History Main / AscendedGlitch

* A variant. A glitch in the first ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' allowed bombs to damage players through walls in Walleye Warehouse. While the glitch itself was of course removed, it received a nod in one of the conversations Off the Hook have about the stage in ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'':

** In a similar act of serendipity that ended up making the game more interesting, during the airboat vs. helicopter battle, the "mine spam" dropped on the player was originally due to one of the programmers accidentally making the helicopter shoot mines out of its machine gun instead of bullets. This was toned down and added in deliberately as the helicopter's DesperationAttack near the end of the battle.

* ''VideoGame/DiabloII'''s Hammerdins. Basically, Blessed Hammer is a nigh-useless spell on the non-spellcaster Paladin. Due to some bug, the Concentration aura (which should only be boosting physical attacks) boosted Blessed Hammer's damage. This created the Hammerdin, making a Blessed Hammer/Concentration combo a viable character build (with the right equipment, of course). Blizzard made sure it would continue to work properly in subsequent patches. Incidentally, this made Hammerdins into one of the strongest builds in the game (some would argue the strongest) and is a huge gamebreaker. Technically the bug was fixed in the expansion, then ''put back in'' on purpose.

** [[LagCancel Animation canceling]] was, at least originally, a bug that allows players to skip the end-animation of abilities or basic attacks, allowing them to use another ability or attack faster than if they allowed the animation to finish. Depending on the specifics, this generally allows the player to use all of their skills significantly faster, allowing for faster damage output and more maneuverability. In some cases Riot has removed animation canceling for specific champions or skills, while in other instances, such as with Riven, they have explicitly admitted that they consider animation canceling in balancing the champion, even making it easier to perform at times. Depending on who you ask, this may be either totally unfair bug abuse, or a legitimate part of the Champion's skill set.

** Also, remember how players of the original NES game would hold the A and B buttons down after grabbing the Red Orb while waiting for the next level to start, causing Simon to repeatedly jump and whip at nothing? Nintendo did -- it's one of Simon's victory poses in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate''!

** Heck, the infinite one-ups bug was so popular in ''Super Mario Bros.'' that the designers made the glitch possible to do in the very beginning of World 1-1 in the difficult [[VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels Japanese version of Super Mario Bros. 2]].

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'': Mutalisk stacking was a strategy that exploited a bug in unit movement: by having a stack of fast-moving air units like Mutalisks and one slow-moving one on the opposite side of the map in one group, the Mutalisks would bunch together in a small space in an attempt to make formation with the distant unit, making them much harder to focus down. Rather than patch it out, Blizzard dealt with it by introducing new units to each race whose sole purpose is to deal with stacked air units through AreaOfEffect air-to-air weapons. This movement style was recreated in ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' as the default way Mutalisks fly. ''[=StarCraft=] II'' also ported other similar interface bugs and even a few quirks of the old AI that had become part of the pro circuit.

* The song "GAMBOL" in ''VideoGame/BeatmaniaIIDX'' has one of the easiest charts in the game; however a bizarre bug caused it to have much tighter timing windows than any other song in earlier versions of the game, making it easy to clear but extremely hard to score well on it. On Happy Sky, the bug was finally fixed: the glitched version was moved up to the Hyper difficulty, while Normal now contained a fixed version. But then on the UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 version of IIDX 11, the developers decided to troll players further by adding an Another chart; it's exactly the same as the other difficulties, except the timing windows were shrunk to the point where it's pretty much impossible to score well on it ''at all.'' Even worse, DJ Troopers' home version introduced EasterEgg codes that let players [[SelfImposedChallenge use the Gambol Hyper and Another timing windows on any song.]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', mercenary ally Krem spends his downtime in the local tavern, where his character model has a tendency of sitting on the back of his chair, standing around the chair, standing ''on'' the chair, basically everything except sitting neatly ''in'' his chair. The ''Trespasser'' DLC later canonized this by revealing he was trying to get a better view of the bard Maryden, who he had a crush on.

