The first game bug you remember having encountered?

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
Inspired by this article https://www.pcgamer.com/games/grand...-dev-explained-the-panic-code-that-caused-it/, what is the first game bug you remember having encountered?

The first bug I remember was in Simon the Sorcerer (1993). In that game, my main character started having flying dragons coming out of his body. I vaguely remember that the small dragons were green-colored. When I reloaded the save, everything went back to normal, so I don't think it could have been a virus. Maybe I didn't have the original copy of the game and this was something the developers put in the game as a form of punishment? I don't believe so though, because I would think that would have been pretty advanced for its time.
 
I don't know the answer to this question (gets hurled into a ditch)
I been playing games since 1982. I wouldn't know...

yours sounds like an unlikely bug. But its not easy to find info on a game from 1993
Its possible it had copy protection but it might have relied on codes. In the manual, something people with a copy don't have.

video might help... not watching it myself
 
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Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
I'm in same boat, way too far back to remember. Probably 1990 when I got my first personal at-home PC and could load it with Shareware titles.

ETA:
I've mentioned before the joy of typing in BASIC code into my Spectravideo pers comp in early 80s, and having to wait for the magazine's errata the following month :D
Not a clue what games, but there were quite a few. Plus of course bugs I introduced myself since the point of it all was to experiment with code.

ETAA:
Okay, I'm going to call the probable title as 4-in-a-Row cos that's the first game/program I experimented on.

There, got you one in the end :D

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ETA:
I've mentioned before the joy of typing in BASIC code into my Spectravideo pers comp in early 80s, and having to wait for the magazine's errata the following month :D
Not a clue what games, but there were quite a few. Plus of course bugs I introduced myself since the point of it all was to experiment with code.
That is possibly where I met my first few as well, missing semi colons will do it. Probably typing them into my Tandy color

But apart from text based errors, I wouldn't know. It wouldn't have been on a PC as I didn't see my first one of those until I worked in a bank and those were not games PC. I think first game I ever played on PC was probably a golf game we had installed on a PC in another job in early 1990's.

Probably saw a few on Nintendo consoles long before I saw any on PC. None are memorable today though.
 
Like everyone else here I can’t specifically remember the very first, but I do have very fond memories of playing Dave Mirra Freestyles BMX 2 on GameCube and laughing hysterically at how glitchy the game was. My friends and I would bail off the bike mid air and slam on the ground, watching the ragdoll glitch in every direction possible. We also found ways to glitch into walls and under the map, which at the time was an amazing discovery that led to many side splitting moments.
 

Zloth

Community Contributor
Not the first game bug you encountered, the first game bug you REMEMBER encountering.

For me, Ultima 2. Whenever you captured a ship and moved yourself onto the ship, it would somehow duplicate so you would have the ship you captured and suddenly there would be a new duplicate ship that hates you in the same location! You would have to move away and defeat the new ship before it sank you.

If it was later in the game, you could board and capture the duplicate ship. That would make yet another duplicate, which you also capture and board. Repeat until you have dozens of ships! You can bridge the ocean with your ships so you don't have to bother sailing, or you can spell out something.
 
The first one that comes to mind is from the Pirates of the Caribbean game from 2003. You could borrow money from loan sharks which you would have to pay back with interest or they would tank your reputation. If you talked with the loan shark again you would get the option to pay your loan back, unless you didn't have enough money to repay them, in which case you could take out another loan.

The problem was that you could only repay the last loan you took, but the game didn't forget about the other loans, meaning your reputation would tank because of your unpaid loans which you could never get rid of.

If you didn't care about the reputation, it was a good way to get a lot of money, as there was a loan shark with a chest you could use in his office where you could store all of the gold you just loaned, which means you could borrow as much money as you liked and immediately buy the biggest ship in the game.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
Legend of Zelda. Getting stuck in those flipping walls and rocks.
Ugh, that reminds me of the times I get stuck in PUBG. I walk around and suddenly get stuck because a part of the ground is shaped like a funnel. If you walk into it, you'll get stuck in a floating animation, which is impossible to get out of if you are playing solo.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
@Johnway I owned an Amiga 1200 as a teenager and it was a kick-ass PC. Used to play Dreamweb, Skidmarks, Cannon Fodder, Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Simon the Sorcerer, Alien Breed, and probably some more I don't remember. Amiga was huge on the demoscene and I remember owning some of them and thinking they were pretty cool.
 
