Portugeezer
Member
Later copies of games would be patched, earlier copies would remain with the bug.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Before patches were possible, how did console games deal with bugs?
- Thread starter frogger
- Start date
BomberMouse
Member
Games were simply shipped with bugs.
Some games couldn't even be completed, like that one LOTR GBA game. Games were also simpler, so QA was simpler too.
Some games couldn't even be completed, like that one LOTR GBA game. Games were also simpler, so QA was simpler too.
stan423321
Member
In one case, a game breaking bug was discovered when a cartridge was already in production. What did the company behind it do? Well, they put on a day one patch... in the cartridge, using something similar to a cheat device. Day zero patch? If you can remind me of the game's name, you're welcome.
Then I posit you likely barely used your amiga.
Sonic & Knuckles contains a patch for Sonic 3 when inserted. All information below $200000 is the Sonic & Knuckles ROM, and all information above $200000 is the Sonic 3 ROM. Hence, the execution starts in the Sonic & Knuckles address space, and all pointer references to areas of Sonic 3 are actually contained within Sonic & Knuckles. A number of pointers are changed with Sonic & Knuckles inserted to point to areas of the Sonic & Knuckles ROM rather than their old, pre-patched locations in Sonic 3.
Huge Succeeded
Banned
ftfy lol
TheBanditKing
Member
/Thread
truth is most console games shipped extremely well tested and rarely had any bugs worth worrying about. Back in the day a game bug let you find/do secret things not corrupt your game save or glitch out your whole system. Typically bugs like we have today were a PC only problem, especially for western markets as the versions of games we got were even further tested and fixed after their Japanese release.
Ah very cool. Thanks
AppleBlade
Member
Yes, some bugs did not get fixed but games definitely were not shipping with the amount of serious issues as they have recently. The complexity excuse is complete BS btw. Getting a Genesis to somehow produce Virtua Racer is a feat on par with any ambition in Drive Club. The PS1 era in particular with the embrace of more narrative, mature games had many games that were non-linear and had huge worlds and there was nothing on par with the issues of many of the games this year.
It is the unintended consequence of patches. It's like when a daycare decides to impose a fee on picking your kid up late. It doesn't decrease the late pickups, it actually increases it because the parents are more ok with paying the fee than the shame with no recourse of just being late.
It is the unintended consequence of patches. It's like when a daycare decides to impose a fee on picking your kid up late. It doesn't decrease the late pickups, it actually increases it because the parents are more ok with paying the fee than the shame with no recourse of just being late.
Fox Mulder
Member
the carts would have revisions fixing bugs, but the older ones would still be out there.
bigbaldwolf86
Banned
It was my Dad's and I only ever played a few games. Dizzy, Magic pockets, some fruit machine game and a few others I couldn't name. My gaming really started from the Mega Drive onwards when it was my console but from all tje games I've had including gameboy, game gear etc I've never encountered a game breaking bug on those old games.
CastorTroy
Member
Profit obsessed publishers weren't trying to push out every single game through the door to make the quarter.
Sword Familiar
178% of NeoGAF posters don't understand statistics
For Japanese games, it was more a matter of having the bugs ironed out before releasing the games in the west, and even then some glitches went through the screening. The ones released natively were probably a lot more buggy. On the console side, I experienced it as being considerably less game breaking bugs (freeze bugs and the like) back then though, so that's always something. PC games were considerably worse AFAIR, but the one's I played were usually from the US, where online updates were already prevalent as soon as the internet started becoming mainstream.
Adam Prime
hates soccer, is Mexican
I sense a lot of chronological snobbery in this thread.
RandomSeed
Member
I remember the greatest hits version of Final Fantasy Tactics had to be recalled.
MvmntInGrn
Member
If it was an easily reproducible game-breaking glitch that the average player could run into the game may get a re-release with the glitch patched. If it was fairly difficult to reproduce or only something you could encounter with a very specific setup the average player would not encounter it was left alone. Usually.
Depends on the publisher ultimately I suppose. Metroid Prime has multiple versions that fixed sequence breaking opportunities which is kind of strange since IIRC they aren't glitches/exploits you'd encounter without knowing the right setup.
