Today’s post is the last of my little glitch series, until I experience enough new ones to write another post about them.  Won’t that be nice?  Ahem, this time I discuss freezing, quite possibly the worst glitch ever.  You can’t work through it.  It just happens, and there’s nothing you can do.  Nothing.  Games never un-freeze.  No, of course, not!  That would be too tolerable if they unfroze!  I hate games that freeze!

Lesser annoying freezing: “Donkey Kong Country 3” is my only glitchy Super Nintendo game.  It always gets slow in the lightning level, and one day, I accidentally touched the cartridge when the game was starting up.  This caused most of my files to be erased, which was quite upsetting.  But, the glitch I am getting to is when I once went into one of the bear’s houses, and the screen suddenly got distorted and froze.  Ever since, I’ve been terrified to go in the bear’s places ever again (not that it’s ever been not stressful to walk into a bear’s house)!  Fortunately, at least no more freezing has occurred, and it’s my least favorite “DKC” game anyway.  Aren’t you proud of the positive spin I put on this glitch?  Also, in “Harvest Moon 64”, walking over the bridge was an ordeal (and there weren’t even any bears), as the game would freeze occasionally when you did.  It was an evil bridge.  Evil.

The freezing that made me combust in rage, so it is fortunate that I live in a duck pond: A damaged copy of “Final Fantasy VII” chose a terrible time to freeze, after a long sequence of cut scenes.  Oh, it made me so mad.  It’s halfway through disc two, at the crater, and you first must cross this annoying, narrow area several times, and if you get hit by something, you must fight enemies.  And sometimes I can’t even see what it is I’m avoiding, so I hit it over and over again.  Then, I get a zillion cut scenes.  Count them.  A zillion.  One with Sephiroth.  One in this cave.  One with Weapon getting woken up.  One with some flashback with Cloud and Tifa.  Then…then!  Tifa wakes up in this place, and Barrett’s there, and he opens the blinds, and the screen goes across the room to show you Meteor outside, and…and…  It froze!  It friggin, diggin’ froze!  I was so frickin’ mad!  You have no idea!  Not only did I just sit through a zillion cut scenes (count ‘em!), but I ran through that stupid area where you don’t know what to not hit!  And it’s one of the greatest games ever, making the freezing that much more conducive to you tearing your own head off!

So I tried it again.  Games never freeze twice in a row in the same area.  Oh, but it did.  It got just a little farther this time, and I thought it would do it…but no, it froze again, at just past the same spot as last time!  So I restarted the game again, ready for my third attempt.  Okay, it got farther that time.  Maybe…oh my gosh, it did it again!  It froze again!  At the same exact spot as the first freeze!  You gotta be kidding me!  Oh!  My!  Gosh!  So I spent a bunch of money and bought myself a brand new copy of the game, and a week later when it arrived, I sat through all that crappy crap crap once again, time number four (count it!), and it worked this time.  It finally worked.  Such a happy day.

Freezing that occurred as a result of my Cube hating me, even though I’m nice to it: And then my damaged GameCube had the nerve to freeze on multiple occasions.  In “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door”, the same game that had skipping sound, do you know where it froze?  Guess.  It’s pretty much the worst place you can think of.  Yes, that’s right.  The Pit of 100 Trials.  You get down 80, 90 levels (Count!  Them!), and it freezes.  I try again.  80, 90 levels, it freezes!  Oh, my gosh, knock it off!  I played hours and hours in this level before finally reaching the end without freezing (and dying, but at least my failure was legitimate this time).

And then there’s “Sonic Adventure 2: Battle”.  The Cube didn’t like this game.  Story mode, fine.  But, replaying these same exact levels in mission select, suddenly it wasn’t so fine anymore.  Was there a change?  No.  The Cube just decided it didn’t cause me enough pain with the Pit of 100 Trials.  It had to make my suffering complete, by freezing over and over again in this game.  I couldn’t pet a Chao without the game freezing.  I kid you not.  I love my Chao.  I’ve had them for a good ten years now, and I’m attached to them, especially Rocky, my little unicorn Hero Chao.  And I couldn’t pet Rocky.  The Cube would make these snapping sounds and freeze.  I could hardly even enter the Chao Garden anymore, especially the Hero one, without it freezing.

Eventually, I also found that Knuckles was no longer allowed to dig.  Piece of the Master Emerald underground, tough luck, you’re not getting it.  I try to dig, with pauses in between, as the Cube snaps like a little beast with all sides of the same area, to try to prevent any freezing.  But, as careful as I was, it still froze.  I became afraid of my stupid GameCube and its weird, snapping noises.  I was afraid to pet my Chao.  I was afraid to dig holes.  I was afraid to do anything.  When it decided to freeze early on in “Rayman 3” in the Bog of Murk (my favorite level!), I decided enough was enough.  I ended up just having to get a new console (because my Wii appears to be illiterate, as it won’t read Cube memory cards, even though it plays Cube games just fine), and you know what, I can finally pet Rocky and dig again.  You never think you’d miss being able to dig holes until you can’t do it anymore.

Share your pain on the dreaded ordeal of freezing.  And do you find freezes to be the most atrocious glitch ever in the history of the universe as we know it?

A Frozen Duck, Defrost Me, Please, But Not for Eating