This probably should go into retro forum, but A great resource for amiga content i still use is hall of light. plenty of scans of the old magazines, manuals, screenshots etc. Personally i sort it by alphabetical and in list.





interesting that there are games being released even now.

i personally had an A500 with 1mb, and still had that till 1999 and then i switched to a p3 500mhz pc from mesh.

gamewise we had a fair few, we had the classics like zool, cannon fodder 2, monkey island 2, speedball 2, rodland, soccer kid etc. some years i did fire up winuae to play alien breed 2 and a few other amiga games that i missed. i would like to one day play hired guns and maybe dungeon master again (could do it in dos i suppose) but i think those games would have aged poorly at this point.
 

Frindis

Dominar of The Hynerian Empire
Moderator
we had the classics like zool, cannon fodder 2, monkey island 2, speedball 2, rodland, soccer kid etc. some years i did fire up winuae to play alien breed 2 and a few other amiga games that i missed. i would like to one day play hired guns and maybe dungeon master again (could do it in dos i suppose) but i think those games would have aged poorly at this point.
All hail EXoDOS! I noticed some of the games you mentioned on it, looking forward to trying them out!:)
Thank you for the link, that database looks insane!
 
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I think it was one of the first games, shadow of the beast 2, it was scary stuff. The intro was scary, but the sudden shock of seeing it crash was scarier.
I had a similar situation as a kid. Whenever the PS1/PS2 or GameCube couldn’t read a disc, it would spin the intro screen to a “disk error” screen. The music and visuals on these screens across those consoles were so eerie, it would send shivers down my spine and creep me out as a kid. Not a jump scare like you experienced, but kind of similar where an error screen made me scared as a kid.

View: https://youtu.be/1uHLQHjtPLE
 
All hail EXoDOS! I noticed some of the games you mentioned on it, looking forward to trying them out!:)
Thank you for the link, that database looks insane!
Damn the motherload of games. I'm probably going to bookmark it and have a look. that said there is a lot of files. I think i need to be selective when i play it. I believe gabe morton has been playing through the entire collection (see his DOSVIDANIYA series) and there is a lot of chaff in there, but damn its good to see it preserved and not killed off like recent live service games.

Speaking of earlier bugs, the amiga has some massive clangers. Robocop 3's secure protection was a massive disaster. its not the first time, i believe there were times when demos gave away the entire game.
 
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I don't know for sure if this was a bug/glitch or purposeful design, but on the Atari 2600, I used to let myself get eaten by the giant duck dragon in Adventure, then wait for that thief of a bat to pick up the dragon and get carried across the maps.

And thank goodness for YouTube so that I can relive some of that nostalgia without actually having to play it, which otherwise might tarnish those fond childhood memories during a time when games had such awesome graphics! :-|

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EBt7OsVB_k
 
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Zloth

Community Contributor
I don't know for sure if this was a bug/glitch or purposeful design, but on the Atari 2600, I used to let myself get eaten by the giant duck dragon in Adventure, then wait for that thief of a bat to pick up the dragon and get carried across the maps.
That's emergent gameplay! Hehehe, I remember getting the bat to fly into the gold castle with the chalice to get the win, too.

Oh, but dropping the chalice just as you put it into the castle would make the winning sound break! That was a bug for sure, and I did that years before the Ultima 2 bug I listed above. Epic memory fail!

The Superman game had a bug, too. At the start of the game, you walk to a screen as Clark Kent and see a bridge get blown up. Part of your task to win the game is to find all those parts and bring them back, rebuilding the bridge. As soon as the bridge blows up, you walk back to the phone booth (on the previous screen), change into Superman, and start looking. However, if you pause the game just as the bridge starts to explode, the game will freeze and start randomly going from one screen to another (to prevent CRT burn-in). If you wait a while, the screen with the phone booth will appear and Clark will turn into Superman! Un-pause, and the game sees all four parts of the bridge close to the location for it, so it rebuilds the bridge instantly!

Ah the good old days, when games were thoroughly tested before being released... ;)
 
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The Superman game had a bug, too. At the start of the game, you walk to a screen as Clark Kent and see a bridge get blown up. Part of your task to win the game is to find all those parts and bring them back, rebuilding the bridge. As soon as the bridge blows up, you walk back to the phone booth (on the previous screen), change into Superman, and start looking. However, if you pause the game just as the bridge starts to explode, the game will freeze and start randomly going from one screen to another (to prevent CRT burn-in). If you wait a while, the screen with the phone booth will appear and Clark will turn into Superman! Un-pause, and the game sees all four parts of the bridge close to the location for it, so it rebuilds the bridge instantly!

Ah the good old days, when games were thoroughly tested before being released... ;)

I completely forgot about Superman! I don't think I ever finished it. I had vague memories of playing it until I went to YouTube. Watching this video sure brought back a lot of memories. But I never knew about that glitch!

I miss those good ol' days for sure! Lots of memories too having all the neighborhood kids at our house for a swim, and then all afternoon everyone on the Atari, where eventually everyone crash out waiting for their turn. Great times!
 

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