chronic_archaic
Member
Batman Arkham Origins on PC
Oh wait... DLC is more important apparently.
Oh wait... DLC is more important apparently.
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Older games (pre-patch era) that had game breaking bugs?
- Thread starter Audioboxer
- Start date
Fennec
Member
Pre-patch era.
petran79
Banned
In the majority of old computer adventure games, you had to save often since they were so bug ridden that even one would make the game unplayable. You just had to hope you would not encounter it.
Eg Phantasmagoria 1 had a bug where sometimes in the final chase scene the glass shard was not available, so it was impossible to stab the attacker, escape from the room and collect all items throughout the mansion.
Also if you forgot to put a newspaper below the door yet pushed the key from the inside, there was no way to retrieve it and you had to restart
Eg Phantasmagoria 1 had a bug where sometimes in the final chase scene the glass shard was not available, so it was impossible to stab the attacker, escape from the room and collect all items throughout the mansion.
Also if you forgot to put a newspaper below the door yet pushed the key from the inside, there was no way to retrieve it and you had to restart
Doczu
Member
Angel of Darkness was a technical mess. It had so many bugs, from the little clipping errors to scripts not activating and halting your progres.
Shai-Tan
Banned
I finished it with the original floppies? I don't remember anything particularly wrong with it. Ultima IX on the other hand was a mess and they knew it was a mess but released it anyway to take our money (not just horrible bugs, also an unfinished story).
"The game's release was initially complicated by a rather buggy first issue, with very advanced hardware requirements for the time; the design team had objected strongly to the timing of release, but the Electronic Arts management enforced it. A few months later, a fixed version was released; a further unofficial fix was leaked on the Internet a bit later by an anonymous member of the team."
Ah thanks for the info, might track down a used copy someday if I find it cheap.
Interesting... Never heard of that, but they may have left the bug in EU version because EU PS2 libs were OK, and left a bug in the software part of the PS3 BC. Do you remember de place?
That's a bit harsh... Many bugs indeed, but there were bugs in most games. Most of them were mostly cosmetic. There's two game-breaking ones, though, at least (if you manage to reenter Potos, and if you use the escape rope in Pandora Castle).
In this very specific case, it's not a bug, it's a feature ^_^
Impossible Mission, indeed...
Yup. It was one of the last bosses if I recall correctly. Maybe the final boss. But the community around that game knew how to level up their characters to a degree that the glitch would never take place. Still a jacked up glitch though.
SerTapTap
Member
A great deal of early PC games don't run right on "too fast" processors. Quest For Glory 4 just fucking crashes in a story-critical screen (the swamp) and it's possible not to notice this for HOURS of gameplay, it's very late game. I still haven't beaten it though DOSBOX or a patch can now fix it. Also the PC port of Sonic 3&K just runs at whatever framerate your PC can, with gameplay still tied to framerate so a fast PC just plays the game sped up and impossible to play.
I had this stupid cart, I think I had to sell it to Gamestop for like $3
I had this stupid cart, I think I had to sell it to Gamestop for like $3
Pandora012
Member
The tears that this brought me to....
protomouse
Member
Cheetahmen II, the monkey boss:
The game won't let you continue past that.
The game won't let you continue past that.
SerTapTap
Member
I don't think that game was finished and I know it wasn't officially released (well....released, even Action 52 was unlicensed )
protomouse
Member
AFAIK there are more levels past that boss, but you have to trigger a glitch that makes the game start up on the following level.
Diablohead
Member
I believe it was known but left alone, low priority i'm guessing.
cj_iwakura
Member
It's optional, thankfully, but yes. Worse, if I recall, it gets stronger each time you fight it.
Rhapsody DS had SEVERAL game breaking bugs. It was a POS.
Donkey Kong 64 had a game breaking glitch that required the ram pak to prevent the game from crashing. It ended up costing Rare tons of money because they had to foot the bill for all the ram paks, if I remember correctly. Here is an article on it
Can we talk about Final Fantasy bugs? They're usually awesome:
Final Fantasy IV - Weapon/shield Duplication Bug
It essentially duplicated any sword or shield equipped in one hand so long as the other hand is empty. Try duplicating a bunch of swords and giving them to Edge to throw. LOL. Unlimited Gugnirs anyone?
