This is correct.
PC games ALWAYS had bugs, and sadly the consoles learned this last gen and now this ship has sailed.
Because PC games were much more complex.
Simpler games did not have bugs, the complex ones did.
This is correct.
PC games ALWAYS had bugs, and sadly the consoles learned this last gen and now this ship has sailed.
Because PC games were much more complex.
Actually, reading this thread I'd love to have a thread about these pre-patch days bugs!
PC gamers have dealt with this for years. Fucking Daggerfall was a mess on launch, but either the developers released a patch, or the fans did. It just became a thing that was accepted, not due to complexity.
But I think of this has a lot to do with how ingrained you were with gaming as a kid, and I mean that online. Offline, most mags didn't give a shit about announcing problems that a game had. Sometimes, it was too late, or sometimes it just wasn't with their narrative.
The advent of gaming forums filled that hole. You'd have people complain about console titles just as they are today. It's scary how things don't change all that much.
No, it hurts too much. There are a lot of memories I'd rather not dredge up!
Because PC games were much more complex.
Simpler games did not have bugs, the complex ones did.
But a game wouldn't ship broken. Bf4 would corrupt my save practicality every time I played it. Had to beaf it in two sessions (I got lucky and it didn't currupt the save the 3rd time I played it. Online broken for who knows how long. If I actually connected to a game (that was usually stuttering) I would play until the match crashed, then tried again. It was like that for months. That wouldn't happen back then.We called them quirks and fucking dealt with it.
Huh? They're working on a massive update, actually.
Games were not nearly as complicated as they are now. Especially before online connectivity was a prominent thing.
Huh? They're working on a massive update, actually.
.
You are not serious with this are you?
Morrowind on Xbox?But a game wouldn't ship broken.
I remember reading several angry reader letters in gaming mags about getting stuck in walls and under the floor in Donkey Kong Country around the time of its release. I think this title is a good example of an early rushed out game (had to get it out in time for Christmas) prone to glitches.
But a game wouldn't ship broken. Bf4 would corrupt my save practicality every time I played it. Had to beaf it in two sessions (I got lucky and it didn't currupt the save the 3rd time I played it. Online broken for who knows how long. If I actually connected to a game (that was usually stuttering) I would play until the match crashed, then tried again. It was like that for months. That wouldn't happen back then.
But a game wouldn't ship broken. Bf4 would corrupt my save practicality every time I played it. Had to beaf it in two sessions (I got lucky and it didn't currupt the save the 3rd time I played it. Online broken for who knows how long. If I actually connected to a game (that was usually stuttering) I would play until the match crashed, then tried again. It was like that for months. That wouldn't happen back then.
This is why Mario still "got it", compared to previous "mascots"
This is why Mario still "got it", compared to previous "mascots"
POKE 60231,0
POKE 42183,11
POKE 59901,82
POKE 56876,4
I love Xenogears, but there's a whole lotta content they left out and it's a very rushed game.
Depends on if you count it as a bug - it could perhaps be an intended feature, but it's certainly unconventional - but Space Invaders on the 2600 had an issue where holding reset on booting the game allowed two shots on screen at a time rather than one.
My gut is that that wasn't intentional, but without talking to the coders, it's hard to be sure.
I recall the - infamous at the time - Attic Bug for Jet Set Willy. Quite simply, the game was a collect-em-up set in a large flipscreen mansion; collect all the items and return to the Master Bedroom to win. However, there was a catch: If you entered The Attic, a bunch of other rooms scattered around the mansion would then kill you immediately if you entered them.
Interestingly, at first, Software Projects actually denied that this was a bug, instead claiming it was intended to make the game harder (stating that those rooms 'filled with poison gas' after you went there). Later on, some players found out how to fix the bug with a few POKE instructions, which were later appropriated and distributed in magazines as the Official Software Projects POKEs:
Code:POKE 60231,0 POKE 42183,11 POKE 59901,82 POKE 56876,4
...which is, technically, possibly the first actual instance of a patch.
(The real reason for the bug? There was a special type of enemy in the game, an arrow which fired periodically from offscreen and travelled the length of the screen. The Attic had an arrow in it that was actually placed *outside* the bounds of the screen in incorrect memory, so as it 'flew' it actually corrupted the memory it travelled through!)
