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[Sho Nuff]

Back in the late 90s I used to drink a lot with industry dudes in Tokyo, and I'd heard an interesting story about the Capcom game SPAWN: IN THE DEMON'S HAND for the Dreamcast and how it could destroy a retail console.

Remember how the Dreamcast Jump Pack (N64 Rumble Pak equivalent) didn't need any batteries because it pulled power from the controller port? Well, SPAWN was one of the most annoyingly vibration-heavy games out there and rumbled like crazy the entire time you were playing. If four players were playing at once, each with their own Jump Pack, the drastically increased/constant power draw would run the risk of frying the controller bus and rendering all the machine unusable. This sounded too crazy to be true, but it wasn't like I was going to try it. (I think it only applied to the Japanese version of the game, but I'm not certain.)

So GAF... I want to know if there are any other games that can send your console to the great hereafter.

 

[Rich!]

Any game played by people with anger issues

 

[Mista]

The Last of Us destroyed my fat PS3

 

[danmaku]

I don't know if it's true but I read that GTA: SA destroyed a lot of PS2 dvd drives because it read from the disk all the time to stream data and the drives were quite crappy to begin with.

 

[legendaryskitch]

Alright someone needs to make a YouTube video where Spawn kills a dreamcast. That's the craziest yet somewhat believable story I've heard in awhile.

 

[petran79]

I read that Mortal Kombat on the PS1 (UMK3 or Trilogy not sure which), would permanently damage the lens reader. Not sure if valid

 

[BocoDragon]

Mario Party 1 is capable of destroying both your analog stick and your hands.

 

[Altered Juice]

Uncharted 2 and ffxiii(PS3)

 

[Log4Girlz]

Battle toads

 

[Dio]

The Witch and the Hundred Knight had a bug that caused a memory leak which made the CPU go faster and faster and faster until the CPU melted. Luckily, the PS3 will most likely shut down after detecting the overheating before it gets TOO bad, but if that doesn't work, then God help you.

NISA is infamous for introducing game breaking bugs that didn't even exist in the original game in the western localizations.

 

[Sho Nuff]

Alright someone needs to make a YouTube video where Spawn kills a dreamcast. That's the craziest yet somewhat believable story I've heard in awhile.

I'd really like someone to confirm that the amount of vibration was reduced in the US version compared to the JP one!

 

[VendettaRed07]

I'm pretty sure I killed my psone playing monster rancher and swapping discs all the time

 

[Ghandi]

Dark Souls---->Any game played by people with anger issues

Nice edit

Never heard of this in a software-ish way

Hardware wise: Wii sports. Destroys your console together with your TV, Dog, Wife and expensive porcelain dining set

 

[Ratrat]

Uncharted 2 killed my ps3. Both Last of Us and Uncharted 4 caused my consoles to crash, which pretty much never happens with other games I've played.

 

[Anth0ny]

brawl fucked up my launch wii

I think certain wii's had problems reading dual layered dvds. brawl was the only one on wii when it was released, I believe.

 

[Aurongel]

The Last of Us killed my fat launch PS3 by making it run significantly hotter than any game before it. I took great care of it too, cleaning dust from it every year. Still ran the fans at full blast after a thorough dust cleaning and reapplication of thermal paste.

 

[doctorcdcs]

I remember that the game "Wargames" for the PC accidentally shipped with the Marburg Virus on it.

this was before the internet became mainstream, so I only found out in a copy of PC gamer months after the fact. haha

 

[riskVSreward]

My PS1 power cord caught fire when I first played Croc. It was probably unrelated...

 

[flipswitch]

GTAV on my PS3 super slim. The constantly reading off the disc made it sound like a printer. Thank goodness games now run off the hdd.

 

[desmax]

Not really a console game, but I believe the uninstaller for Myth 2: Soulblighter would format the entire hard drive if the game was installed in the root folder, since the uninstaller would attempt to delete the folder the game was installed, instead of the game data that was in said folder.

I also remember my PS3 doing some very loud noises when I played the disc version of Record of Agarest War II. Gladly nothing wrong happened to my console, but that couldn't be good.

 

[NCR Redslayer]

The Last of Us killed my fat launch PS3 by making it run significantly hotter than any game before it. I took great care of it too, cleaning dust from it every year. Still ran the fans at full blast after a thorough dust cleaning and reapplication of thermal paste.