Final Fantasy VI - Vanish/Doom
Cast Vanish and then Doom on most enemies. Instant death. Oh yeah: this worked on many bosses. Sure, not every boss was susceptible but holy crap.
Final Fantasy VII - W-Item
Duplicate any items you could access from the battle menu. Replicate 99 Sylkis greens and sell them for wads of gil. Replicate 99 elixirs and megalixirs and cheat death forever. Absolutely awesome.
Final Fantasy IV - Weapon/shield Duplication Bug
It essentially duplicated any sword or shield equipped in one hand so long as the other hand is empty. Try duplicating a bunch of swords and giving them to Edge to throw. LOL. Unlimited Gugnirs anyone?
Final Fantasy VI - Vanish/Doom
Cast Vanish and then Doom on most enemies. Instant death. Oh yeah: this worked on many bosses. Sure, not every boss was susceptible but holy crap.
Final Fantasy VII - W-Item
Duplicate any items you could access from the battle menu. Replicate 99 Sylkis greens and sell them for wads of gil. Replicate 99 elixirs and megalixirs and cheat death forever. Absolutely awesome.
SerTapTap
Member
Say what you want about the story and draw system, but FF8 was clearly a higher standard of polish for the series--every FF until 8 had tons of crazy bugs, FF8 has almost nothing. Far better translation too. Spirit stat just NOT WORKING in FF7 is crazy.
Not really a "bug" per se, but the version of Bubble Bobble I played as a kid was corrupted (probably a bad floppy disk), so around midway levels became all random blocks, Missingno-style. It was still possible to finish a few of the first corrupted levels, so I just thought the game was supposed to be that way.
Audioboxer
Member
Some interesting replies. Games might be released in far worse states these days, but they certainly weren't immune to issues in the past!
People will argue that Draw/Junction was fundamentally broken though (combined with Card Mod). =p
I love FF8 though. =)
The street fighter 2 game on gba had a legit "game breaking" bug. I forget how to trigger it exactly, but iirc you had to fight or beat akuma in arcade mode and the game would totally stop working and actually brick itself. Capcom even offered to replace it with copies of Alpha 3 if people mailed it in.
One Foul Note
Member
Jak 2 had a game breaker about two thirds of the way through. I can't remember the exact details but between two of the main missions you had to go and talk to a specific NPC for story reasons, but if you did a side mission (any side mission) the NPC despawned and halted your ability to finish the main story. It was a bit of a nightmare at the time but luckily I knew about it before hand so it is easy to avoid if you know what to do.
PepsimanVsJoe
Member
WAY back in the day I brought the game to an after-school computer/gaming club.
One of the characters got trapped in a hole and we couldn't do anything to get them out.
EmptySpace
Banned
they're all easier to make. cartridge games were what, 3mb in size?
and that's with everything. so you can just imagine how exponentially small the code is compared to today's.
today it takes a lot of people to debug a lot of code. people who often compare the two situations just don't know any better.
and that's with everything. so you can just imagine how exponentially small the code is compared to today's.
today it takes a lot of people to debug a lot of code. people who often compare the two situations just don't know any better.
I'm Spartacus
Member
And not to mention that going into the Attic screen would cause a game-wide bug where-by going into certain rooms would result in all your lives being lost and a game-over and that you could only reset the state by reloading the entire game again.
Another ZX Spectrum game: Ghostbusters. Just selecting Kempston joystick (by far the Spectrum's most bought joystick) on the game's menu would cause the whole game to crash necessitating another 5-10 minute load of the game!
Yea the character creation mode
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
Elder Scrolls Daggerfall.
This game was released with a litany of gamebreaking bugs and while it was patched, Daggerfall was made at a time when the majority of people were still on dial up internet. The patch was over 200 MB in size and unless you were willing to download that at ~3-6 kb/s on your blazing fast 56K modem, you had to order it from Bethesda or hope that one of the PC gaming magazines would include it on their demo disks.
This game was released with a litany of gamebreaking bugs and while it was patched, Daggerfall was made at a time when the majority of people were still on dial up internet. The patch was over 200 MB in size and unless you were willing to download that at ~3-6 kb/s on your blazing fast 56K modem, you had to order it from Bethesda or hope that one of the PC gaming magazines would include it on their demo disks.