True game-breaking bugs didn't seem too popular among big releases.
Depends on the publisher ultimately I suppose. Metroid Prime has multiple versions that fixed sequence breaking opportunities which is kind of strange since IIRC they aren't glitches/exploits you'd encounter without knowing the right setup.
True game-breaking bugs didn't seem too popular among big releases.
Doctor_Thomas
Member
So, here's the thing, people tihnk of games being buggy and it's a recent development because of patches, but that's not true. It's a real "rose tinted" view of game development of yester year. Bugs and glitches are an inevitable part of software development and many aren't found until they're out to consumers, but we didn't have the luxury of patching cartridges. If there's a bug that doesn't break the game, it's not getting recalled and the only hope was for it to be fixed in later revisions.
BattleMonkey
Member
Games weren't as rushed and also at the same time simpler. Games have gotten bigger and more complex, involving more people and also being rushed to market.
Games had to work before release, instead of them knowing that any problems they could just patch later. Being able to patch games have made the whole process lazy.
Games had to work before release, instead of them knowing that any problems they could just patch later. Being able to patch games have made the whole process lazy.
a benefit of having a whole lot less to test
IAmRandom31
Banned
Games were just ironed out prior to release. You had the rare game that would release with some kind of noticeable bug but 99.9% of the time the game was perfection and bug free.
It is unfortunate the PC way of development ran into the console space but it is what it is. Atleast I can still play the game while the game patches itself in the background
It is unfortunate the PC way of development ran into the console space but it is what it is. Atleast I can still play the game while the game patches itself in the background
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Games were also a lot less complex than they are now, not even comparable even for single player games... add online multiplayer and you just got a hard problem made a lot harder.
Mufti Nabiyu Erin
Member
People also need to keep in mind that games back in the day were worked on by small teams, and that the sizes of games were almost nothing compared to games being put out now. Compare the credit rolls of Resident Evil 1 (1996) to Resident Evil 6 to see just how much staff numbers have ballooned for video game development. When you have way more moving pieces and way more people working on a project, you're going to get way more bugs than you would if you're dealing with a game that's a fraction of the size and is developed by only 20 or 30 people.
reSpec Gaming
Member
TL;DR: Too many games to make, too little time
The difficulty of game development these days is that it takes longer to make AAA games just by nature of how complicated everything has become (from programming, to design, to U graphics, to everything) but we're releasing AAA games at a faster rate (ie yearly or even faster). So developers are under this pressure to make a game in far too short of a time period than is reasonable. DLC is being developed before a game is finished so there's a concentration on post release content before finishing the original game so that the DLC can be out within a couple months of a game release.
Then there's the issues online presents. Back in the day, I never thought online games would work on consoles for the very reason that multiplayer games need to be constantly patched through the games life cycle and I never thought that was feasible in a console space because consoles games used to have completed polish on Day 1.
So now you get Day 1 patches and seemingly obvious bugs that get by play testing because play testers are probably working out bugs for the 0.8 version of a game and the 1.0 gets released and it has never been, or has barely been, tested because it needed to be released on time for the release date.
The difficulty of game development these days is that it takes longer to make AAA games just by nature of how complicated everything has become (from programming, to design, to U graphics, to everything) but we're releasing AAA games at a faster rate (ie yearly or even faster). So developers are under this pressure to make a game in far too short of a time period than is reasonable. DLC is being developed before a game is finished so there's a concentration on post release content before finishing the original game so that the DLC can be out within a couple months of a game release.
Then there's the issues online presents. Back in the day, I never thought online games would work on consoles for the very reason that multiplayer games need to be constantly patched through the games life cycle and I never thought that was feasible in a console space because consoles games used to have completed polish on Day 1.
So now you get Day 1 patches and seemingly obvious bugs that get by play testing because play testers are probably working out bugs for the 0.8 version of a game and the 1.0 gets released and it has never been, or has barely been, tested because it needed to be released on time for the release date.
