Exploit, bad grammar, and glitch acknowledgement as "tricks"

[Evie ❤✿]

Inspired by Nester, here are errors in games that have later been reconsidered as tricks or features. Which others can we think of?

1. (from Nester): The Wonder Boy in Monster Land game had an exploit where shaking the joystick back and forth could result in more money. The Sega Ages re-release adds a button to do it for you.

2i. and the EN, FR, DE, IT exclusive left-facing shore tile glitch, which allows you to fight Pokémon from the wild grass Pokémon buffer, which will either be the previous data or can be overwritten with three tricks; watching old man's demonstration (player's name determines Pokémon), Link Cable trading (opponent's name and unknown things determine Pokémon), in-game NPC (always includes MissingNo.) trading albeit with different effects. An application of this was referred to as the fight Safari Zone Pokémon "trick".

2ii. The "MissingNo." placeholder Pokémon, manifesting with glitch data (MissingNo.'s sprite and some of its data is really from unrelated program code; just like opening a JPG file in Notepad). The MissingNo. are actually 39 different Pokémon, but 9 have special cries, and 3 use the Kabutops Fossil, Aerodactyl Fossil and Ghost sprites. In the Japanese version, the Ghost sprite MissingNo. is not named "MissingNo." but "ghost" (not "yurei").

(^ Note; very likely Nintendo of Japan knew about it too, with the Select button glitches in Japanese Red/Green/Blue being viable means to find it)

3. The exploit to continuously jump off a Koopa shell in Super Mario Bros. was considered as a trick.

4. This one might not have had Namco's consent to reference. The 2010 Google Doodle featured a Pac-Man game. If you are to proceed to Level 256, you get to see a spoof of the split-screen glitch.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUtM8pwL80o

5. World 9, originally a glitch world Super Mario Bros. with 9-1 as an overworld world set underwater. Apparently Nintendo were so surprised regarding reverse engineering of Super Mario Bros. and their glitch levels (of which one method was to exploit a Tennis Game Pak exploit to access any level), that World 9 was inspired by them. Out of Japan, players would also discover World -1 (actually World 36-1).




Source:
legendsoflocalization.com/super-mario-bros/misc/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N62QPlIX_PQ


6. Wavedashing (Super Smash Bros. Melee). Smash Wiki considers it as an exploit, not a glitch. I heard (but not sure of the details) Super Smash Bros. Ultimate would bring something similar to it back.


By extension, Nintendo have officially acknowledged glitches, sometimes with patch notes. The Minus World (Super Paper Mario) it is believed and "I am error" text was mentioned in Super Paper Mario.

Some vague memory I have also is that either Game Freak/Nintendo like people to find "weird" elements of their games according to a certain interview I forgot. ✿

[nocturnal YL]

Google Doodles that refer to commercial products are fully licensed. Also, there is an official mobile game called PAC‑MAN 256 where the goal is to keep running from the glitched graphics in an endless scrolling level. This glitch is officially recognised.


On wavedashing, SmashWiki has this to offer:

Directional air dodges return in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, bringing wavedashing and wavelanding back as well. However, wavedashing cannot be performed as quickly as in Melee as characters have faster initial jump velocities and directional air dodges have a five frame windup animation. Additionally, wavelanding takes longer due to air dodges having higher landing lag and characters halt at the end of the wavedash rather than retaining momentum fully throughout like in Melee. Also as with other dodges, dodging repeatedly causes the dodges to be executed slower and slower. Because of this, wavedashing is slower and less safe overall. Finally, the boost given by airdodges is impossible to fully transfer into sliding momentum, as during the windup of an air dodge the user pulls back in the opposite direction slightly before moving in the inputted direction, and traction for the entire cast is much higher than previous games, thus virtually all of the air dodge momentum will wear off by the time the character fully lands.

Wavedash is back, but is essentially rendered useless because of changes to directional air dodge.

[Nester the Lark]

I don't know if this has ever been confirmed, but the story for the old PC game Wing Commander II may have been inspired by a glitch in the original game.

Basically, Wing Commander is a space combat game, and in the last mission, there's a part where you have to defend your carrier from an enemy attack. However, there was a glitch that caused the enemy spacecraft to disappear. You could still target and destroy them, but they were invisible. Then, in the beginning of Wing Commander II, it shows your carrier from the first game being destroyed by secret enemy stealth fighters, and it becomes one of the main plot points of the story.

Again, I don't think it's ever been confirmed that the glitch from the first game directly influenced the plot of the sequel, but if it's only a coincidence, it sure is interesting.

Other than that, the only examples I can think of are bad grammar and awkward translations. I get the feeling that this is actually fairly common, but here are a few off the top of my head.

- The most famous is probably the "You spoony bard!" line from Final Fantasy IV. The original SNES version is pretty obviously translated by non-native English speakers. The phrase is actually being used correctly; it just sounds funny. FF4 has been officially re-translated a number of times over the years, but they always keep the "spoony bard" line, though its placement in the scene moves around a little bit. Legends of Localization discusses it in this article.

- In the original version of Resident Evil, a character refers to Jill as "the master of unlocking" because she has a lock pick item. It's one of many awkward lines in the game. The line was replaced in the 2002 remake, but has been referenced in some other RE titles.

- At one point in the original Shantae on Game Boy Color, a character gives you directions on where to go, but the text was accidentally written to say "east" instead of "west," so players ended up going in the opposite direction and got confused. This is referenced in one of the sequels (Risky's Revenge, I think?), where a character makes the same mistake, but this time, another character corrects him and adds "What kind of idiot doesn't know east from west?"

- And in the original version 1.0 of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, when you were fighting Ardainian soldiers, they would yell "Don't forget me!" and "Think you can take me?!" over and over. It sounded kinda funny, and became a meme among fans, but the lines were immediate replaced in the first patch. They were never re-implemented despite fans requesting they be put back in. However, they're referenced a couple of times in the DLC. There's a description for one of the challenges in the challenge mode that directly references them. Also, in the Torna ~ The Golden Country story expansion, Hugo, the emperor of Mor Ardain, will sometimes say "Don't forget me!" during a chain attack.

It always struck me as funny that Nintendo would put in references to something that was permanently removed from the game, so not many people would even understand them.