Famous Video Game Bugs, Glitches, and Oddities Quiz

Answer: Final Fantasy

The woman's character sprite was rendered incorrectly. Characters that are not inside rooms before you enter are supposed to disappear when you do go inside. This simulates you being inside the room by making the screen completely vanish on the outside and leaving the room and what's inside as the only thing visible.

Here they got it backward. The woman was accidentally made visible only when you're *inside* a room. And since she isn't in or near a room in the game, she thus becomes the Amazing Invisible Woman.

Answer: The score field

Needless to say, this made the game far too easy for those in the know, and the glitch was removed from all later shipped 'Asteroids' games.

Answer: Zero Wing

The opening cinema sequence of this game provides many laughs with such mangled phrases.

Answer: Guide a snail through a maze

Turn on your Master System without a cartridge and press up and both buttons at the same time to access it. This only works for the earliest Master System consoles as later versions have their own non hidden and documented built in games.

Answer: Tempest

The "magic number" is any six digit score where the first two numbers are greater than sixteen, the middle two are between twenty-nine and sixty, and the last two are zero and six, eleven, or twelve. If the last two digits are something else, all kinds of bizarre effects can happen, from the screen freezing to the game getting put into test mode. Needless to say, the programmers did not have this idea in mind!

Answer: Meteor!

'Astrosmash' started out as an entirely different game called 'Meteor!'. The earlier game was another 'Asteroids' clone. The programmer didn't care for the game much, and the legal department figured that Atari might sue them, since the game so resembled 'Asteroids.' So the intrepid programmer cut his losses by using the existing 'Meteor!' graphics and sound effects to make a new game, 'Astrosmash'.

The programmer didn't want to risk potential bugs and errors by altering the old 'Meteor!' code, so he stuck a branch routine around the opening menu straight into 'Astrosmash'.

The code for the 'Asteroids' clone 'Meteor!' is still in the cartridge. Sometimes if a player hit reset, a glitch caused 'Meteor!' to show up instead! This was a very rare occurrence I am told.

Answer: Grasshopper

You can see the grasshopper's graphic sprites if you enter the test mode. The grasshopper has been completely removed from the actual game itself so don't think that it can be activated somehow!

Answer: Atari 7800

The cart was released with a bug where some of the pieces with which you need to solve the game are hidden under computer terminals but the game will not allow to you search the terminals and collect them. This bug was eventually fixed, but Atari never released the updated version in the United States.

Answer: Bard

Another interesting choice in translation. Next to the Zero Wing gaffes, this quote is often cited as another example of the bizarre translation style that ruled in earlier video games.

Answer: Ghost behavior patterns

The ghosts are programmed to behave exactly the same way in every maze no matter whether it is the first or hundredth time that someone is playing the game. Experts would memorize all the different ghost patterns for each stage and easily breeze through the game. This problem was corrected in the many 'Pac-Man' sequels such as 'Ms. Pac-Man'.

Answer: The Goblin Room

The Goblin Room consists of some goblins sitting around a table and several miscellaneous items scattered around. Trying to grab any of the items leads to the goblins attacking and killing you. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do to get the goblins out of the way.

Answer: You can control the computer frog for one second

The frog becomes controllable in attract mode for about one second when it reaches the very top log.

Answer: Rapidly turn the power on and off with a cart inside

Some Atari 2600 fans use "frying" to study the odd effects it has on their favorite Atari 2600 carts. I don't recommend this myself. It could possibly cause permanent damage to the cartridges and/or console.

Answer: True

Nowadays debug modes are often meant to be used by the player as a sort of "easter egg."

Answer: Moth, Harvard

Grace Murray Hopper was working at Harvard University on the Mark II computer when she found a dead moth jammed into a relay. The poor bug had accidentally stopped the delicate machine cold. She removed the moth, wrote down what happened to the computer in the log book, and glued the moth next to her written explanation. Since then, whenever the machine stopped working, the technicians would say that the computer needed to be "debugged." The page of the log book with the the moth still on it is preserved at the Smithsonian Institution.