How did this myth get started?

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

Okay

Nostalgia goggles I can understand, thinking a game was better than it was because of the effect it had on you combined with the amount of time since you last played it. I can even understand maybe not playing these games as fully to hit bad spots.

But how did the myth get so entrenched that games in the old days were released without bugs or glitches? I see people complaining on a regular basis about how 'nowadays games are released so unfinished they're almost unplayable.'

Stop it. Right fucking now. You know what an unplayable game is? A Sierra Adventure game where because you didn't follow one extremely specific course of action that there is no hint of you are literally unable to progress past a certain point in the game. Ocarina of Time had a glitch which meant you could turn game crucial items into bottles. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine had dozens of these bugs.

So where did this bizarre idea that older games didn't have glitches and bugs that rendered them unplayable spring from? Personally I think it's that the gamers complaining about it nowadays were too young to remember, or haven't played emulators or ROMs, of the old games.

For additional discussion value, discuss your favourite game breaking glitches and bugs from any game pre-2000. My personal favourite if from 102 Dalmations (2000) which featured a glitch on the second level which I never figured out which prevented me from getting any further in the game. Yeah. I got stuck on the second level of a twenty level game.

 

[Scrustle]

I think games do tend to have more bugs than they did at least compared to last generation. Bugs were still there, but they were getting better until this most recent generation. Because of the internet game devs and publishers think they can get away with buggy games more because they can patch them later. That wasn't anywhere near as possible before so they took extra care.

But also because of the internet I think this problem is exaggerated. It's much easier for talk of bugs and glitches to spread. For example I've never really had many problems with Bethesda games. They may be slightly more buggy than most, but I've never had an experience like many people report.

 

[Attercap]

I think there was a certain level of "ignorance is bliss" along with the "nostalgia goggles." Prior to the proliferation of immediate information gained via the Internet, I used to blame either myself or my computer for problems with certain games, rather than thinking the issue lied in the game itself. It was The Elder Scrolls: Arena and information being passed along the usenet that abolished that idea for me.

 

[Kahunaburger]

What do you mean? Old games were 100% glitch free. Like Super Metroid. And Pokemon RBG. And Tribes. And pfffttahahahahaha

 

[evilneko]

Unpatched Classic Diablo (1996) and possibly the demo version had a Daylight Savings Time-related bug that would render save files useless. It was fixed in one of the first patches.

A bug that was never patched involved deliberately letting certain mobs beat on you until your max health was below a certain amount. Once past this threshold, you could not be stunned at all.

Not quite gamebreaking but can be annoying (and deadly): due to Diablo's sprite limit, high level chain lightning will have large gaps.

Finally, what we called "happy feet"--due to Diablo's tile-based system, anything moving in certain directions simply could not be hit by projectiles. Firewall spells laid in those directions would also have gaps enabling mobs to pass through unharmed. Speaking of firewall, Lazarus's chamber had a hole in it through which you could cast firewall.

All that and it was still a better game than its crappy sequels.

Oh yeah, and Protostar (1993) had an overflow bug that could result in alien traders paying you to relieve them of their wares. One could make a lot of money that way, but it wasn't really gamebreaking since money doesn't necessarily translate to success in that game, plus it was pretty easy to make enough to upgrade everything on your ship anyway.

And that's about the earliest I even remember encountering bugs. However....

NES Action 52 [http://cinemassacre.com/2010/04/30/avgn-episode-90-action-52/]. 'nuff said.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

Whhhaaaat?! O.O people actually say that?! If anything there are fewer glitches now then there were then(at least in my experience?). Bug free back in the day, who are people trying to fool? When I was a kid at times I was rolling on the floor due to the glitches I would run into in games.

 

[Kordie]

While I agree that old games were far from bug free, I do believe that older games were better. This is purely because of the ability to patch games. Older games were made and sold in 1 condition. period. If that version had a game crashing bug, it was now garbage. that game was literally broken and not fixable. Now developers can afford a larger tolerance for bugs because they can patch things after launch. Second issue is that games are more complex now. It was easier to avoid bugs in simpler games, because the games were simpler. Complex games can create more complex problems.

 

[Vegosiux]

But how did the myth get so entrenched that games in the old days were released without bugs or glitches? I see people complaining on a regular basis about how 'nowadays games are released so unfinished they're almost unplayable.'

I think the existance of those mythical gamers who actually say that is a myth in its own. So, let me use your quote to say what I think about that myth.

Stop it. Right fucking now.

No really. Maybe I don't read well, but unless you can point me to at least one person having actually said that (without quote mining them, that is), I'm going to keep calling bravo-sierra on this one.

Oh, and in case of Sierra adventure games becoming unwinnable...yeah, that was a feature. It was done on purpose, with accompanying game over screens to tell you why you got yourself killed.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I think it has a lot to do with modern consoles having patching capability. Back in the day, they couldn't be patched, so unless you personally came across it or it was a horribly game breaking bug that a lot of people /did/ come across, you likely never heard of it. Nowadays, regular patches are the norm, so you hear about a lot of bugs, even if you don't actually encounter them all that often. The Fez patch is a great example of this. The patch introduced a save file incompatibility that only happened in a specific case that only affected 1% of users. Because it was so small, and the problem could be avoided by just, you know, playing the whole game with the patched version, the developer decided it wasn't worth the 40 grand that Microsoft wanted for him to put out a hot fix. Cue rage from thousands of gamers who never would have even known about the glitch if this had been in the old days, even if the glitch existed.

