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[PreyingShark]

In the case of Pokemon Red and Blue's multiple game mechanics that did not work properly, they let you conduct multiplayer battles on Stadium instead, where from what I remember those mechanics actually worked correctly.

Not sure if Stadium 2 fixed the Gen 2 Marowak + Thick Club glitch, though, where it was possible to use Swords Dance and then have your attack be hilariously low instead of really high.

As for the series in general, there have been some pretty broken bugs in the series that were fixed during localization. This even happened in Gen I. Other highlights include being able to glitch your way to illegal egg move combinations and glitching your way to Shaymin + Darkrai. I think later copies of the games also had those particular bugs removed.

 

[Screaming Meat]

By ignoring them in some cases. I know we need to be rah rah broken games these days but they weren't exactly all perfect back in the day.

Yeah, but keep in mind that games only got more complex as time went on which increases the amount of bugs that can occur. Sometimes gamebreaking issues did pop up on consoles without much capabilty to patch. (like Twilight Princess on the Wii) and then you could send the disc to nintendo or restart your game and don't get stuck again.

They dealed with most of them before release.

That about covers it, I think.

 

[SeventhSon]

In the old days, you could return games.

 

[Blizzard]

Quality control may play part of it, but I do feel like high-profile games have gotten hugely more complex over the years, with everything from open world stuff down to the engine details to worry about.

I imagine this also gets nasty if it's something like an open-world game and problems don't show up until people have played for hours with certain qualifiers.

 

[Doctor_Thomas]

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.'

Sonic also has other glitches that are exploitable because of thin walls, if I remember correctly. You can really break the game by performing certain actions in certain locations due to speed and enemy knock back. I'm struggling to remember anything in particular, but I know the Mega Drive games were an interesting mixed bag of stuff happening. A lot of warping to the end of levels because of how the game tracks your position?

 

[Santerestil]

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.

Micro Machines, an unlicensed NES cartridge by Codemasters.

If I remember well, after beginning production of the game they discovered going the wrong way on the first track crashed the game: they also found that changing the value of one or two bit of the program could fix this - so their solution was to add in every copy a sort of Game-Genie thing who modified these values every time the game was played.

 

[jimi_dini]

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.

That's true, but compilers + debuggers are way way better than back then. Back then some of those games were written in pure assembly. You got proper source code managment software as well. You didn't have something like that 25 years ago.

Sierra for example used an object oriented engine for their adventure games back in 1990. It was state of the art back then. And it's amazing that their earlier games with that engine were almost bug free despite being highly complex and non-linear with multiple ways to solve puzzles (Quest for Glory series comes to mind). When you compare that with games nowadays, where even linear games are a broken mess ... where even Tetris gets released in a broken state... well that's saying something about the state of the industry.

You can analyse your sourcecode automatically for all sorts of issues nowadays. But of course someone has to actually want to do that. When the publisher wants a release right before christmas, that publisher will get a release right before christmas. Even when that means that you are going to sell a broken piece of shit.

 

[Gamer @ Heart]

It is a great quote, but he didn't quite live up to it for wind waker

(not saying its a bad game, just that a lot of content was cut. And yes, I know he was only producer for that game).

People keep saying this. These dungeons people think were cut where never made. Prototyped for mechanics like all Nintendo games, but not semi made and cut.

 

[Afrocious]

Better QA and games being made with simpler technology.

 

[Krejlooc]

People keep saying this. These dungeons people think were cut where never made. Prototyped for mechanics like all Nintendo games, but not semi made and cut.

When people say "cut" they don't mean the content was made but not included, they mean content that was planned to get made, that wasn't because they wanted the game out asap.

 

[Rest]

Patches. Games have version numbers like 1.00.01 and things like that. Newer versions were manufactured, and you knew which patch you had based on which version number was shown while booting.

 

[Son Of D]

Some games got bug fixes in reprints. Usually in Greatest Hits editions. I also believe that the Greatest Hits version of Spyro 3 added in some new music.

 

[C-DubSP]

You either had a buggy game or you didn't. Basically that was all there was to it.

 

[Rabid-Coot]

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.'

So thats what hapened to me in Sandopolis act 1 that one time all those years ago. I must have gotten lucky because after some high speed movement while in the walls it spat me out at the boss.

