you were then once you had completed these games you would go back and seek out and take advantage of these bugs. Remember Mario Kart on Frappe Snowland when you would jump off the bridge onto the snow, drive way off the track and you were put back right in front of the finish line and completed laps in as little as seven seconds! Yes I see you nodding with that smug look on your face you do don’t you and you loved it didn’t you? Exactly, glitches, bugs, graphical errors whatever you decide to call them were so much fun, they added so much to the game, being able to go back through a level and do something which was just plain weird or stupid was never so much fun, the lifespan of these games rocketed into the 100’s, we couldn’t put them down!

Think about it, you all did it, you all tried to at least once jump the wall on Mario Raceway, attempted to complete the Koopa race in 00, 00 seconds in Mario 64 or tried to float across to the second Island on the Dam level in Goldeneye and it was great fun wasn’t it so I say keep these glitches in, lend the ears of a few games developers and tell them to add these shall we say “gaming extras” in intentionally. We obviously don’t want annoying glitches that actually mess up the game, I’m talking little quirks that allow you to do something that shouldn’t be possible and make us feel happy because we pulled it off. Maybe we love it so much because we shouldn’t be allowed to do it, forbidden fruit always was the sweetest.

These got ironed out and became more and more scarce in games released later on which came as a slight disappointment. Just stop and think for a second then and think of all the games that you played and took advantage of these quirks. Thought about it? Now wasn’t those games your favourite ones? If I remember correctly and I know I do Mario 64, Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Zelda and nearly all the others you’ve just thought of all received rave reviews in every magazine, website and tv programme across the globe! Granted it wasn’t because of the glitches but we all remember game guides, websites and countless pages in a magazine all dedicated to these glitches and how to pull them off so we must be having fun doing them right, all these media sources must have published them for a reason and that reason is because we loved them.

I can see that these could cause problems though with discs and it maybe harming the game in some way so we need an solution and I think we already have one. Action Replay carts, remember them? Well they opened up similar sorts of gaming weirdness with the use of codes so maybe developers could make these code only or similar and maybe subliminally hide these codes throughout the game for us to seek out and exploit or maybe without us purchasing more hardware maybe just have an enter code screen, even if they were put there on purpose and we didn’t know they would still be a hell of a lot of fun to find out. I’m not talking changing the colour of your person or turning you into an alien using a code, I’m talking if you lean against a wall in a FPS and jump at the right time you fall through and end up in a previously inaccessible room which is laden with objects and pieces that the developers just put away from sight. See what I mean? Of course the original way is more fun as in without the codes and you simply look up in a magazine or website and perform away because you all did it, there were so many that you still find them in your old games to this day.

If these glitches were put in intentionally but at the same time didn’t effect or harm the game and still remained hidden from our usual gaming play then I think were onto a winner.

So what do you think, make glitches part of the game or do you think they can destroy the fun if used out of the intended context?

What’s your favourite quirk and on what platform?

Your opinions please.

Thanks for reading
Starlight

Yes you heard me right I did say glitches you know those little bug type things that mess with your game and betrove all sorts of weirdness on that little window you’re looking into. Well to put it bluntly they’re brilliant, hence the title. Interesting, but why I hear you say they don’t they defeat the point of the game and make programmers and games testers look bad, yes, maybe so but let me take you back a little, particularly to the early days of the N64.

Remember Mario 64, Mario Kart, Goldeneye to name but a few? Well if you owned any of these games and took enough time out of your life to play through them then you would know that there are little niggles in them known only as glitches. If you were like me and I know you were then once you had completed these games you would go back and seek out and take advantage of these bugs. Remember Mario Kart on Frappe Snowland when you would jump off the bridge onto the snow, drive way off the track and you were put back right in front of the finish line and completed laps in as little as seven seconds! Yes I see you nodding with that smug look on your face you do don’t you and you loved it didn’t you? Exactly, glitches, bugs, graphical errors whatever you decide to call them were so much fun, they added so much to the game, being able to go back through a level and do something which was just plain weird or stupid was never so much fun, the lifespan of these games rocketed into the 100’s, we couldn’t put them down!

Think about it, you all did it, you all tried to at least once jump the wall on Mario Raceway, attempted to complete the Koopa race in 00, 00 seconds in Mario 64 or tried to float across to the second Island on the Dam level in Goldeneye and it was great fun wasn’t it so I say keep these glitches in, lend the ears of a few games developers and tell them to add these shall we say “gaming extras” in intentionally. We obviously don’t want annoying glitches that actually mess up the game, I’m talking little quirks that allow you to do something that shouldn’t be possible and make us feel happy because we pulled it off. Maybe we love it so much because we shouldn’t be allowed to do it, forbidden fruit always was the sweetest.