Dick Justice
Banned
True Crime 2 on PS2 had a bug where the final race would freeze up when getting close to the finish line. One race away from getting 100%. Fuck that game.
This could have also been due to the spotty emulation in later PS3 models. Revised models used software emulation (I believe original PS3 models actually had PS2 hardware inside them for backwards compatibility, but don't quote me on that), which could cause problems with some games. Sony even had a list on their support website detailing which games were incompatible with certain models, though it wasn't always accurate.
JimmyRustler
Member
I remember Blood Omen 2 being full of bugs. I'm pretty certain that I was falling through walls several times. I do not remember however ever having any really game breaking bugs, meaning that I had to start all over again. The topic is generally extremely overblown imo. There were never any bug free games. Todays games may be a bit more buggy in average but they are a lot bigger in scale after all, so it is kinda understandable.
TheAdmiester
Member
Gran Turismo 2 had a bug where using the machine test mode to test out your cars would remove a random amount of cars from your garage or completely wipe the save. It was "patched" by just trying to flood the market out with updated 1.01 discs.
MagnaderAlpha
Member
The thing is, these are gamebreaking only because you can abuse them to cheat. You don't HAVE to, or hell, you could go throughout the game without knowing about them and complete the game honestly. This is different than the shit that's happening with the PC version of Arkham Knight, or all those horrible bugs and glitches in the AC games.
Robert at Zeboyd Games
Banned
Lufia 2 (SNES) has the infamous area that's just one huge visual glitchy mess.
Was playing Grandia 1 the other day, fell off a toadstool and instead of falling off, I just got trapped in mid-air. Couldn't get out, eventually had to reload my last save.
Was playing Grandia 1 the other day, fell off a toadstool and instead of falling off, I just got trapped in mid-air. Couldn't get out, eventually had to reload my last save.
shaowebb
Member
Ar Tonelico for PS2 had a game breaking boss glitch. After so many turns you lost so you had to beat Raki by the 3rd turn or the glitch kicked in and you couldn't beat the game.
Atelier Iris Eternal Mana had a glitch where if you beat the final boss of the game (known as Amalgam) with any of the game's music turned on in the options it caused an error after the credits that froze the game due to a misnamed audio file from the japanese version being left in. Unless you turned off the audio in options before the final boss fight you didn't get the option to save after the credits, get to the final optional dungeon, or get the final story and one character back.
Arcana Heart for PS2 had a glitch with the dragon arcana that meant if you equipped your fighter with it they flew off the screen when activated. Lots of bugs in that series sadly...
Prince of Persia The Two Thrones across PS2, Xbox and Gamecube all had a ladder glitch where a cutscene was meant to play at the top of a ladder...however since it triggered too early it caused a game freeze error that meant folks couldn't get past that section of the game. The only method was to unequip a sub weapon and try to wall jump over the wall with the ladder to trigger the cutscene otherwise the game couldn't be completed.
Atelier Iris Eternal Mana had a glitch where if you beat the final boss of the game (known as Amalgam) with any of the game's music turned on in the options it caused an error after the credits that froze the game due to a misnamed audio file from the japanese version being left in. Unless you turned off the audio in options before the final boss fight you didn't get the option to save after the credits, get to the final optional dungeon, or get the final story and one character back.
Arcana Heart for PS2 had a glitch with the dragon arcana that meant if you equipped your fighter with it they flew off the screen when activated. Lots of bugs in that series sadly...
Prince of Persia The Two Thrones across PS2, Xbox and Gamecube all had a ladder glitch where a cutscene was meant to play at the top of a ladder...however since it triggered too early it caused a game freeze error that meant folks couldn't get past that section of the game. The only method was to unequip a sub weapon and try to wall jump over the wall with the ladder to trigger the cutscene otherwise the game couldn't be completed.
Diablohead
Member
updates and mods on magazine discs, this brings back memories.
Know if the pal version was 1.01? sounds like a nasty bug which I gladly never experianced.
I remember Spyro: Year of the Dragon having a glitch that could prevent you from getting the eggs on the speedways if you left the level before completing everything. I wish I still had the drive from back then when I encounter such things. These days it "well, that's the end of that".