*** Basically any bug or glitch that [[GoodBadBugs isn't game-breaking]] is allowed to stay as long as it's funny (e.g. putting a bucket on somebody's head so they can't see you robbing them blind). The bug that cropped up during development where animals such as chickens would report crimes that they saw didn't qualify mainly because, while [[RefugeInAudacity similarly hilarious]], it would be unfair to players who didn't know about it.

** Companions were added into the original game at a very late stage in development. As such they are basically {{Non Player Character}}s scripted to follow the player around. This lead to some rather idiosyncratic game behavior which has since become trademarks of the series. First off your companions, like all [=NPCs=], are incapable of getting radiation poisoning. This is useful because it means that the player only needs to worry about getting radiation suits and Rad-X drugs for themselves. This made things much simpler than having to track the health of each party member, and was kept in the games even after Bethesda took over. Another thing was that all interaction with the companions had to occur through the conversation window; this meant that you couldn't directly access their inventory, which lead to cases where a companion wouldn't equip the weapon you wanted them to, and in some cases (if you didn't use the store-interface to provide them with an item of equal or greater value) refuse to give you an item out of their inventory. The developers loved this emergent behavior, since it made it look like the companions had a mind of their own, and matched up with the way that companions worked in ''Wasteland''. Hence they left it in, and it remains in the series to this day.

** Similarly, the Critical Hit Glitch. In the original NES release, each weapon had a dedicated critical hit rate in its code, but the combat engine would use the weapon's index number as the critical hit rate instead of the intended critical rate, which had the effect of critical hits becoming more frequent as you climbed the SortingAlgorithmOfWeaponEffectiveness. For example, Thor's Hammer was intended to have a crit rate of 0.5%, but in practice had a crit rate of 18%. This bug has never been fixed in any remake of the game.
* ''Makai Toushi [=SaGa=]'' AKA ''VideoGame/TheFinalFantasyLegend'' has the infamous Saw Glitch. This weapon was supposed to instant kill any enemy whose defense was lower than the user's strength but instead it does the opposite: it instants kill enemies whose defense is ''higher'' than the user strength. And it works on the ''Final Boss''. Not only the UsefulNotes/WonderSwan Color remake kept the glitch but it's been referenced in other ''[[VideoGame/SagaRPG [=SaGa=]]]'' games such as ''Romancing [=SaGa=]: Minstrel Song'' (the tale of the Axe that Slew a God), ''[[VideoGame/SagaScarletGrace [=SaGa=] Scarlet Grace]]'', (the legendary Emperor's Saw, capable of slaying a God) and ''Romancing [=SaGa=] [=Re;Universe=]'' (The "Black and White Towers" event where Aishe attempts to kill the final boss of ''Makai Toushi [=SaGa=]'' with her chainsaw. He survives, but his life flashes before his eyes, complete with death by chainsaw.) and even other Creator/SquareEnix games (''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' [[spoiler: where the final boss Orphan is vulnerable to Vanille's Death spell once staggered]]).

** The well-known Vanish-Doom/X-Zone [[GoodBadBugs was a really easy way to dispatch pretty much any enemy]], and it wasn't fixed in the PSX port, except for one case. Storyline-boss Phunbaba was programmed in the PSX version to be invulnerable to the Vanish spell, because Phunbaba could [[GameBreakingBug crash the game when being Vanish-Doomed because of how much it messed with the script]]. Even then, the programmers didn't get the "invulnerable to Vanish" part quite right, since he can still be given the Clear status effect another way. However, the Game Boy Advance version of the game thoroughly squashed the glitch on Phunbaba by making him unable to be hit with the Clear status effect at all.

** The Polaroid was a trinket that let you access TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon in the ''Wrath of the Lamb'' expansion. Originally it was supposed to have a very low drop rate from Mom, but it was accidentally made to drop 100% of the time on release. Rather than patch it out, the devs let it be since the final area was no longer a secret. Come ''Rebirth'', and it's now a passive item so it doesn't take up your trinket slot, and even has a new EvilCounterpart you can take instead.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Spelunky}} HD'', the Ball and Chain that attaches to your character for destroying two altars wasn't ''meant'' to be able to break the Moai in the Ice Caves. Once it was discovered that it could do so, however, the developers had no qualms with leaving it in, and even fixed the visual bug of the Moai not breaking into pieces like other terrain does when destroyed.

