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Most insidious bug in a console game?

A

argon

Member
I'm interested in hearing some of the worst bugs ever to make it past QA.

The worst one I can think of is the Viewtiful Joe 2 demo bug which wiped your memory card. I can't think of anything worse than that... any others?

On the flipside, some major bugs even turned out to add playability. At the time, Zelda: OOT's no-sword trick was like the mother of all glitches.. it seemed to open up even more bugs, like being able to fly outside of the game world with the hookshot, among other things.

Your thoughts..

edit: if possible, please describe the bug, how it occurs, and what it does...
 
The most famous glitch that I can remember was in the original Pokemon games for Gameboy. You had to have an item that you could have more than one of (Pokeball's, vitamins, etc..) in your sixth inventory slot or something like that and then you had to fight Mewtwo.

...I think it went like that.

Anyway, after you did it that item would have like 99 instead of 1 or 5 or whatever you had. Having 99 ultra balls or whatever the strongest one was made it too easy to catch ridiculous monsters.

edit: From gamefaqs -

Duplicate items
To get WELL 99 of an item, put the item you want duplicated in the sixth item slot. Make sure you have the Fly HM, then Fly to Viridian City. Talk to the old man that stopped you in the begining of the game( kind of to the north) When he asks if you are in a hurry, say no and watch him catch a weedle.

Then Fly to Cinnabar Island, and use the SURF HM. Surf along the right COAST, Not in the water, if you surf in the water it won't work.

Now, use SURF until you run into a Pokemon called ''M'', ''Missingno.'', Or a Pokemon over level 100 Once you see one of those, kill it or just simply run away. DON'T CATCH THE M OR MISSINGNO. AS IT WILL RUIN YOUR GAME!!!

When fighting a high level M if you have a slow pokemon and it attacks you are screwed, as it has a VERY high attack, you can beat him by simply using a quick attack.

after you win/run look at your sixth item it should look VERY weird with wird symbols and such, don't worry all it means is you have over 99 once you use it up alot it will stop using symbols and once the supply gets back to 99 it will show up as ''99''

edit 2 - oh, you said console game :lol :lol
 
Flying Cars In Driv3r.... Why?

Because when I saw it I spit out the soda I was drinking and ruined a newly bought pair of jeans

Also Enter the Matrix was one big glitch
 
If gameboy games count (as pokemon was listed above), the Phantasy Star Collection save glitch for PS1 is up there on my list.
 
ntb825 said:
....Now, use SURF until you run into a Pokemon called ''M'', ''Missingno.'', Or a Pokemon over level 100 Once you see one of those, kill it or just simply run away. DON'T CATCH THE M OR MISSINGNO. AS IT WILL RUIN YOUR GAME!!!
Click to expand...

Oh, how I wish I had known this before I caught the bastard. Ruined my week, it did.... :lol
 
Demigod Mac said:
That was Myth 2. bad Bungie, bad!
Click to expand...

Wasn't that the glitch where if you uninstalled the game, it removed essential windows files and basically trashed your installation forcing you to reinstall windows?

If so, definitely worst ever for a PC game
 
yes, Myth 2's uninstaller originally destroyed your OS install.

the virus scanner companies actually added the program (that specific version) as a virus definition.
 
I remember the Myth 2 one, but it didn't effect me. Screwed some things up pretty bad back then though. Morrowind did have some bugs, but Daggerfall I thought was worse. Don't know how many times I feel through the floor, then out of the world all together. You could look up and see it moving away from you.
 
Ash Housewares said:
I caught missingno a bunch of times, I feel so left out of the bug fun, nothing bad ever happened
Click to expand...

What did it look like? Was it that squished, corrupted sprite image...? They should turn it into a real pokemon =)
 
shuri said:
The duplication bug in Final Fantasy 2! My cousin had like 99 masamune or something insane.
Click to expand...

How is that bad? =)

And wasn't that in FFVI? I remember there being a bug (or bugs) having to do with Relm's sketch ability, although sometimes it had really bad results.
 
argon said:
What did it look like? Was it that squished, corrupted sprite image...? They should turn it into a real pokemon =)
Click to expand...

Wasn't there a misingno family of sorts? M, Misingno, and @#$$%$#@@%%%$# (sp?)? So these days they're all considered to be the same thing.....Do I smell a conspiracy?
 
Orin GA said:
Phantasy Star Online:

BSOD
FSOD
Double Save
Click to expand...

nothing like losing all your items and money.


Oh by the way, did anyone ever have the misfortune to own Driv3r? I've seen someone press the button to get out of a car and they appeared on top of it.
 
If I remember correctly, the first release of GT2 for psx had a horrible bug. After you unlocked and beat nearly all of the game, it jacked your save and reset you. It was like they never actually finished testing it, because there was sooo damn much to do.
 