 

[tesqui]

I've heard of certain regions getting the fuller game due to them releasing later. For example there are some changes in both the European and Japanese GameCube versions of RE4 that america didn't get due to it releasing there first. Which was an added easy mode and weapon stat tweaks. (Red-9: damage increase, shotgun: reload speed nerf, etc)

So essentially NTSC got version 1.0 while PAL and NTSC-J got the updated release.

 

[Diablohead]

MSR on dreamcast had a batch of first print discs with some bugs like the driver having no arms and beating tournament cups in last place, sega offered a post in service so they could post you a fixed copy.

problem was I never knew at the time as there was lack of Internet at my house, and they did little to advertise the fix, magazines were always a month off with their stories too.

 

[Man God]

Well, tbf making Evade work is actually new work. That has to be tested too. And maybe has to be balanced across the game.

Not really! One of the first things people did when SNES emulators became usable was to edit the code to make evade work and they did it with a few quick replacements. It's literally just pointing at the wrong stat. Evade works perfectly otherwise.

 

[ban25]

In the old days, you generally only had one shot, so you lived with whatever bugs were shipped. Allow me to introduce article 1 below as a particularly egregious example:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/556553-star-wars-knights-of-the-old-republic/faqs/24705

That said, console games today are typically still cleaner than PC Exclusive titles due to the first party certification process, though things are getting looser.

 

[Laconic]

They dealed with most of them before release.

*daps*

 

[Krejlooc]

Sonic also has other glitches that are exploitable because of thin walls, if I remember correctly. You can really break the game by performing certain actions in certain locations due to speed and enemy knock back. I'm struggling to remember anything in particular, but I know the Mega Drive games were an interesting mixed bag of stuff happening. A lot of warping to the end of levels because of how the game tracks your position?

There is a flag that is set to allow levels to infinitely scroll in both directions (so that, when you begin to reach the bottom of the level, the top of the level will loop around to the bottom). You can abuse this flag in levels to wrap all the way back around to the other side if you move faster than the camera can update. Using certain moves, like the super peel out in Sonic CD which advances the camera automatically, you can force the camera out of position while it wraps around to "warp" to the end of the level through solid walls.

So thats what hapened to me in Sandopolis act 1 that one time all those years ago. I must have gotten lucky because after some high speed movement while in the walls it spat me out at the boss.

The Sonic games have an ejection routine that will attempt to spit sonic out through solid walls if he gets trapped by moving him left or right at a very high velocity. Sometimes the ejection routine will fail, and that is what the thing in the manual is describing.

 

[Jotamide]

We had stuff like Missigno and it was awesome. Now all glitches are lame.

 

[Mr. RPG]

If you were playing Final Fantasy on the NES you just had to deal with it.

Man that game has so many bugs!

 

[TheGreyHulk]

They tested the shit out of them back then

BUT we also have to take into consideration that games back then were nowhere near as complex as the games we get now.

 

[KarneeKarnay]

I would put it a lot of the blame on people rushing the game out onto the market and stupidly high costs.

AAA Studios spending up to and over 18 million on a game is not uncommon practice now. Hell when I was a kid I remember people gawking at the idea of 4 million cost for a game. I'm not saying every AAA is this cost, but a lot of them are.

What early access and increased internet connectivity has meant, that these big publishers and smaller studios is that they can see a return on their investments sooner. I have no arguments against this in principle, but the reality is that there are a lot of studios and publishers that see early access as an excuse to release broken and buggy games, get money for them and have no intention of ever completing them.

If I am an Indie Dev and I make a game for $30,000 and then release via early access and get $3 million by releasing it via early access, I get two options. I can either invest that money into the game (The right thing to do btw.), or I can just take the money and run. There is nothing stopping me from doing that and it seems a lot of devs, studios and publishers are doing exactly that.

Not the big ones though. The AAA's no that they can't get away with shenanigans like that so instead that cut costs. They rush a game they have invested millions in so it can be released as early as possible, regardless of the condition. Because they can just release a Day One Patch that fixes all the show stoppers. Of course there are times when that hasn't worked and a game has remained pretty much unplayable for days after a release because of these bugs that haven't been addressed by the patch or have been caused by the patch.


The real goal is the same for both of these groups though, to get the money as soon as possible and once they have it, screw the game. Want an example of this? HALO: MCC or Stomping Ground.