* The egregiously NintendoHard ''VideoGame/{{Gradius}} III AC'' had significant slowdown when there was a lot of enemies/bullets on the screen, which was practically required to navigate these bullet storms. The [[UsefulNotes/PlayStation2 PS2]] CompilationRerelease subsequently included an option to emulate the lag/slowdown. Similar to the ''Street Fighter II'' and ''Space Invaders'' examples, this would influence other games, as intentional, hardcoded slowdown when bullet density reaches a certain point has become a widespread feature in BulletHell games.

* ''[[LevelEditor Stunts/4D Sports: Driving]]'' has the sixth gear bug, invoked by racing at full tilt in the fastest car in the game and going over a ramp, accelerating to half the speed of sound and remaining that way until you let go of the throttle. Naturally this was done on purpose in many user created maps.

* The 1980s game show ''Series/PressYourLuck'' had a game board with eighteen screens with values that almost always changed at the same time, but half of the screens would occasionally change out of sync with the other half. Its revival, ''Series/{{Whammy}}'', actually implements—and even amplifies—this behavior. While the screen values always change at the same time during ''[=Whammy=]''[='=]s first round, the screens change independently from each other at semi-random intervals in the second.

* So called "broken colors" could be considered a form of this. They basically occur when your eye sees a combination of wavelengths of light and can't really classify them, so renders them as a non-spectral color, with brown and grey being the most common. Essentially, it's your eye giving you an error message.

* A glitch in ''VideoGame/Splatoon1'' allowed bombs to damage players through walls in Walleye Warehouse. While the glitch itself was of course removed, it received a nod in this Off the Hook conversation when the stage returned for ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'':

* A glitch in ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' allowed bombs to damage players through walls in Walleye Warehouse. While the glitch itself was of course removed, it received a nod in this Off the Hook conversation when the stage returned for ''VideoGame/Splatoon2'':

* During a phase in which thatgamecompany had trouble getting the ending levels of ''VideoGame/{{Journey}}'' to properly resonate with playtesters, one test ended prematurely when a glitch caused the game to seem like it was over [[spoiler:right after you die in the snowstorm]]. The playtester found this false ending so profoundly moving it brought him to tears; this inspired tgc to put in significant extra effort to turn the actual ending into something equally moving.

* ''VideoGame/Hitman2'' was coded so that throwing weapons will always hit their target, and will steer themselves mid-flight to compensate for moving targets. Fans discovered that the ICA Briefcase was both very large and had a very slow travel speed, leading to surreal moments when it would float through the air and steer around corners in pursuit of targets. This glitch was fixed by increasing the travel speed of the briefcase. A later update added a new briefcase item that flew through the air ''slower'' than the original unpatched one, the ICA Executive Briefcase MKII, as a free unlock.

** The Phantom Train wasn't supposed to be vulnerable to Sabin's Suplex move - the game has a hidden value where enemies that are flying or too heavy could not be affected by it. Someone forgot to set this variable on the Phantom Train, which meant that Sabin is apparently capable of lifting a moving train off of its rails and slamming it back down. Even in later versions where a lot of other bugs were fixed, Square Enix left this one as is, because it's a once-per-playthrough experience that was too popular to omit. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' gave Tifa the Meteodrive LimitBreak as a MythologyGag, which had this effect no matter how big the enemy was.** In the original Super Famicom version of ''Final Fantasy VI'', a bug rendered any item as being equippable as a helmet, with Edgar's [[ThisIsADrill drill]] tool being the best option. ''Dissidia'', already rife with {{Mythology Gag}}s, saw fit to include a drill as being the headset equip for the 'Machine' equipment set. ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyCrystalChronicles'' references this as well with the Drill being an artifact with the sole purpose of raising defense.