I expect that when running the newest game on the oldest console.

 

[Cranster]

Not really a console game, but I believe the uninstaller for Myth 2: Soulblighter would format the entire hard drive if the game was installed in the root folder, since the uninstaller would attempt to delete the folder the game was installed, instead of the game data that was in said folder.

Yeah, it would basically render your MAC computer useless. It was a costly bug that helped nearly put Bungie out of business until Microsoft bought them.

 

[AGoodODST]

Sunset Overdrive as it crashed and broke the hard drive in my Xbox One.

 

[Crimsonclaw111]

Myth 2 Uninstaller bug:

The Myth II Uninstaller worked by deleting the folder which contained the game files. However, this implementation assumed that the user installed Myth II in the default directory. (i.e. Crogram FilesMyth II). If the user installed Myth II in a different directory, such as the system root C:*, then when the user uninstalled the game, *all the files in the C drive were deleted.** Boom.

 

[MattKeil]

Ninja Gaiden II was the game that finally killed my launch 360.

 

[Neff]

FFXIII melted the GPU of my fat MGS4 BC PS3. RIP.

I remember a fruitless back and forth between Sony and Squaresoft where each party blamed the other for consoles dropping like flies as a result of the game's demanding visuals.

 

[bloodyroarxx]

Myth 2 Uninstaller bug:

Similarly I believe the Pool of Radiance remake fucked with System 32 when you uninstalled it.

 

[Oldest Snake]

Wasn't there a problem with Assassin's Creed Unity on PS4 running the main menu at an unlocked framerate and causing the fans to go into overdrive?

 

[Infernal Monkey]

Playing Uncharted 4 sounded like it was slowly killing my PS4.

 

[MrCunningham]

Going way back, but pirate NES carts like these destroyed NES's over time...

That burning smell that people would complain about in youtube videos that came from these carts were the result of the cart sending an overcharge to the NES10 lockout chip to bypass it. They literally would just zap it with a jolt of electricity to knock the lockout chip out temporarily.

 

[Hasemo]

Myth 2 Uninstaller bug:

Similar to that, PSO2 had a bug where it was deleting other games etc. from your HDD during the patch process.

 

[GeordieMark]

Fable 2 made my 360 sound like it was about to take off and fly out of the window. I always felt like I was flirting with disaster when I played it for more than an hour.

 

[D1AMONDDOGS]

Don't know about destroying the console, but GTA V was completely unplayable on my launch xbox 360. It was crazy.

 

[Tohsaka]

Folklore killed my first PS3. I saved the game before the last boss and turned it off to go out for a bit, and it got the yellow light of death the next time I tried to turn it back on. Fortunately, it was still under warranty.

 

[Morrigan Stark]

Folklore killed my first PS3. I saved the game before the last boss and turned it off to go out for a bit, and it got the yellow light of death the next time I tried to turn it back on.

Sounds like jumping to conclusions to me.

 

[ResidentDante]

Going way back, but pirate NES carts like these destroyed NES's over time...


That burning smell that people would complain about in youtube videos that came from these carts were the result of the cart sending an overcharge to the NES10 lockout chip to bypass it. They literally would just zap it with a jolt of electricity to knock the lockout chip out temporarily.

Holy shit, never heard about this before. Sounds like a potential fire hazard!

 

[EctoPrime]

Jade Cocoon on Ps1 seems to directly control the consoles mjpeg decoder to run a still frame plus animated video file that runs for what seemed to be over an hour in length which made my consoles cd drive lockup. No long term harm but I avoided that npc afterwards. It also has an intro video that runs in 480i or was that 480x360, I cant remember.

 

[JSoup]

I think it was Ratchet & Clank 2, but one of the original games had in the Insomniac Museum a sampling of a water effect they made. It didn't make it into the final game because the hardware physically couldn't handle more than just that one square sample without freaking out. You can turn the animation on and after three or so minutes, my PS2 started heating up and making noises.

 

[Tohsaka]

Sounds like jumping to conclusions to me.

