10 Big Mistakes Devs Left in Games
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VOICE OVER: Riccardo Tucci
WRITTEN BY: Caitlin Johnson
These are not bugs, they're features! For this video we're looking at games with hilarious mistakes that were never corrected by the developers! Our list includes All Your Base Are Belong to Us “Zero Wing” (1990), Headless CJ “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” (2004), The Out of Map Glitch “Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” (2007), Allan Please Add Details “Hitman: Blood Money” (2006), Land Swimmers “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (2011) and more!
Script written by Caitlin Johnson
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at 10 big mistakes devs left in games. They’re not bugs, they’re features!
It can be a little complicated to get this glitch to work, but if you know what to do you’ll be able to trigger it easily enough and encounter one of the most sinister Pokémon in the series. MissingNo is a glitchy, L-shaped mess of a creature that appears because of how “Red” and “Blue” were programmed, and if you fight it on Cinnabar Island it’ll multiply the sixth item in your inventory. This means you can easily farm it and get an endless amount of whatever consumable you choose. Then, in 2017, almost twenty years after “Red” and “Blue”, players were given the ability to transport Pokémon into “Sun and Moon” where they could break the game all over again.
It’s not exactly difficult to break a Bethesda game; them being broken is part of the appeal, after all. But “Oblivion” featured one particularly hilarious glitch enabling players to endlessly duplicate items. The most popular item to dupe was watermelons, which led to one player spawning 10,000 watermelons to his location to see how the game would handle it. The answer is, of course, not very well. The watermelon video became wildly popular, with an endless barrage of watermelons raining onto Cyrodil from above and tumbling down the mountainside. Still, at least you’ll never have to worry about getting your five a day again.
Christian Kirksey is a 6’2” linebacker for Cleveland Browns - unless you play with him in “Madden 15”, where a glitch renders his character model at a minuscule 14 inches tall. Despite his small size, Kirksey’s stats aren’t reduced at all, meaning the “Tiny Titan” is still capable of holding his own. When the glitch was discovered, however, EA thought it was so funny they didn’t patch it out. This is the exact opposite problem another EA sports game, “FIFA 12”, had upon release, where goalkeepers became ten times bigger. Again though, they retained their stats, so being able to cover the entire goal didn’t actually make them better players.
Plagued by the pressure of an annual release cycle combined with enormous ambition, “Assassin’s Creed Unity” was the fall from grace “AC” was always going to have at some point. Though its story was okay and the design of revolutionary Paris was great, “Unity” was absolutely full of glitches, plenty of them game-breaking. But aside from non-stop frame rate issues, “Unity” had one particularly notorious bug: characters’ faces disappeared, leaving just floating eyes, mouths, and wigs. Ubisoft eventually patched out the face glitch, but it’s remarkable something this insane managed to make it into the finished game at all – though, we use the word “finished” loosely.
Have you ever wanted to go swimming, only to be put off by the hassle of having to go to a pool, get changed, and actually swim? If this is the case, you may want to move to Skyrim, where you’re able to swim without any water at all. This strange glitch saw the world’s NPCs lift off and swim through the air without a care in the world, and depending on what mods you’ve got installed, it can happen to you, as well. The bizarre problem left players looking everywhere for a way to fix it, sometimes by installing mods, sometimes by uninstalling mods, and sometimes by tweaking the frame rate. But of course, Bethesda never tried to patch it out.
Agent 47 is sent to Vegas to take out a corrupt CIA agent, but while there he came across something he never expected: a lobster crate with a very strange message. If you go into the Shark Club kitchen you’ll be able to interact with this crate, which has the description “Allan please add details.” Allan must have completely missed this message from a fellow developer because those details remained nonexistent. Far from being embarrassed, however, the message became an Easter egg in later “Hitman” titles.
