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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

I remember getting stuck inside a building in Driver 2, that was wierd, but I couldn't get out agan so it kinda sucked.

Your idea is really cool except for having to buy AR hardware - thats kinda like forcing you to spend more money to get the most out of your games, andif I did get one for the glitches I would probably be tempted to ruin my other games by using it on them.

Thanks for the replys guys, glitches sure can be fun fun can't they.

Just wondering but as anyone here messed around with the Beta test for Zelda Ocarina of time? I know it's not a proper glitch but it requires a card to do all those wacky things which is similar to what I was talking about. Anyone done this? Was it good at all?

Meka Dragon wrote:
> 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 Conkers Bad Fur Day, playing as a Raptor in the multiplayer game, I managed to get blasted through a wall to find myself floating in mid air, bits of the level all around me.

It was funny at first until I realised that there was no way of getting back and those smutty little cavemen were stealing all my eggs!


Otherwise, glitchs are always a laugh. Goldeneye was a great example.
Hands going through doors, guards flying and ending up with half their body through a wall, floating mines...

There was so much to come back to when you'd finished the game.

I had the exact same problem with the disappearing AT-ST. I also spent ages hunting around the level trying to find out what to do next when all I had to do was restart the level from the beginning and made sure I destroyed the darn thing before it went "byebye" again.

In Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast there are 2 glitches which I have found, 1 is annoying and the other is kinda funny.

The first one is on the level Artus Topside (the one with all the AT-ST's, just after escaping the mine). The first time I played this level I helped the prisoners survive by destroying 2 AT-ST's. Then as I was running toward this huge door another AT-ST came out. Luckily there was a gun turret near the start of the level so I ran as fast as I could, without being killed in the process, to the gun turret. When I got to the gun turret I turned around and to my amazment the AT-ST had disappeared!! I thought, hey that was lucky and continued through the level. After disarming and destroying the Ion Cannons I received this strange message (I cannot remember the exact phrase but here goes) saying sorry can't land yet with those AT-ST's still active, 1 shot from them and I could be done for, yada yada (by the way that's yoda's mums name). I searched the level for like 30minutes, maybe longer, but couldn't figure out what to do. It turns out that the AT-ST that disappeared still "existed" and I couldn't get any further in the game until that damn thing was destroyed. I therefore had to reload my game and kill the AT-ST before it disappeared again!!

The second one is on the final level, the penultimate fight with Desann. After fighting him, rather unsuccessfully, I greatly improved (fighting Desann makes you even better with the lightsabre) anyway.........
I was standing beside this pillar and as he threw his light sabre, I used force jump to jump over him, his light sabre hit this pillar and it collapsed on top of Desann!!!! It was a suicide!!! Having checked Jedi Knight 2 forums this isn't the way he is supposed to die. Strange very strange! (not sure if you could really count this as a glitch but I thought I would include it as it is quite strange)

Cheers if you read my jabberwocky

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.

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

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?

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.

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*

:(