Edit: PC Gamers have been getting patches all the way through, by the way.

Also, old Adventure games having unwinnable states was a design choice, not a bug. Sierra in particular was terrible about it, but it was entirely intentional. It was Lucasarts that started the whole "no unwinnable states" movement in adventure games.

 

[superdark]

In sonic 2, they didn't test the game much as super sonic. If you jump as your cross the finish line for the level, it glitches up and you have no choice but to restart.

 

[Esotera]

Nobody is saying that games used to be entirely bug/glitch free, but there were definitely higher standards required of releases back then. There wasn't the option of just chucking a buggy game out of the door and patching it over the internet a month later - a broken product would essentially stay that way. This doesn't mean that there aren't exceptions to the rule of course.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Games did generally have fewer glitches... then again, they also had much simpler programs so they were easier to find and fix before release.
It's not nostalgia goggles, it's just that the more complex games get, the more likely glitches will slip through the cracks.
Also, there's the internet, which makes post-release patches easier, and therefore makes it easier for companies to justify letting a few things slide. Old cartridge-based games couldn't be patched, so developers had to be extra careful to get it right the first time (not that they always succeeded)

 

[BeeGeenie]

My award for the worst bug ridden game to ever be released has to go to Fallout 1&2.

LOL, my award for BEST bug ridden game ever would be fallout 1&2. Great games, but you're right, absolutely infested with bugs. XD

 

[WoahDan]

Bugs are actually less common nowadays, but people are far less tolerant of the bugs that they do find. In the old days if you found a bug in your game you didn't have the internet so couldn't immediately jump into an echo chamber where you could obsess about how bad it was, you just did your best to ignore the bug. People have higher standards these days, and while that moves the industry forward it also has the unfortunate side-effect of more complaining.

 

[targren]

In the old days if you found a bug in your game you didn't have the internet so couldn't immediately jump into an echo chamber where you could obsess about how bad it was, you just did your best to ignore the bug.

Hell, in the REALLY old days we collected and traded bugs and exploits as tricks of the trade. Spots on the screen where the boss's (boss'? w/e) shots wouldn't hit; Enter then immediately leave Level 1 in Zelda to unlock the first door; Stand under the enemy-spawner with the Wood Shield to farm lives;

Now, you get a bug like that, expect it to be screwed with, even in a single-player game (I'm looking at you Oblivion Dupe Trick and Borderlands Chest Farms) in a later patch.

We lost what I always felt was an important part of the gaming community when that went away, IMO.

 

[Redd the Sock]

Well, a few things to consider:

Few glictches were game breaking in genreal play. Yes they happened, but stuff like the minus world in SMB is the kind of thing you don't think any sane person would even find by accident, let alone discover how to pull off intentionally. Today, when glitches are found in very general play, it looks like there was no testing involved in the name of saving money and letting us pay to be the beta test.

Games were shorter. We all had a NES game go batshit on us in the final level, But the extra hour it took to get back there wasn't insufferable. For that matter most games were rented so there wasn't that 60 dollar price tag attached to a flawed product.

By that regard, a lot of those style glitches were blamed far more on the hardware, or in hindsight, a poorly constructed RNG reader. At the very least, a reset, or a cleaning usualy got rid of things so the fact the problem could be in the software wasn't conceived.

Moreover, glitches were fun and even benificial. Duping Pokemon in Gold/Sivler. Copying weapons in Final Fantasy 2 (IV). Maxing fighting levels in level 2 of double Dragon. Normal Mario with fire power. Ermac in Mortal Kombat. I could go on.

Lastly, games have more prestige these days and higher standards come with it. When they were kids toys, it was understandable to not put toal effort into fixing every tiny programming flaw or typo. Today when you expect to sell millions to full grown adults, a quality ethic that didn't feel the need to fix "I feel asleep" doesn't cut it.

 

[Kordie]

In the old days if you found a bug in your game you didn't have the internet so couldn't immediately jump into an echo chamber where you could obsess about how bad it was, you just did your best to ignore the bug.

Hell, in the REALLY old days we collected and traded bugs and exploits as tricks of the trade. Spots on the screen where the boss's (boss'? w/e) shots wouldn't hit; Enter then immediately leave Level 1 in Zelda to unlock the first door; Stand under the enemy-spawner with the Wood Shield to farm lives;

Now, you get a bug like that, expect it to be screwed with, even in a single-player game (I'm looking at you Oblivion Dupe Trick and Borderlands Chest Farms) in a later patch.

We lost what I always felt was an important part of the gaming community when that went away, IMO.

"it's not a bug, it's a feature" Heh, some bugs wen't on to bigger and better things. like the skiing "exploit" in the first tribes. Now it's a big point in the game.