For as long as gamers have existed, they’ve been trying to glitch out of the map, and few franchises are as good for this as “Call of Duty.” During the “Charlie Don’t Surf” story mission in 2007’s “Modern Warfare”, if you do a tricky bit of platforming across some broken walls and onto a roof, you’re able to get out of bounds. You won’t find an awful lot out there, just some empty buildings for scenery and, strangely, a lone turret. The glitch was fixed for “Modern Warfare Remastered” but luckily, there are still other ways to get out of the map if you really want.
This isn’t necessarily a mistake because it’s what the devs intended - but perhaps thinking this was a good idea was the real mistake all along. While solving a case as iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, you’re of course accompanied every step of the way by Watson – except they decided not to animate Watson walking, instead having him teleport around the map. The kicker is he only does this when you aren’t looking, creating a very sinister, “Slender”-like experience. Luckily, Frogwares has a sense of humor, and even preserved this “feature” in the remastered version of the game as well as referencing it in a trailer for 2014’s “Crimes & Punishments”.
You may have encountered this weird glitch if you played “San Andreas” through local co-op back in the day. If player two gets their hands on a katana, they can behead player one. Then, if player one quits co-op and goes back to the single-player campaign, CJ will be playable without his head for the rest of the session. And it’s not just that he’s headless, his severed neck will continually spurt blood for as long as you play. Unfortunately, though, CJ’s head will mysteriously return to his body during cutscenes and if you restart the game. If you want to complete a whole run without a head you’ll have to repeat the co-op exploit as often as it takes.
Translating is a difficult job and sometimes mistakes get made. One of the most famous translation errors of all time appeared in the Japanese game “Zero Wing” and its poor English localization when it was ported to the Sega Genesis. You’d be forgiven for thinking this line is the only hilarious mistake to appear; in fact, all the written dialogue seems like it’s been run through Google Translate and then through a blender for good measure. But despite “Zero Wing’s” notoriety, these hilarious mistranslations were never fixed, adding to the charm of the game and the longevity of the meme.
10 Big Mistakes Devs Left in Games
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at 10 big mistakes devs left in games. They’re not bugs, they’re features!
MissingNo.
“Pokémon Red and Blue” (1998)
It can be a little complicated to get this glitch to work, but if you know what to do you’ll be able to trigger it easily enough and encounter one of the most sinister Pokémon in the series. MissingNo is a glitchy, L-shaped mess of a creature that appears because of how “Red” and “Blue” were programmed, and if you fight it on Cinnabar Island it’ll multiply the sixth item in your inventory. This means you can easily farm it and get an endless amount of whatever consumable you choose. Then, in 2017, almost twenty years after “Red” and “Blue”, players were given the ability to transport Pokémon into “Sun and Moon” where they could break the game all over again.
10,000 Watermelons
“The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion” (2006)
It’s not exactly difficult to break a Bethesda game; them being broken is part of the appeal, after all. But “Oblivion” featured one particularly hilarious glitch enabling players to endlessly duplicate items. The most popular item to dupe was watermelons, which led to one player spawning 10,000 watermelons to his location to see how the game would handle it. The answer is, of course, not very well. The watermelon video became wildly popular, with an endless barrage of watermelons raining onto Cyrodil from above and tumbling down the mountainside. Still, at least you’ll never have to worry about getting your five a day again.
Tiny Titan
“Madden NFL 15” (2014)
Christian Kirksey is a 6’2” linebacker for Cleveland Browns - unless you play with him in “Madden 15”, where a glitch renders his character model at a minuscule 14 inches tall. Despite his small size, Kirksey’s stats aren’t reduced at all, meaning the “Tiny Titan” is still capable of holding his own. When the glitch was discovered, however, EA thought it was so funny they didn’t patch it out. This is the exact opposite problem another EA sports game, “FIFA 12”, had upon release, where goalkeepers became ten times bigger. Again though, they retained their stats, so being able to cover the entire goal didn’t actually make them better players.