 

[DOWN]

Games got more complex, quality control got simpler via patches, the pressure to be thorough got lowered. The three are an unpleasant mix.

 

[MCN]

The released an updated version of the cartridge/disc, and if you were an early adopter you had to suck it up.

 

[GRaider81]

I think aswell, back then you were maybe less likely to know about bugs unless you found them yourself.

 

[McLovin]

They had actual quality control, although sometimes stuff slipped through the cracks, just not as often as now.

 

[Seanspeed]

We called them quirks and fucking dealt with it.

The real goal is the same for both of these groups though, to get the money as soon as possible and once they have it, screw the game. Want an example of this? HALO: MCC

Huh? They're working on a massive update, actually.

They had actual quality control, although sometimes stuff slipped through the cracks, just not as often as now.

Games were not nearly as complicated as they are now. Especially before online connectivity was a prominent thing.

 

[Mxrz]

Eh. I remember lots of issues growing up in the 8/16bit days. We just didn't have an internet to tell us things were bugs, or to complain on. So most of the time we just assumed it was working as intended. You can see a lot of goofy stuff in avgn's videos, and the rest.

On the PC side, you could get patches from some retailers, and then later on PC mag demo discs would contain patches.

 

[gelf]

Usually if a game came out broken it was broken forever, it would review badly and people (usually) didn't buy them. Your absolutely looking thought rose tinted glasses if you think that few games where released in a horrible state. These days you could redeem almost anything with a patch, in those days they would just be seen as a crappy game and forgotten.

Most only remember the polished releases for good reason as they stood the test of time.

 

[basic_text]

lmfao BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. I absolutely refuse to believe you never saw this screen:

Maaaaaaan, that screen was the bane of my life back in the day!

 

[Flunkie]

Devs usually finished their fucking games.

.!

 

[Forkball]

Quality control may play part of it, but I do feel like high-profile games have gotten hugely more complex over the years, with everything from open world stuff down to the engine details to worry about.

I imagine this also gets nasty if it's something like an open-world game and problems don't show up until people have played for hours with certain qualifiers.

This. While it's easy to say "LOL lazy devs!", games have definitely become more complex in terms of what can go wrong. "Uh in GTA V when I am wearing cargo shorts as Michael and equipped with a rocket launcher, at 7:19 PM when a green car drives by my game crashes. Plsfix."

I remember when Twilight Princess came out, there was actually a game-breaking glitch if you saved and quit in the wrong place. I can't remember how Nintendo fixed it exactly. I know they reprinted TP without that glitch, but I don't remember them ever pushing out a patch. Most people just grabbed a save file off the net via an SD card if it afflicted them.

 

[SlickShoes]

When was the last time a game got released without huge bugs, not a bareboned piece of crap and DLC that was expected to pick up the slack? There are a few I can think of.

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim - Lots of DLC Expansions. This makes sense because beside the home dlc they all added a lot of content into what was already a good game. There were some bugs, but nothing truly game breaking.

You are not serious with this are you?

 

[onken]

Don't forget games were a lot simpler back then so there was less to break.

 

[Scrawnton]

I always talked about the time that I quit buying new games and just enjoy all the old ones I have accumulated over the years. With this practice of releasing broken games and nickel and diming, I'm probably only going to buy two to three PS4 games a year brand new.

 

[MCN]

This. While it's easy to say "LOL lazy devs!", games have definitely become more complex in terms of what can go wrong. "Uh in GTA V when I am wearing cargo shorts as Michael and equipped with a rocket launcher, at 7:19 PM when a green car drives by my game crashes. Plsfix."

I remember when Twilight Princess came out, there was actually a game-breaking glitch if you saved and quit in the wrong place. I can't remember how Nintendo fixed it exactly. I know they reprinted TP without that glitch, but I don't remember them ever pushing out a patch. Most people just grabbed a save file off the net via an SD card if it afflicted them.

Didn't Nintendo release a save game fixing tool for download?

 

[SlickShoes]

I certainly don't recall anything on PS2 for example that was anywhere near as broken as Halo MCC or AC Unity etc. However, in the case of most of these games the issues have sprouted from online services not being up to snuff, and during the PS2 era that wasn't really part of the equation, so it's not really comparable to current situations. The only real comparable games I can think of are shitty low-budget games like Charlie's Angels.