The first Final Fantasy and Pokemon Blue/Red are similar in that respect. Lots of moves that do nothing/do the opposite of what they're claimed to do, items that don't actually have the bonuses they're claimed to have... etc.
gioGAF
Member
Much greater effort was placed on the initial release. Some bugs existed, most of them were entertaining or innocuous, at worst a mild nuisance. Nothing on the level of what we are experiencing today. Low budge shovelware had its problems, but then again it was low budge shovelware.
I could always expect quality from certain developers, nowadays I'm not so sure what I'm going to get if I'm dumb enough to buy something on day 1.
I could always expect quality from certain developers, nowadays I'm not so sure what I'm going to get if I'm dumb enough to buy something on day 1.
Doc Holliday
SPOILER: Columbus finds America
Testing a game like dragons age, phantom pain, unity, or gta is far more complex than testing Super Mario world or even sm 64.
Before you could get away with a couple of testers and the team doing it during their free time. Now? QA departments are huge and they still can't get it all because of all the components needed to work together.
-online
-drm
-f2p systems
-complicated graphics shaders
-hundreds maybe thousands of people working on one game over multiple years.
-core gameplay
Honestly I'm surprised anything ships in a playable state. Shit I haven't even brought up PC!
Before you could get away with a couple of testers and the team doing it during their free time. Now? QA departments are huge and they still can't get it all because of all the components needed to work together.
-online
-drm
-f2p systems
-complicated graphics shaders
-hundreds maybe thousands of people working on one game over multiple years.
-core gameplay
Honestly I'm surprised anything ships in a playable state. Shit I haven't even brought up PC!
JinjoUnchained
Member
I long for the days when bugs were fun little extras that made the game more interesting. Like the pause trick to beat bosses in Mega Man 1 and Blaster Master. At least I assume those were bugs and not intentional.
Sonic 2: Gather all the chaos emeralds and beat a level with 50 rings. After you cross the goal, press jump twice to change into super sonic. You will change for a second, mid-air, then quickly change back and start running in air. Since you crossed the goal post, you cannot move, and the clock has stopped.
Congratulations, you have now crashed the game. You can't proceed any further until you hit reset. this was fixed in the second revision.
zerokoolpsx
Member
There is a lot more stuff to test now and only so much time to do them.
Older games would be issued revisions if it was serious enough.
A lot of games released still have them, even triple A ones.
Older games would be issued revisions if it was serious enough.
A lot of games released still have them, even triple A ones.
infinit777
Member
If they couldn't deal with them.... the game died...
R.I.P. Advent Rising...
R.I.P. Advent Rising...
Pegged it to magic evade instead.
Funny thing is FF Vi had a revision to fix a major game breaking glitch but this relatively easy fix went all the way to the GBA port before getting fixed.
Well, tbf making Evade work is actually new work. That has to be tested too. And maybe has to be balanced across the game.
Is there any data available on development time for games now VS. the past? It seems to me that games have grown larger and more complex, dev teams are larger, and costs have grown, but it appears to me that development time is either the same as it always was or perhaps even shorter. If true, why isn't dev time growing with everything else? If it is growing, is it growing in proportion?
Boombloxer
Member
The most severe ones like crashes and progression stoppers are always fixed.
The others, prior to patching? "Start over".
You could build a game in 3-6 months in the 80s, using a team of 3. Games today - the big budget ones - typically have 2 year dev cycles and teams of 30-100.
bro, keep in mind that back then less than 10 people were working on a game. these days its hundreds of people fucking around with the code.
ass creed being the magic game exceeding 1000 people who were involved made me sad.
that one in twilight princess was such a rare bug.
most of the time, vidya mags were calling out to fans to warn about bugs or the other way around: how to make use of that one little bug.
The last "tip" is describing a bug they knew about but couldn't fix. If your velocity is too great in any Sonic game, you can step over a thin wall's collision detection entirely, because the game doesn't do collision based on vector projections.
Their solution is for you to 'reset the game.'
https://atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareID=2516
text dump of JagDoom. From the networking section:
Hey guys, remember this:
