Craziest glitch you've encountered without prior knowledge?

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

I'm wondering if any of you encountered any glitches or bugs in games back in the days before the internet? My favorite game as a kid was FFIII US (FFVI in Japan). I ran into what is known as the Sketch bug and it blew my mind. It basically does wild things with the graphics and the sprite pallette and randomizes your inventory. It can also brick the cartridge if you save a corrupted gamestate but fortunately I didn't experience that.

Edit: Bonus points if you've encountered any particularly scary glitches. (in the spirit of Halloween)

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Yeah... I once stopped the entire game on Backyard Baseball 09 (PS2) after getting the ball to bounce off one of the outfield structures on the farm field.

The outfielders wouldn't get the ball, the baserunners all scored, and the commentary stopped right there and then, but the game just wouldn't resume. It was creepy.

 

[moonbits]

In the original Gears of War (2006), there was a bunch of glitches and exploits in multiplayer. It sort of became the Smash Bros Melee of TPS were you had to do some of these to survive. The huge back flip and the advanced roadie run were among the most hilarious and memorable.

 

[Aziamuth]

When I was a kid I was playing Pokémon Emerald and ran out of batteries while saving. This happened after selecting your Pokémon in the Battle Factory. When I turned it back on, I had lost all of the Pokémon I had on the team (which included my starter and Rayquaza) but in exchange I obtained the ones I chose at the Battle Factory (which I believe were Ludicolo, Milotic and Walrein), at level 100 and with quite competitive sets. I used them to beat Steven eventually.

 

[It's Thinking 2]

Super Mario Bros. 3 on NES (Hammer Bros. on the overworld map got confused and kept marching between spaces nonstop.)

Dexter's Lab: Deesaster Strikes on GBA (disappearing tool in the House level that prevents you from finishing the game)

Zelda: Link's Awakening DX on GBC (screen skipping by accident led me to the inside of the Wind Fish egg)

Pokemon Red and Blue on Game Boy (MissingNo. caused the Hall of Fame to glitch out and it kept going on seemingly forever while glitching out with Pokemon I never used as well as sound effects and music.)

Landstalker on Sega Genesis (I glitched through a locked door by forcing my way through!)

Post automatically merged: Oct 31, 2024

I'm wondering if any of you encountered any glitches or bugs in games back in the days before the internet? My favorite game as a kid was FFIII US (FFVI in Japan). I ran into what is known as the Sketch bug and it blew my mind. It basically does wild things with the graphics and the sprite pallette and randomizes your inventory. It can also brick the cartridge if you save a corrupted gamestate but fortunately I didn't experience that.

Edit: Bonus points if you've encountered any particularly scary glitches. (in the spirit of Halloween)

Scariest glitch i encountered was in the underwater mines from Sonic Adventure 2 playing as Knuckles. I was diving to get the last emerald piece and drowned as soon as i grabbed it and died. The level reloaded with a floating dead knuckles and i couldn't do anything. It was some Sonic exe type of shit.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Oh, yeah... once, in Pokemon Crystal, I had saved on a Pokemon Center in Johto and then turned the game off just like I had done a billion times before.

... Except that, when I came back, my character was standing in Kanto, with a team I didn't recognize and with screwy stats.

I was so taken aback by it that I actually uploaded the save to a forum just to see if people could understand what was happening. The closest we got to an answer was that messing with Iron, Carbs and other items in such a massive scale right before saving had messed up the file.

Quite an unsatisfying answer, but an answer nonetheless.

 

[Adrastia]

In Phantasy Star 4 I went to cake shop in Aiedo. I bought the cake and as I was leaving a dialog window popped up that said "Dorc". Or it might have been "D0rc". I just remember it was dork with a "c". It was on real hardware and a real TV so I couldn't really capture it. I knew taking photos was pointless.

I've heard that the shop itself is buggy. But that's the only bug I encountered there. I'm not sure what the letters mean. I guess it's some string. I tried to repeat it several times but I couldn't.

There's some kind of crash handler in Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition for Genesis. I somehow triggered it by resetting the console. It shows a bunch of code on what I think was part of E. Honda's stage. But the palette was more like Ryu's stage. It's been more than 20 years. But I remember I thought it was actually the E. Honda background with the wrong colors. But it's been so long. The code printed over the image may have made it look confusing.

Anyway, I never saw it documented anywhere. And I was never able to repeat it.

 

[SuperSampleStar]

This one happened recently to me.

I wasn playing Sonic3&K as Hyper Knuckles in Sandoplis Zone Act 2 and there's a section where normally you're supposed to hit a plug on the roof to drop the sand so it spills onto the floor and pile up that it rises to help you get to the higher section. You can do this easily as Knuckles without needing to hit those plugs, but they also break if Knuckles hits a wall as he's gliding (Hyper Knuckles has an earthquake effect when he hits a wall while gliding). The only way to not break the plugs as Hyper Knuckles is to double-tap the jump button when he's hugging the wall (so it tricks the game into thinking you aren't in mid-glide). Unfortunately I goofed and accidentally caused an earthquake midway, but when the plug broke, the entire screen was covered in sand and then at one point the sand stopped rising, but the game acted like I was buried in the sand and couldn't get out until the timer ran out.