Many video games have exploits and glitches that can be surprisingly useful to players. The only problem is that they are often too useful and developers are quick to fix them with patches. But there are also cases where unintentional errors gradually become official mechanisms. Howtogeek.com portal speak about victories that have become a tradition.
Leaping bunny and Quake physics are broken
Quake is the most important version of the first-person shooter genre. It marked the transition of FPS to full three-dimensionality, inspired the rise of arena shooters in the 1990s, and of course, became the source of many popular exploits. The bunny hop is probably one of the most famous.
In Quake, the character's speed is often tied to the direction of movement. If you move forward or backward in a straight line, the speed will be limited to the standard speed. But if you swing left and right, the player will immediately accelerate, because the movement is diagonal – and this acceleration can be maintained by constantly changing the direction of the attack. And with the right timing, you can add a jump here – this is what it's called. “strafe jump”, which allows you to fly around the map at twice the normal speed.
The bunny hop is a culmination of these tricks and adds another technique. Instead of continuously holding the forward key, the player must release the key into the air, which further increases movement speed. Although this exploit contradicted the intentionally “realistic” dynamic of Quake, almost every subsequent game in the series retained bunny hops, bomb jumps, and other tricks that exploited bugs in the physics engine.
They were initially kept in the game because id Software did not want to accidentally break Quake's fan-favorite movement mechanics. But then, as other developers started working on the same engine for their own projects, bunny-hopping became an actual feature of the genre.
Rocket jump
Earthquake physics also gives video games the technique of “rocket jumping,” or enhancing jumping by firing a rocket launcher at one's feet. Regarding context, in Quake, as well as many other games of the same genre, the rocket launcher is a powerful weapon with a powerful explosive wave. Even if the player survives being hit by the missile, the explosion will still throw him a certain distance depending on the detonation location. It's not surprising that the gaming community has found a way to use this weapon feature to their advantage.
Like bunny hop, later Quake titles kept the rocket jumping feature and even had cards designed with this exploit in mind. And later this trick also appeared in many other classic shooting games such as Half-life, Halo and Team Fortress 2.
Wavedash and the fighting game revolution
Every self-respecting fighting game has a long list of obscure tricks and must-have feats, especially at the competitive level, and Super Smash Bros. Melee is no exception. In fact, there are so many glitches and exploits in Melee that they require their own text. But even the most remote people have probably heard of the wavedash technique.
Wavedash is a movement trick that allows players to dash around the arena at extremely high speeds. To do this, you need to perform an air dash, a moment before the character lands on the ground – this will make him slide along the landing point. Furthermore, with certain skills, “Wavedash” can be repeated many times, which allows you to move very quickly around the arena – because of this, this trick has actually become the optimal way to play Melee.
Unlike many other popular exploits, Nintendo has fixed the wavedash bug in Super Smash Bros. titles. But that hasn't stopped other developers from adding similar tricks to their games: Rivals of Aether, Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Marvel vs. Capcom 3, even the Tekken franchise.
Clipping is a speed runner's best friend
Clipping refers to any bug that causes objects in the game to bleed into each other. Typically, such bugs are accompanied by minor visual glitches, such as character fur leaking through clothing or background objects coming through walls. But the definition of truncation also includes exploits that allow players to enter locked parts of a game level. When used strategically, these glitches provide an effective way to skip large sections of a level, potentially saving hours of gameplay.
For this reason, cropping is very popular among speedrunners, regardless of the game. However, unlike many other common exploits, it is difficult to name a single project that popularized cropping. Although there are famous examples. As a result, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is full of level-passing feats, just like Super Mario Bros.
Time travel
Some games use the platform's system clock to track game time, sometimes to reflect real time, like Animal Crossing or Pokemon, and sometimes for time-limited events. There are also rare cases, such as Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, that use the console's internal clock to track food expiration dates and allow you to time yourself against specific bosses.
Usually, these games require you to wait days, weeks, sometimes even months to access limited events. But nothing prevents players from simply setting the clock on their PC or console to the desired time, thereby literally moving into the past or future. Similar Animal Crossing and the latest Pokemon punish such blatant exploitation, but the rewards almost always outweigh the consequences.
At Konami
Technically, the famous Konami code is more of a cheat than an exploit, but it comes from a programming error. In case you haven't heard of this legend, in many Konami games you can enter the same code to open up different possibilities: “up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A.”
It was originally added to the NES port of Gradius to make it easier for players to test the game, as entering codes on the pause screen automatically unlocks all power-ups. But then Konami's developers forgot to remove the cheat from the final release version of Gradius – and players quickly discovered its existence.
Later, the Konami code was returned to many of the publisher's game portals. In Contra, it rewards the player with 30 lives, and in Gradius III, it instantly blows up the player's ship. Even third-party developers often add it to their games as a joke or reference.
Street Fighter II accidentally invented the combo
Combos are the heart of almost every modern fighting game, and they wouldn't exist without Street Fighter II. Or rather, there were no players who broke the Capcom release. Initially, Street Fighter II, as conceived by the developers, was supposed to be played like previous fighting games: that is, the characters would exchange single attacks. But fans of the game quickly noticed that certain attacks could briefly stun opponents, allowing them to chain attacks.
Attacks can then be completed with a super move, which was quite difficult to do in the original Street Fighter II. But later versions of the game emphasized this randomization mechanic: they increased the speed of play and added more chained attacks. Unsurprisingly, the combo structure has become an enduring feature of the genre, something almost no other fighting game has been able to do.
