How did this myth get started?

[Luca72]

Because glitches back in the day were AWESOME. In the days of the N64 I was only half interested in playing the intended game - the real fun started when I tried to break it.

I think this is because I was in like third grade when I got Pokemon Red, and I still recall the day a group of us were huddled around on the playground, passing on the mysterious secret of MissingNo. It was one of those things I wouldn't believe until someone showed me, and then it was like looking into the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

There as also that thing where you could save after losing the Master Sword against Gannon in OoT, then reload and do crazy shit like throw bombs while riding Epona, or float around a map with the hookshot.

 

[Rack]

Mostly because it's largely true. PC games back in the day were extremely buggy but by and large console games were extremely stable. Part of this was down to heavy regulation placed on the market as a reaction to the videogame crash and part of it was down to the fact there's only so many bugs you can cram into 512k of code. SO while there were bugs in console games they were generally oddities that happened on a set of sequences so convoluted it was difficult to discover them by accident.

Anyone who had a PC back then isn't likely to hold this viewpoint, games like Ultima VIII, Ultima IX, Drakkhen and Myth 2 make Skyrim look like the inside of an operating theater by comparison.

 

[Crazy]

The Ocarina of Time is riddled with glitches, what are you on about?

 

[Twilight_guy]

Probably combination of Nostalgia making them remember only the good parts and the fact that games nowadays are far more complex and thus do wind up with more bugs. If programmers have stayed relatively the same in catching bugs over time and games have become more complex then the total number of bugs is multiplied by the increase in complexity.

 

[Kroxile]

I remember a bug from the original super mario bros where I got hit at the very same instance I hit the axe at the end of world 1-4.

When I got to 2-1 the mushroom made me small and getting hit made me big again. I fell into a pit before I got to find out what a fire flower did though lol

 

[Lunar Templar]

honestly?

i think its that they know they can get away with releasing buggy games now a days and just patch it later, all the consoles have 'patch capability' so quality control isn't as tight as it used to be, sure, there where bugs in older games, but very few like what Bethesda constantly turns out

which leads into the OTHER thing. games have gotten more complex on a technical level, so there's more that can, and will go wrong (Murphy was truly a wise man) compared to some of my favorite games (almost all of which are 16bit btw) which are far less complex, thus less to go wrong so the likely hood of something being 'broken' is slimmer

 

[Kargathia]

Current-generation games are more complex on several orders of magnitude, and are released with relatively less QA, as they can be patched after shipping.

Of course there are going to be more bugs. Are there also more bugs when game size and complexity is taken into account? I doubt it.

 

[SextusMaximus]

Bro, chill out. Not that big a deal - plus it's mostly true, mainly because older games weren't as big a scope rather than developers getting lazier.

 

[SonicKaos]

Games are significantly more complicated now than they used to be. If we were still making 16 bit games, there wouldn't be any bugs. They had less bugs in the past because they had less to worry about. Now with our online fanciness and 3d models, there is a lot more that can (and does) go wrong.

 

[TrevHead]

I think a few gliches are totally different from game breaking bugs.

Consoles have always had glitches however most games you could atleast play the game and finish it.

PC has always had game breaking bugs that stop us from playing our games. Most consoles games wouldn't sell if they were broken, because they would remain broken forever.

Imo this gen of consoles have more game breaking bugs, but the important thing is that (those of us with a net connection) we can patch them and fix the glitches aswell. All in all this gen is better for bugs than previous gens imo, especially now we all have the internet to look up game wikis and FAQs so we can quickly find out the systems in play for our games.

 

[Ljs1121]

But no game is unplayable because you're playing it so that makes it playable, right?

I actually don't have much experience with glitches save the odd screenfreeze every once in a while, so I don't know if newer games are more prone to glitching or not. But what I do know is that glitches have always been around and I don't think they're gonna go away anytime soon.

 

[dimensional]

I have never heard anyone say games in the old days were released bug free some were almost (or were) uncompletable because of bugs, Moonstone on the Amiga immediately springs to mind for me, such a fun game but so riddled with bugs.

So this Myth is to me a Myth I have never heard anyone say it, ever let alone a large enough contingent of people to say it and believe it long enough for it to develop into a myth.

You say that people complain games today are released unfinished and buggy well I have heard a few complaints like that and certainly with DLC there is an argument as to what exactly constitutes as complete but it seems like the OP is immediately assuming that because people are saying this about new games they believe old games werent like this (about the bugs anyway old games were always complete in that what was on the disc was all of the game but as for whether the game was of a high enough standard to be considered finished is another matter). This seems like a bit of a leap in logic to me, they complain about new games so old ones were better.

Im sure someone somewhere has said exactly what the Op is saying and meant it but really overall I dont think many people believe it certainly not enough to propagate such a belief.