Faceless Characters
“Assassin’s Creed Unity” (2014)
Plagued by the pressure of an annual release cycle combined with enormous ambition, “Assassin’s Creed Unity” was the fall from grace “AC” was always going to have at some point. Though its story was okay and the design of revolutionary Paris was great, “Unity” was absolutely full of glitches, plenty of them game-breaking. But aside from non-stop frame rate issues, “Unity” had one particularly notorious bug: characters’ faces disappeared, leaving just floating eyes, mouths, and wigs. Ubisoft eventually patched out the face glitch, but it’s remarkable something this insane managed to make it into the finished game at all – though, we use the word “finished” loosely.
Land Swimmers
“The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (2011)
Have you ever wanted to go swimming, only to be put off by the hassle of having to go to a pool, get changed, and actually swim? If this is the case, you may want to move to Skyrim, where you’re able to swim without any water at all. This strange glitch saw the world’s NPCs lift off and swim through the air without a care in the world, and depending on what mods you’ve got installed, it can happen to you, as well. The bizarre problem left players looking everywhere for a way to fix it, sometimes by installing mods, sometimes by uninstalling mods, and sometimes by tweaking the frame rate. But of course, Bethesda never tried to patch it out.
Allan Please Add Details
“Hitman: Blood Money” (2006)
Agent 47 is sent to Vegas to take out a corrupt CIA agent, but while there he came across something he never expected: a lobster crate with a very strange message. If you go into the Shark Club kitchen you’ll be able to interact with this crate, which has the description “Allan please add details.” Allan must have completely missed this message from a fellow developer because those details remained nonexistent. Far from being embarrassed, however, the message became an Easter egg in later “Hitman” titles.
The Out of Map Glitch
“Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare” (2007)
For as long as gamers have existed, they’ve been trying to glitch out of the map, and few franchises are as good for this as “Call of Duty.” During the “Charlie Don’t Surf” story mission in 2007’s “Modern Warfare”, if you do a tricky bit of platforming across some broken walls and onto a roof, you’re able to get out of bounds. You won’t find an awful lot out there, just some empty buildings for scenery and, strangely, a lone turret. The glitch was fixed for “Modern Warfare Remastered” but luckily, there are still other ways to get out of the map if you really want.
Don’t Look Away
“Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis” (2008)
This isn’t necessarily a mistake because it’s what the devs intended - but perhaps thinking this was a good idea was the real mistake all along. While solving a case as iconic detective Sherlock Holmes, you’re of course accompanied every step of the way by Watson – except they decided not to animate Watson walking, instead having him teleport around the map. The kicker is he only does this when you aren’t looking, creating a very sinister, “Slender”-like experience. Luckily, Frogwares has a sense of humor, and even preserved this “feature” in the remastered version of the game as well as referencing it in a trailer for 2014’s “Crimes & Punishments”.
Headless CJ
“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” (2004)
You may have encountered this weird glitch if you played “San Andreas” through local co-op back in the day. If player two gets their hands on a katana, they can behead player one. Then, if player one quits co-op and goes back to the single-player campaign, CJ will be playable without his head for the rest of the session. And it’s not just that he’s headless, his severed neck will continually spurt blood for as long as you play. Unfortunately, though, CJ’s head will mysteriously return to his body during cutscenes and if you restart the game. If you want to complete a whole run without a head you’ll have to repeat the co-op exploit as often as it takes.
All Your Base Are Belong to Us
“Zero Wing” (1990)
Translating is a difficult job and sometimes mistakes get made. One of the most famous translation errors of all time appeared in the Japanese game “Zero Wing” and its poor English localization when it was ported to the Sega Genesis. You’d be forgiven for thinking this line is the only hilarious mistake to appear; in fact, all the written dialogue seems like it’s been run through Google Translate and then through a blender for good measure. But despite “Zero Wing’s” notoriety, these hilarious mistranslations were never fixed, adding to the charm of the game and the longevity of the meme.
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