These got ironed out and became more and more scarce in games released later on which came as a slight disappointment. Just stop and think for a second then and think of all the games that you played and took advantage of these quirks. Thought about it? Now wasn’t those games your favourite ones? If I remember correctly and I know I do Mario 64, Mario Kart, Goldeneye, Zelda and nearly all the others you’ve just thought of all received rave reviews in every magazine, website and tv programme across the globe! Granted it wasn’t because of the glitches but we all remember game guides, websites and countless pages in a magazine all dedicated to these glitches and how to pull them off so we must be having fun doing them right, all these media sources must have published them for a reason and that reason is because we loved them.

I can see that these could cause problems though with discs and it maybe harming the game in some way so we need an solution and I think we already have one. Action Replay carts, remember them? Well they opened up similar sorts of gaming weirdness with the use of codes so maybe developers could make these code only or similar and maybe subliminally hide these codes throughout the game for us to seek out and exploit or maybe without us purchasing more hardware maybe just have an enter code screen, even if they were put there on purpose and we didn’t know they would still be a hell of a lot of fun to find out. I’m not talking changing the colour of your person or turning you into an alien using a code, I’m talking if you lean against a wall in a FPS and jump at the right time you fall through and end up in a previously inaccessible room which is laden with objects and pieces that the developers just put away from sight. See what I mean? Of course the original way is more fun as in without the codes and you simply look up in a magazine or website and perform away because you all did it, there were so many that you still find them in your old games to this day.

If these glitches were put in intentionally but at the same time didn’t effect or harm the game and still remained hidden from our usual gaming play then I think were onto a winner.

So what do you think, make glitches part of the game or do you think they can destroy the fun if used out of the intended context?

What’s your favourite quirk and on what platform?

Your opinions please.

Thanks for reading
Starlight

But the amount of times I've thought that I've discovered a new area in a game, only to get in there, and not get out again is terrible!


On Link's Awakening on the Gameboy, if you pressed either start of select when you were leaving a room, you would appear on the other side of the room you entered. ie, leave via the bottom of the screen, press selcet, or start (can't remember which) and you be at the bottom of the room below. You could use this to get across gaps, and reach places that you weren't supposed to get to until much later in the game.

I never knew that one, but yes I see what you mean how that could be a problem. Then again I bet at first you thought "cool" (or you know something similar) when you first pulled it off.

:0)

That's why I suggested codes really so you can only perform these glitches once you have already completed the level, it would be harder to implement in an advenure game like Zelda as you say but I suppose you should just be careful how you use it.

There's a problem from an implementation side though. The whole point about a glitch is that it's inclusion in the game is accidental. As the software of a modern game tends to be extremely complicated, you ge ta lot of bugs and glitches left in.
Intentionally coding glitches is sheer madness. It's more likely to screw up the whole game than remain as a secret 'easter egg' that a tiny percentage of the game's players will discover.

Unfortunately, for me, glitches are rarely a good thing, and more often than not ruin the sense of immersion that a good game shoulg generate.

Good point.

In that case another solution could maybe be when the game is in it's testing stages, when a tester unearths something particulary bizzare but is good fun then maybe leaving it in so long as it dosn't effect the rest of the game could be an option.

Nothing to obvious though, something suttle that you would only discover on chance not something that annoyingly pops up time and time again.

As for programming them in, some could easily be programmed in. Racing games for instance, anyone remember on Mario Kart 64's Jungle track where if you boosted and jumped into the the right place where the two walls meet near the finish line you would fall through into black water and would be put right in front of the finishing line and complete a stupidly quick lap. Surely something similar could be purposely programmed in?

Still you have to admit doing some of these quirks for yourself is quite satisfying and great fun.

Damn, you did a post about glitches!

I was doing a post about glitches!

Now i cant be bothered doing one.

:(

Nice post though.

:)

*Deletes his glitches post*

:(

Perhaps there could even be a game BASED on glitches, where you had to cause them in order to find the next section. Get through a glitch in a Doom style game and find yourself in another style or area.

Nice post anyway.

On GTA3 you can fly a tank across to the other Island, not sure if its a glitch though because you have to press a sequence of buttons to get some gravity cheat. Also SSX you can do a similar thing to that of what you said about Mario Kart, where you can finish a race in about 15 seconds.

S'all good

I smell a GAD..... or is that my armpits?

Sometimes on Tony Hawks you can get stuck in mid-air and do endless tricks.

That's TonyHawks Glitch was very, very rare though. Of all the hours and hours myself and my firends spent playing it, I only ever saw it happen once.

I didn't know that zelda glitch. Gonna have to go try that out sometime ;)
I did find another cool glitch on Link's awakening, but I can't remember what it was...possibly something to do with chain chomp.