 

[Smeggs]

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.

That's absolute bull, it has nothing with the devs thinking they can "get away with it," it's the fact that last gen and this gen have huge differences in technology. There's a lot more shit to work with on these new games, for example, all of the graphics need to be so pretty for all the "I can't play a game unless its HD makes my eyes roll to the back of my head" people that of course there will be a few things they miss.

On the second half of your post I do agree, though. The internet and other social media make it a lot easier to spread these glitches around, and of course many people will blow it out of proportion.

 

[TheDoctor455]

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.

Hmm... while it is true that bugs have always been there, they were not quite as pervasive as they are now. Back in the 8-Bit days, bugs were much easier to spot and fix before release because these games were so simple, and therefore, there was much less code to sort through.

As games became and continue to become more and more complex, bugs are going to be more frequent in occurrence because there is more code to sift through. Doesn't entirely excuse bugs being in games now, but it does explain them. Why isn't this excuse games? Well...
remember how buggy Oblivion and New Vegas were? Buggy as hell, a lot of quests are still broken even after all of the efforts modders have put into both games... and the reason given for this is that these games are set in large sprawling worlds, and thus, detecting bugs is very difficult. Again, understandable, but not entirely excusable. Why? Because Divinity 2 was built on the same engine as New Vegas and Oblivion, and yet... I haven't encountered a single bug in it yet. Not even a single performance hitch. It runs perfectly. So it clearly wasn't an issue with the engine. Developers simply need to have decent QA testing, and pay attention to reviews and fan feedback that tells them what is wrong with their game. Same thing with The Witcher - buggy as hell at launch, terrible performance issues... but then they released the Enhanced Edition (for free for those who already owned the original game at that), which eliminated a number of bugs, and vastly improved the game's performance.

Bugs are going to become more commonplace as time goes on and games improve and become more complex. But I'd rather have a buggy masterpiece like Alpha Protocol or New Vegas, with incredibly well-thought-out plots, characters, and story arcs to them than a simple 8-bit platformer about rescuing the princess ad infinitum.

 

[pilouuuu]

I think games are more complex now, so they may have more bugs, but they have always been present. But people were more patient back then and weren't so easily annoyed, so they just lived with the fact that games, as human creations, are not perfect.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Prior to PS1 none of my cartridge games ever froze up randomly, had objects become hidden inside of the geometry on a regular basis, had me falling through the floor endlessly, and have the game be unbeatable because one or more flags were not properly activated.

I have at least 100 NES,SNES,GB,GBC,GBA, and DS games as well as many PS1/PS2 games that run fine 99% of the time. Sure there may be some text errors, and the Dual Blade Shrine/Final floor of the ancient Cave in Lufia 2 are completely f'ed up but thats pretty much it.

I have next to NO PS3 games that don't require patches, and even with them a few of the special ones only work fine 78% of the time.

Loading errors are unfortunately going to happen no matter what, but stupid little things that could be fixed easily that go completely unaddressed just piss people off. Like the bug in Oblivion that prevents you from curing vampirism. It is well known and documented, and unofficially patched. They had all the time in the world and quite a lot of money and resources to fix one flag not working to allow you to give the item needed to the NPC.

In Skyrim the heavy armor set perk not working with Ebony armor, or a few items being totally nonupgradable like the nord bow because it was left out of the appropriate list...these aren't gamebreaking but it shows that they are totally unwilling to fix their own simple errors.

I mean great you added some new content and are charging $20 for it...now could you be bothered to finish the game you put out 7 months and soon to be 7 patches ago?

 

[Hero in a half shell]

In the original Fallout (and most RPGs) Half the perks don't actually do anything, as in they are so bugged they simply don't work. Even better half your skills are also useless. Putting points into stealing doesn't increase your chances of stealing, for example. Gambling is hilariously broken if you bother with your Luck Attribute at all, and there is not enough content granting xp in the game to actually max your character without huge exploits of spawns and quest bugs, of which there are many.
The original Command and Conquer has several bugged bits in the campaign where putting units in certain areas will crash the game. This is shown best in the alien crash site level, where putting a unit near the crash site to secure it (the main mission objective) crashed the game. Bravo.
Games have always been released with gamebreaking bugs and exploitable mechanics, we are just able to hear and complain about it a lot easier with the internet.

 

[Windcaler]

Bugs werent unheard of in the 8 bit or 16 bit generations but they were pretty rare as I recall. Im sure if I took every game made during those times and listed them out there would be quite a few but comparatively Im fairly sure todays age of gaming would have a much greater bug to bug free ratio then either the 8 or 16 bit era. Ill even go so far as to speculate if you combined both era's together you would have less bugs then the current era