* ''Makai Toushi [=SaGa=]'' AKA ''VideoGame/TheFinalFantasyLegend'' has the infamous Saw Glitch. This weapon was supposed to instant kill any enemy whose defense was lower than the user's strength but instead it does the opposite: it instants kill enemies whose defense is ''higher'' than the user strength. And it works on the ''Final Boss''. Not only the UsefulNotes/WonderSwan Color remake kept the glitch but it's been referenced in other ''[[VideoGame/SagaRPG [=SaGa=]]]'' games such as ''Romancing [=SaGa=]: Minstrel Song'' (the tale of the Axe that Slew a God), ''[[VideoGame/SagaScarletGrace [=SaGa=] Scarlet Grace]]'', (the legendary Emperor's Saw, capable of slaying a God) and ''Romancing [=SaGa=] [=Re;Universe=]'' (The "Black and White Towers" event where Aishe attempts to kill the final boss of ''Makai Toushi [=SaGa=]'' with her chainsaw. He survives, but his life flashes before his eyes, complete with death by chainsaw.) and even other Creator/SquareEnix games (''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' [[spoiler: where the final boss Orphan is vulnerable to Vanille's Death spell once staggered]]).* It's possible that the "Mime" job class introduced in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' was based on a fun glitch in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' that caused Kain to copy the previous character's actions in battle. This is also possibly an origin for the Augment system in the [[VideoGameRemake remake]].

** When the pistons were added, people soon realized that they sometimes got stuck in an incorrect state and need to be "updated" to make then snap back to their expected state. Ingenious people managed to transform this glitch into so-called block update detectors that significantly expanded the ways redstone mechanisms can interact with the rest of the game world. Another, unrelated glitch with the pistons made it possible to propagate redstone signals arbitrarily far within a single tick (0.1s). This enabled the players to circumvent the intended 150m/s limit. This later capacity was expanded in the next update, making it significantly easier to transmit instantly both edges of the signal.

* This is essentially how evolution works. Random gene mutation may result in physical changes in descendants. If the mutations don't result in it's death before it has a chance to breed, it will pass on it's mutation to future generations, until eventually it's a standard feature of a breed.

* ''Franchise/TombRaider'':
** The original ''VideoGame/TombRaider'' has an assumed-to-be glitch during the Tomb of Qualopec level where the player could aim their pistols at one of two mummies positioned by Qualopec's throne (which are encountered as enemies late in the game) and shoot it, which would cause it to roar and fall over. The remake ''VideoGame/TombRaiderAnniversary'' takes this scenario and incorporates it into a cutscene: while Lara is examining the throne, the same mummy lounges at her before dying, causing a startled Lara to quickly aim her pistols at it.

** Lucian's passive ability causes him to attack his next target twice after using an ability. But it turned out that if the enemy you attacked dies before the second hit, the second hit seeks another nearby enemy. The next patch, this behavior was cleaned up a bit and was made a feature.

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering Arena'' used to display a null prompt if it couldn't remember the name of a spell or ability, most commonly encountered by copying a spell with the card Expansion/Explosion. A later update would replace null prompt with the art of the card Totally Lost, noting that Arena had totally lost what was supposed to go there.* In ''VideoGame/SuperRobotWars'', all other music being [[BackgroundMusicOverride overrid-]] '''''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCmTJVew_tY TROMBE!]]'''''

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'': Mutalisk stacking was a strategy that exploited a bug in unit movement: by having a stack of fast-moving air units like Mutalisks and one slow-moving one on the opposite side of the map in one group, the Mutalisks would bunch together in a small space in an attempt to make formation with the distant unit, making them much harder to focus down. Rather than patch it out, Blizzard dealt with it by introducing new units to each race whose '''sole purpose''' is to deal with stacked air units through AreaOfEffect air-to-air weapons. This was also recreated in ''VideoGame/StarCraftII'' without the need to do the bug. ''[=StarCraft=] II'' also ported other similar interface bugs and even a few quirks of the old AI that had become part of the pro circuit.

