When you hear the word “glitch,” you immediately think of something bad. After all, glitches mean a game’s programming isn’t working as intended, and that’s bad, right? Well, in the case of these eight glitches, an error in a game’s programming ended up becoming a feature in the game. That’s the best kind of glitch.
Enemy Juggling (Devil May Cry)
The Devil May Cry has been a favorite of gamers since it first released in 2001, but many don’t know that one of its main mechanics was spawned from a bug in a completely different game. While Hideki Kamiya was developing Onimusha: Warlords, he discovered a glitch that let you keep enemies in the air by repeatedly hitting them with a sword. When he began work on DMC, he included the glitch as an intentional game mechanic.
Difficulty Curves (Space Invaders)
When Space Invaders was under development, programmer Tomohiro Nishikado had a problem: none of the hardware he could find would run the game. The hardware simply couldn’t move the aliens as fast as he wanted therm to move. However, as you killed off the aliens, the remaining enemies speeded up, finally reaching the speed he intended. The upshot of this was that the game got progressively more difficult. He liked it so much, he kept it in the game, and gamers loved it too. This effect, plus the addition of a high-score mechanic, made Space Invaders wildly popular.
Wall Jumping (Super Mario Bros.)
The wall jumping that we all know and love started out as a glitch. If Mario landed on a wall just right in Super Mario Bros., you could jump off the wall and end up much higher than intended. After the devs saw how popular the glitch was becoming, they embraced it, and began including it in games starting with Super Mario 64. These days, wall jumps are in almost every platformer, and even appear in games from other genres as well.
Combos (Street Fighter II)
Combos are an integral part of pretty much every fighting game, which makes it all the more awesome that they were invented completely by accident. Producer Noritaka Funamizu was checking a bonus stage in Street Fighter II for bugs when he discovered you could cancel an animation for a previous attack by executing another attack. This glitch allowed players to land multiple blows before their opponent could respond. In a decision that would change the genre forever, Funamizu decided that it would be too hard for gamers to master the timing required to execute these “combos,” and left them in the game.
An AI glitch creates a franchise (Grand Theft Auto)
In 1995, DMA Design was working on a new game called Race’n’Chase. The top-down action game would let you complete the game’s mostly vehicle-based missions as a criminal or a cop. The game wasn’t progressing well, and during testing a glitch popped up that turned the police AI into lunatics who would relentlessly pursue the player, crashing into his car if needed. The team found this far more fun, so they redesigned the game to be played only as a criminal, and changed the title to Grand Theft Auto. After a few buyouts and mergers, DMA Design became the far more familiar Rockstar North.
Rocket Jumping (Quake)
Quake was a game that was all about visiting violence upon others before they could visit it upon you, so it would seem counter-intuitive to point a loaded rocket launcher at your feet and fire away, but that’s just what rocket jumpers did. If you jumped just right, the rocket exploding at your feet would propel up into the air (Provided the damage didn’t kill you). This first appeared in Marathon and Rise of the Triad, but it was Quake that truly made it popular.
Skiing (Starsiege: Tribes)
When Starsiege: Tribes first hit the market in 1998, players flocked to its near-perfect mix of vehicle and ground combat. They quickly learned that due to a quirk in the game’s physics, you could rapidly tap the jump button while running down a steep slope to quickly accelerate. When the slope ran out, players would use the jetpack to accelerate up the next hill (and usually into the air), landing on the next downslope and repeating the action. This was dubbed “Skiing,” and it quickly became necessary if you wanted to be competitive. Some players went so far as to write scripts to automate the jump command. Developer Dynamix took note of this, and instead of patching it out, embraced the idea as a way to set Tribes apart, making skiing a part of the game in every subsequent release.
The Spy (Team Fortress 2)
Team Fortress began as a 1996 mod for Quake. A recurring bug in the mod made a player’s name show up in the color of the opposing team, making them appear to be a member of the other team. That may seem like a minor glitch, but it was a huge one for the future of the game, as it inspired them to create a new class. This class would be based on disguise and deception, impersonating members of the other team and then taking them out. When the game re-launched in 1997 as QuakeWorld Team Fortress, the Spy was a part of the roster, and has stayed in the game ever since.
Published: Sep 25, 2015 07:00 pm