Ghost Recon on PS2 was a total shit show, most online games as well were full of exploits and you were lucky if a patch happened at all.

 

[TI82]

Huh weird looks like my post didn't make it when I submitted yesterday.

But basically if it was discovered after being minted they would either reprint the game if it was popular enough with an update or not bother. You could call in to the company, send your game off, and get a new updated one back. This happened most recently with guitar hero 3 on the Wii which had a bug where it only played in mono sound and since Wii games couldn't be updated you had to send the disc to Activision and they fixed it up. Got some extra goodies too.

 

[thewhitehawk]

I remember seeing once a statement by Nintendo about a certain bug in Ocarina of Time that they warned users against reproducing because it would prevent them from progressing in the game.

 

[CircleOfFire]

I have a memory of Terminator: Future Shock coming with a patch on the disc back in the day. That blew my mind.

 

[eso76]

You shouldnt forget that games were much simpler, with far fewer variables and no online...
No beta testing will provide results as accurate as a few hundred thousand playing the game for hours.

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

lmfao BULL. FUCKING. SHIT. I absolutely refuse to believe you never saw this screen:

Oh the memories :*)

 

[Khaz]

You shouldnt forget that games were much simpler, with far fewer variables and no online...
No beta testing will provide results as accurate as a few hundred thousand playing the game for hours.

PS2, XBox and Gamecube games were as complex and had online.

 

[TheSpoiler]

This topic is kinda cute. There are people here who refuse to believe previous generations of games had problems anywhere near as bad as this one.

Truth is, gamebreaking glitches existed in games prior to this gen. Even in the ones you love. Zelda games had unwinnable situations that players could get themselves into, despite a bit of difficulty towards getting there.

Someone here mentioned that they never saw a PS2 game have the same issues as AC:U? Well let me tell you about the Deus Ex port. What a shitstorm that was.

Basically, you had to reformat your card to save the data. You can say no and work around it somehow, but if you did that, the card would magically reformat itself randomly. So all that hardwork from other games you had saved?

Fucking gone.

And let's just say you have a brand new memory card. It's clean, you formatted it (you'll know because the game does this for you, how kind!), and you are playing some Deus Ex. Uh oh, looks like it just randomly decided to reformat again. Why? Because fuck you.

Soul Calibur 3 would just randomly corrupt itself too. Man that was fun. All that time spent adventuring, all my custom characters, poof! Gone!

We were kids back then. It pissed us off, and maybe some of us went to the forums to complain. But the internet wasn't as big, so the problems weren't as widespread, despite being just as bad.

If anything, things have gotten better. AC:U and other games are outliers compared to how many titles come out with no problems, but it's another side of the spectrum - too heavy of a reliance on patches in general.

But yeah, believing the previous generations to be untouchable is bullshit and pure nostalgia. It's not an AAA game by any means, but Action 52 was a thing, and if you don't know about that game, it's probably one of the most broken, shitty games to ever exist.

You can't even beat some of the 52 games, as doing so would either crash the cart or just end up sending you back to the previous menu. That sort of quality, when taking everything into account, was far more common in the yesteryears.

Huh weird looks like my post didn't make it when I submitted yesterday.

But basically if it was discovered after being minted they would either reprint the game if it was popular enough with an update or not bother. You could call in to the company, send your game off, and get a new updated one back. This happened most recently with guitar hero 3 on the Wii which had a bug where it only played in mono sound and since Wii games couldn't be updated you had to send the disc to Activision and they fixed it up. Got some extra goodies too.

That happened sometimes. A few developers would be nice enough to do so, but most told me to fuck right off or return the game.

 

[ResidentDante]

They dealed with most of them before release.

 

[deim0s]

I have a memory of Terminator: Future Shock coming with a patch on the disc back in the day. That blew my mind.

Bethesda being Bethesda in 1994.

 

[Spades]

 

[TheSpoiler]

Didn't stop the amazing amount of horrible titles that appeared on their consoles!

Also,

I remember seeing once a statement by Nintendo about a certain bug in Ocarina of Time that they warned users against reproducing because it would prevent them from progressing in the game.

Devs usually finished their fucking games.

I love Xenogears, but there's a whole lotta content they left out and it's a very rushed game.