Tag Archives: game glitches

Uncategorized

Glitches That Involve Freezing and the Rage They Cause

6 Comments
Screenshot by Flickr User: Sklathill
Screenshot by Flickr User: Sklathill

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. Continue reading Glitches That Involve Freezing and the Rage They Cause →

Uncategorized

Glitches Involving Wackiness

6 Comments
Screenshot from Flickr User: A. Currell
Screenshot from Flickr User: A. Currell

Today’s post focuses on my favorite kind of glitches, the silly ones.  These ones fill me with mirth and make game errors not so terrible.  Enjoy these hilarious (and mildly amusing) glitches.  That’s an order.

Unintended mutants: “Tak 2: The Staff of Dreams”, I found, enjoys a good freeze now and then on my somewhat injured XBox.  Not funny.  It’s also not funny when you make a mistake and it becomes impossible to continue the game.  What is funny was early on, in Wetstone Lake, when I whacked one of the squirrels (who are not nice, so it’s okay), and it ran away and stopped somewhere, where it started contorting.  The body stood up vertically behind it, while one eye got huge, and it lost all of its limbs but one, and that limb got long and began to wiggle.  It was hilarious, but also a bit terrifying. Continue reading Glitches Involving Wackiness →

Uncategorized

Glitches Involving a Disappearing Act, With no Magicians Responsible

2 Comments

Today’s addition to my little glitch series is a common one, when things just mysteriously vanish.  Mysteriously.

Sometimes, the world falls apart around you: This happens in “Spyro” games I played on the Cube.  For me, it was quite common in “Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly” for the ground to disappear in the second world, the farm level.  So I’m walking along, and then the ground is just suddenly gone, wheat and barns and scarecrows, not to mention little, purple dragon, floating in midair.  No harm is done, but it’s rather frightening to see oblivion right there below you.  And once Spyro was riding an elevator down from Cloudy Domain in “Spyro: A Hero’s Tail”, and the world decided to disappear from below him, leaving just an expanse of yellow.  Rather worried at the apparent coming of Armageddon taking place below me, I had no choice but to continue riding the elevator down.  It eventually arrived on the ground, and everything was now black, except for Spyro, the elevator, and a distant Moneybags’ shop.  Unsure of what to do, I attempted to glide towards that shop, my single beacon of hope in a world apparently come to an end.  Here, Spyro did not meet any invisible ground.  He fell to his doom.  And I reset the game and rode that elevator nevermore. Continue reading Glitches Involving a Disappearing Act, With no Magicians Responsible →

Uncategorized

Glitches Involving Injustice

3 Comments

Today the Duck is continuing my little glitch series with a description of glitches involving injustice in this already unfair world.  These glitches involve the unfair deaths and restarts that can sometimes be as amusing as they are frustrating.

Sometimes, your characters end up in another dimension (at least, they might as well be): In “Super Mario Sunshine”, I decided to go under the big waterwheel in Bianco Hills once as a shortcut (even though it’s a poor excuse for a waterwheel, considering it does not make contact with water, unless you squirt it, I guess), and poor Mario got pushed under the ground by one of the paddles.  Shocked and dismayed, I attempted to get him out or pause the game and exit at least, but could not.  He stayed under there, and the only thing that could be done was to restart the game.  And then Fox once fell through the ground in “Star Fox Adventures”, as well.  This time, he was simply walking along, and he just fell right through into this weird place (and he wasn’t even assaulted by a sorry example of a waterwheel, mind you).  Once again, I couldn’t escape or pause or anything, as pausing doesn’t appear to work in alternate dimensions, it seems, and had to restart the game.  Injustice! Continue reading Glitches Involving Injustice →

Uncategorized

Glitches Involving Capricious Audio

8 Comments

A little while ago, Cary wrote a post about some glitches in a damaged copy of “The Last of Us” that ruined the game for her, which got me thinking about how much fun I have talking about glitches, no matter how bothersome they can be.  Because not all glitches are purely upsetting.  Some can be rather funny, too.  And so I decided to start a little mini-series talking about the glitches found in various games I’ve played.  Today’s topic, unpredictable sound.

Skipping is fun, but not when it comes to gaming: I first had skipping issues when I moved and two consoles didn’t fare quite as well as they had in the past.  These two unlucky consoles were my poor dear GameCube and my not as dear, but still poor, XBox (who was just a year old at the time, too).  That’s when issues began that I had never had before.  Months later, I plugged the Cube in for some joy, and I was confronted with some skipping music in that pirate’s cave place in “Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door”.  Very odd, as it was the only area that decided to do that.  I suppose pirates like to skip?  They certainly like to sing (on TV, at least, which is very accurate).  Then, finding this great fun, the XBox decided to join in (I guess it was just emulating its big brother Cube, who was being a very bad influence) with “Star Wars: Battlefront II”, where I was subjected to more skipping and erratic music, especially in the Hoth level.  It really didn’t like that place at all.  (Considering the freezing experienced in “Tak 2” not long earlier, though, I really didn’t mind at that point.) Continue reading Glitches Involving Capricious Audio →

Food For Thought

When Glitches Just Ruin It

26 Comments
Image by Flicker user yhancik
Image by Flicker user yhancik

The Last of Us is considered one of the “must play” games of 2013. It’s received praise upon praise for its story, mechanics, and style. Despite all the great reviews and such, we decided to rent it first. (Hey, there’s a lot of great games to spend a hard-earned $60 on these days!) When it finally arrived last weekend, my husband called dibs on playing it first. I was looking forward to watching it more than playing, so I settled in for some visual fun.

The game took a very long time to load and stalled once during the process; but we didn’t think much of it — we’ve had similar issues with PS3 games before, particularly games we’ve rented. When things finally got underway, the viewing experience was beautiful. The Last of Us is truly deserving as far as art and art direction go. Everything in the game is gloriously rendered in a style that’s a cross between naturalism and photography. And oh man…that story. After avoiding as many spoilers as possible about the game, I couldn’t wait to see how the story of the main protagonist Joe unfolded.

Continue reading When Glitches Just Ruin It →