* ''[[VideoGame/WarCraftII Warcraft II]]'':
** The game had a bug that allowed a player to get 100 extra lumber at the start of any game; this was so liked (due to allowing games to get going more quickly) that it became standard tournament practice to use it every game. When Blizzard remade the Battle.net version of the game, they fixed the bug but also had it start each player off with 100 extra lumber.
** It was also possible to build buildings faster by assigning workers to repair the under construction building. This was included in the sequel, but only for the human faction.
* The way air units move in ''VideoGame/WarcraftIII'' is descended from Mutalisk stacking in ''[=StarCraft=]'' - the units clump together in a single [[BuffySpeak un-focus-fire-able]] formation, then explode outwards when they reach their destination or are given attack orders.

[[folder:Beat 'em Up Game]]

* ''VideoGame/TheStanleyParable'':
** There were two {{Game Breaking Bug}}s in the original mod; you could close the door to your office, trapping you inside, and you can kill yourself by repeatedly jumping off of the scaffolding in the Mind Control room. Both these eventually became fully fledged endings in the HD Remake (''Reluctance'' and ''Stop Moving'', respectively).
** There's also the ability to trap yourself by stepping out of the elevator before the doors close. In HD, you can do this with the door to the boss' office, enabling another new ending.
** The Essense of Divine Art who shows up in the Art Ending, which can only be achieved by playing the Baby Game for ''four hours'', is this. It appearing as a black monolith thing that obscures part of the text actually ''wasn't'' its intended form, but the devs never bothered to actually bugtest this ending since they figured no one would ever see it. [[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible Everyone who did just assumed such a pointlessly incomprehensible thing appearing in the Art Ending was deliberate]] and so nobody questioned it or reported it. To quote Galactic Cafe:
---> Yes, the black monolith thing was not actually intentional, it's a bug that we didn't know about because no one actually fully tested this ending prior to the game's launch. Turns out that the door that slides open to reveal the puppy was unintentionally sticking around long after it was supposed to, and getting in the way of the camera. But most of this stuff was getting added in the last few days before launch, so if we were going to spend 4 hours debugging the game it should probably be used on a part of the game that people would actually, you know, see. Anyway, the game launched and I watched the Baby Game for the first time ever [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GAtSIy4-w via Youtube]]. I was kind of miffed that there was a weird black monolith in there, but at least the game wasn't crashing or deleting files off your harddrive or whatever. Besides, I guess it looks sort of like the monolith IS the essence of divine art that's speaking to you? It's not totally implausible.

* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'' has a glitch during [[spoiler:the Spamton NEO fight where if you pressed "Z" while holding down the "Enter" key, your SOUL could rapid fire "[[ChargeAttack big shots]]." Rather than patching it out, Toby Fox added a variable labeled "[[RuleOfFunny FunnyCheat]]" keeping track of how many times you used the glitch. Later, another patch was added which causes Spamton to notice if you're using the glitch, [[TurnsRed riling him up]] and strengthening his hits.]]

* ThrowItIn, which is like this trope, but happens when the work is in development stages.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', when mercenary ally Krem spent his downtime in the local tavern, his character model would sit on the back of his chair, stand around the chair, stand ''on'' the chair, basically do anything except sit neatly ''in'' his chair. The ''Trespasser'' DLC later canonized this by revealing he was trying to get a better view of the bard Maryden, who he had a crush on.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeInquisition'', there was a bug where the model for mercenary Krem would sit on the back of the chair, stand around the chair, stand on the chair, basically do anything except sit neatly ''in'' his chair. The ''Trespasser'' DLC later canonized this by revealing he was doing it in order to better see the bard Maryden, who he had a crush on.

** Two cross-medium examples from ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'':

*** A morphing animation glitch from ''[[VideoGame/Sonic3AndKnuckles Sonic & Knuckles]]'', resulting in a purple hedgehog/echidna sprite, inspired the appearance of Thrash the Tasmanian Devil from ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics''.

** The Sniper Vs. Spy update canonized the disguise kit+crouch+look up "Spycrab" pose (in which the spy's model stretches beyond his animation skeleton) by having approximately 1 out of 10 taunts with the disguise kit use an alternate animation with the spy dropping into a crouch and making claw motions with his hands.