There was a bug in the half life 1 installer that wiped out everything in the directory that the half life 1 directory was in when you uninstalled the game (part of the reason why I hate the game).
 
comeon, no one has mentioned gta3!

What about when youre driving around and out of no where the road becomes clear and you game crashes 30 secs later
 
the only bad bug I remember from games I've played was one on Metroid Prime which randomly froze in areas after... um... the gigantic plant.

took me for ever to pass that because of having to go back to the save point.
 
Suburban Cowboy said:
comeon, no one has mentioned gta3!

What about when youre driving around and out of no where the road becomes clear and you game crashes 30 secs later
Click to expand...

The road has become clear for me quite a few times in LCS as well, but the game hasn't crashed yet.
I also have another aggrevating bug in LCS... I can't complete "Love on the Rocks"
I pull into the garage and nothing happens :( Makes me mad.
 
KotOR - The Carth Glitch

(Infamous cut scene where if you started while invisible no one would talk to you and you were screwed.)
 
I remember a few:

In the godawful Pirates of the Caribbean, it was possible to enrage the French guards in a certain town and then leap off a pier into the water. The guards would follow you and you'd be surrounded by 15 or so Frenchmen, all dog-paddling madly. They'd just surround the hero and not bother to either attack/apprehend him. You had to reset the game -- and it was definitely a bug that happened every time you tried such a stunt.

In the original version of Magic: The Gathering Battlemage, the game would always crash if you left the credits rolling.

Everybody will claim the bugs in KOTOR (the invisibility one) were really bad. If you used a certain character's stealth ability and went cloaked during a mission, the game would make it so you needed to reset -- or outright crashed.
 
Suburban Cowboy said:
comeon, no one has mentioned gta3!

What about when youre driving around and out of no where the road becomes clear and you game crashes 30 secs later
Click to expand...

That occurs because your PS2 suffered from a disc read error, not because of the software. Since the game constantly streams data, if your defective (or weakened) PS2 drive doesn't return the data, well the game has nothing to display. And of course it ends up crashing.
 
The bug on "Space Station Sillicon Valley" on N64 where you couldn't complete the game 100% cause you couldn't get one of the artifacts, great game , too bad for that problem:(.
 
borghe said:
yes, Myth 2's uninstaller originally destroyed your OS install.

the virus scanner companies actually added the program (that specific version) as a virus definition.
Click to expand...
I had no idea about this, it explains so much though... :(
 
GhaleonEB said:
KotOR - The Carth Glitch

(Infamous cut scene where if you started while invisible no one would talk to you and you were screwed.)
Click to expand...
This is the first one I thought of, although some of the other bugs mentioned in this thread are worse.
 
There's a bug in Jet Set Radio Future that if you don't run after a character the first time you're supposed to do it... well he disappears and never comes back... and you can never finish the game, since you need him.
 
When I tried to uninstall Pool of Radiance and it fucked up my boot sector or something.

stupid fucking game, still burns me to this day.

oh wait, this is for consoles.

n/m
 
bitwise said:
When I tried to uninstall Pool of Radiance and it fucked up my boot sector or something.

stupid fucking game, still burns me to this day.

oh wait, this is for consoles.

n/m
Click to expand...

Even though it wasn't a console game, I was just about to post this. Fuck that game.
 
Some bugs I encountered:

Metropolis Street Racer - this game was pretty buggy from the sound to the kudos system (it allowed you to basically play certain (non-race) tracks, and then just do large skids back and forth on the final straight to rack up kudos, and then cross the finish line for an absolutely rdiculous amount, compelteing the level in one foul swoop).

Silicon Valley, with the not being able to get certain trophies, thus disallowing you to finish the game.

Eye Toy kinetic- if I'm correct, if you leave the title screen demo going, it crashes. This is something that should've been EASILY picked up in quality control.
 
Realm' sketch bug in FFVI was the biggie for me. 99 atma weapons - however I was dumb enough to bet one in the colosseum and lost nearly all of them. I was young at the time and had a hissy fit and argued that I was sick and wanted to stay home from school and sulk.
 
Whether you got MissingNo., M, or @#$#@*&^#@, depended on what you named your character and the most recent random encounter field you visited. The glitch came up because the area below Pallet Town has a small field with monsters that overlaped the East Coast of Cinnabar Island, resulting in a small patch of land that was open for random encounters. The trick for duplicating items comes from talking with the Old Man in Viridian City and having him show you a demonstration on how to catch wild pokemon. Since what pokemon you can catch is determined by the area you enter, and the Cinnibar strip does not define a set of pokemon, talking with the Old Man sets a variable, flying staight to the strip and surfing up and down it causes wild pokemon to appear as set by the condition of talking with the old man. This is what causes the glith, but how it grants you 100 additional copies of the item in your sixth item slot escapes me.
 
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