Maybe, the thing that sucked the most though was that I had to start the game all over because they made me send the HDD with the system when I sent it in for repair. I did end up finishing it eventually, at least.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

VR games, especially with motion tracking

 

[predalien27]

I remember that the game "Wargames" for the PC accidentally shipped with the Marburg Virus on it.

this was before the internet became mainstream, so I only found out in a copy of PC gamer months after the fact. haha

Wow. That's insane. Here's something that Google gave me about it: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/wargames-hit-with-marburg-virus/1100-2464581/

TLDR; Register the game electronically, and 3 months later the virus executes. Crazy.

 

[jwhit28]

I have had the disc drive die in my PS1, PS2, and PS3. I think disc streaming is the cause. This is from the story of how Crash Bandicoot came to be.

Andy had given Kelly a rough idea of how we were getting so much detail through the system: spooling. Kelly asked Andy if he understood correctly that any move forward or backward in a level entailed loading in new data, a CD “hit.” Andy proudly stated that indeed it did. Kelly asked how many of these CD hits Andy thought a gamer that finished Crash would have. Andy did some thinking and off the top of his head said “Roughly 120,000.” Kelly became very silent for a moment and then quietly mumbled “the PlayStation CD drive is ‘rated’ for 70,000.”

Just a guess here but I think GTA was responsible for the dead drives that caused a class action lawsuit by PS2 owners. Then a lot of PS3's bit the dust with Last of Us and GTA V. Just a theory.

 

[batfax]

Similar to that, PSO2 had a bug where it was deleting other games etc. from your HDD during the patch process.

Speaking of PSO, I remember way back while playing on the v.1 Dreamcast game online I got one of those typical NOLs or RSODs or whatever and just rolled my eyes, disconnected my VMU and turned off the system. When I turned it back on, none of my controller ports worked and otherwise my Dreamcast still functioned. Wonder if some funky AR code could do that. Always heard rumors that hackers on v.1 could brick your console somehow, but I also heard a million other rumors in those days.

 

[MrCunningham]

Holy shit, never heard about this before. Sounds like a potential fire hazard!

Not all pirated NES games are like this and certainly not modern home brews. Tengen actually took advantage of the US copyright office and managed to get documentation on how to bypass the NES10 chip. This really drove Nintendo insane, as they kept the protocols for NES10 lockout under tight lock and key. But some of the other pirated carts just use brute force to daze the lockout chip with higher volts of electricity.

 

[Nonoriri]

The Last of Us would cause my launch day 20GB PS3 to overheat and force shut off halting my progress around 25% through the game, had to pick it the remastered version to finish it :x

My PS3 is still kicking though! (Whoa it'll be 10 years old soon...)

 

[Green Yoshi]

The Secret of Monkey Island destroyed my Xbox 360. It freezed and then the GPU was done. Luckily Microsoft replaced my console for the second time.

 

[Fredrik]

Every time I start Uncharted 4 I fear that my PS4 will die, the fan go crazy just by watching the title screen. :/

 

[Vex_]

Fallout 3 destroys both 360s and PS3s. I know it generated a LOT OF HEAT on my ps3. One day, I got the yellow light of death.


Perhaps because it was a CPU intensive game?

 

[Premium Quality]

Uncharted 2 killed my old fatty (bc) PS3.

 

[Kumubou]

I managed to physically damage a PSP playing Project Diva 2nd trying to first pass and then perfect The Intense Voice of Hatsune Miku on Extreme in that game. That song is incredibly stupid, as it involves you alternating between two inputs (like X and down) very quickly for extended periods of time... faster than the hardware was intended to take. Or maybe I was mashing too hard. Probably both -- but for what it's worth, in later versions of the game (like F2 on the Vita/PS3 and Project Diva Arcade) they reworked the chart to be less stupid.

I've also seen Dreamcasts get blown out by people playing Marvel vs Capcom 2. The issue here is similar to what someone described with the rumble packs and Spawn. People playing on old Mas sticks (an early custom stick maker who made sticks that were the size of cinderblocks... and weighed about as much) would be prone to getting the purple screen of death (really just the pause screen randomly coming out from the controller ports freaking out). However, what really caused issues was people who played on variants of these sticks that used optical sticks, which required 5 volts of power... but the Dreamcast controller ports only delivered 3.3 volts. So there would a voltage issue and over time the controller I/O board would just fry itself. Although that's more of an issue of people using hacked together solutions and the Dreamcast controller ports being hot garbage (which they absolutely were).