** Equipping a shield item to the Demoman allows them to right click to charge forward in a somewhat straight line - with very limited movement to the left or right. However, an exploit was found that if the +left or +right commands were bound to a button and that button was pressed while charging, the turning radius would be much tighter, to the point that you could circle around to where you initially started charging in a wide enough space. This exploit, along with the innate high resistances of the shield items, and the ability to gain large amounts of airborne momentum through charging on certain sloped surfaces, was actually enough to see the loadout become viable in the competitive scene. The turn radius exploit was eventually removed, but it can be similarly achieved through alternate weapons given to the Demoman after its removal - the "Ali Baba Wee Booties" or "Bootlegger" Primary now gives a small amount of horizontal control, while the "Tide Turner" shield weapon gives up the high resistances of the other shields for full turn radius control.

** One of the oldest examples in League of Legends is Nunu's channeling spell ultimate, "Absolute Zero" being cast in a bush. Normally, when a spell is cast from a bush, the champion casting the spell becomes visible to everyone. However, Nunu used to remain hidden while channeling his ultimate, that could be used to completely take an opposing team by surprise. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB8xj2QiPtY It's immortalized as the Empire play]], Riot once fixed the glitch, but by that time the glitch had become a staple of Nunu, and the resulting backlash caused Riot to change it back.

** The MinusWorld in the original game was a programming error; however, there are many intentionally hidden stages that are unlocked via similar methods in later games.

* ''VideoGame/{{Deltarune}}'' has a glitch during [[spoiler:the Spamton NEO fight where if you pressed "Z" while holding down the "Enter" key, your SOUL could rapid fire "[[ChargeAttack big shots]]." Rather than patching it out, Toby Fox added a variable labeled "[[RuleOfFunny FunnyCheat]]" keeping track of how many times you used the glitch. Later, another patch was added which causes Spamton to notice if you're using the glitch, causing him to [[TurnsRed get mad]] and hit harder.]]

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, players quickly learned that you wouldn't get blamed for killing someone if you [[GrenadeTag reverse-pickpocketed a live grenade]] onto them; in ''VideoGame/Fallout2'', this was an easy way to get rid of those annoying child pickpockets in the Den without getting the [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment Childkiller]] perk. Future installments canonized this as a game tactic; ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' keeps a running tally of "Pants Exploded" every time you do it (along with an achievement for your first time) and the ShowWithinAShow calls it "the ol' Shady Sands Shuffle."
** Companions were added into the original game at a very late stage in development. As such they are basically {{Non Player Character}}s scripted to follow around the player. This lead to some rather idiosyncratic game behavior which has since become trademarks of the series. First off your companions, like all [=NPCs=], are incapable of getting radiation poisoning. This is useful because it means that the player only needs to worry about getting radiation suits and Rad-X drugs for themselves. This made things much simpler than having to track the health of each party member, and was kept in the games even after Bethesda took over. Another thing was that all interaction with the companions had to occur through the conversation window; this meant that you couldn't directly access their inventory, which lead to cases where a companion wouldn't equip the weapon you wanted them to, and in some cases (if you didn't use the store-interface to provide them with an item of equal or greater value) refuse you give you an item out of their inventory. The developers loved this emergent behavior, since it made it look like the companions had a mind of their own, and matched up with the way that companions worked in ''Wasteland''. Hence they left it in, and it remains in the series to this day.

---> Yes, the black monolith thing was not actually intentional, it’s a bug that we didn’t know about because no one actually fully tested this ending prior to the game’s launch. Turns out that the door that slides open to reveal the puppy was unintentionally sticking around long after it was supposed to, and getting in the way of the camera. But most of this stuff was getting added in the last few days before launch, so if we were going to spend 4 hours debugging the game it should probably be used on a part of the game that people would actually, you know, see. Anyway, the game launched and I watched the Baby Game for the first time ever [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GAtSIy4-w via Youtube]]. I was kind of miffed that there was a weird black monolith in there, but at least the game wasn’t crashing or deleting files off your harddrive or whatever. Besides, I guess it looks sort of like the monolith IS the essence of divine art that’s speaking to you? It’s not totally implausible.