The Hobbit - the famous Melbourne House text adventure from the 80's - was originally intended to have the command "DO MAGIC", which was scrapped before release. However, the verb "DO" was left in, and behaved oddly. IIRC, if you were to type, say, "SMASH DRAGON DO", it would kill the dragon; and KILL <something> DO would smash an inert object.
Also on text adventures, Infocom titles were littered with bugs, and had several different revisions through the years. They were catalogued in the (now defunct) webzine XYZZYNews for a while, which is how I discovered them, but they've since been archived in a more formal database
In short, bugs have existed for ages. The more complex the game, the more likely it is for a bug to creep in. It's very easy to have rose-tinted goggles about the olden days, but back then it was, well, a lot easier to find bugs to fix.
That's not completely exonerating publishers of today. I do think there is still a bit of a culture of sacrificing robustness in the name of scale which wasn't really as pronounced in the past and I think that's unhealthy in the long run. I don't think that's down to 'the ability to patch', though, more a reflection of the demands of the audience of today.
That never meant anything in regards to buggy games back in the day, just counterfeit games and non Nintendo cartridges. And it definitely didn't mean much in recent years with the Wii.Nintendo Seal of Quality...
Or you know, they just actually worked on the game until release, not the DLC which comes out after -_-
it probably leads to companies testing their games a bit less than they should
There was no way to tell if a freeze was caused by the game or your hardware.
Actually, reading this thread I'd love to have a thread about these pre-patch days bugs!
Sure, there was cut content all the time in games, but what he meant by that is that the game was functional, had very few bugs. Not that it had all the content that the devs intended.
This game had such a horrible game-breaking bug it had to be recalled, re-released (with a different-colored cart so people could tell the "correct" version) and I believe SNK actually had a replacement program.
Do people seriously believe that there were no bugs? lol
Last week with all those speedruns was a great opportunity to see lots of them.
The PAL version of Digimon World was so broken you had to know beforehand how to avoid the bugs to be able to finish the game. As far as I know this never got fixed.
Hey guys, remember this:
They dealed with most of them before release.
Didn't Nintendo release a save game fixing tool for download?
Evade (state) does absolutely nothing in Final Fantasy VI. It's not used in any algorithm. It is an entirely useless stat. They actually forgot to use one of the major, tracked stats in the game, entirely.
Insane.
Evade (state) does absolutely nothing in Final Fantasy VI. It's not used in any algorithm. It is an entirely useless stat. They actually forgot to use one of the major, tracked stats in the game, entirely.
Insane.
I remember Pokemon Ruby had a major berry related bug that was "patched" when you link them on newer carts)or was it FRLG)
.
It's not that the games don't have glitches. It's that they aren't gamebreaking and numerous.
Which is wrong!
The thing is the build date on v1.1 which was the first one without the song actually predates the launch of the game itself.The best example of a reissue I can think of is OoT and that was more for religious reasons than actual bugs
Great post. The PS2 Viewtiful Joe demo is another example of a game responsible for Memory Card genocide.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!
Yes, though most games shipped with less issues I think as a whole, as the planning of a release without accounting for post-release maintenance was different then, as was the size and scope of the software released.Reissues (so first run copies were just fucked, but they could probably exchange) or people just lived with them.
A lot of games were shipped with game-breaking bugs or poor performance and people just kind of lived with it, because what was the alternative?
Because PC games were much more complex.
Simpler games did not have bugs, the complex ones did.
I'm not saying it didn't happen ever but it was rare back then. Now a day patch is expected. How fucked up is that? Everyone was pissed off at the original xbone because of always online, but if you don't have online at all then you're sol in a lot of cases. Look at Assassins creed unity and the ungodly update patch to fix the game. Yeah you can technically beat the game without the patch, but that patch is pretty much the game. If you bought that game you got a blu-ray disc with junk code in it.It's not an apples to apples comparison. There was no online option. Look back at a game like Battletoads on NES where you couldn't get past the third level if you were playing with a friend. I'm guessing everyone here is just really young, because there have always been broken games being released. People just remember the classics, but there was tons of offensive shit.
But a game wouldn't ship broken.