In case you missed the news, gamers have found a game breaking glitch in Pokémon: Sun and Moon. If a player saves their game in either the Pokémon Centers or the Battle Tree, the save file becomes corrupted. The next time the game is loaded, the player avatar will be gone or the bottom screen will go black and remain unresponsive. However, as Kotaku reported, the developers were well aware of the glitch and intentionally left it in the game as it only activates when players edit their game using PKHeX. Meaning, unless you are a cheater, you have nothing to worry about.
Developers intentionally leaving glitches in their game is nothing new. Most of the time when gamers think of glitches, they imagine horror stories like the atrocity that was Assassin's Creed: Unity or famous glitches like MissingNo. in the original Pokémon games and all the nonsense that can happen in Skyrim. These are the unintentional result of bad coding and are typically things developers try to remove from their games. Unfortionatly, not everything is caught during alpha and beta testing and some bugs inevitably end up in the final product. However, sometimes, the developers decides not to remove these glitches. While not common, the practice can be traced all the way back to Tetris. These glitches, known as ascended glitches, are intentionally left in games because they are funny, don't damage normal gameplay, or offer a unique feature.
There are many famous examples of ascended glitches. Many of the fun glitches in the original The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64 are well known and beloved by fans. Nintendo developers chose to intentionally leave as many of these glitches in the game as they could when they remade it for the 3DS. Goat Simulator might as well be retitled as Ascended Glitch: The Game. While it was originally made as a joke project, Goat simulator is a game where the bugs are half the fun. Players can wander around the open world and laugh as the rag-doll physics and wonky coding work together to create the most bizarre scenarios you can think of. In the original Quake, players can use rocket launchers while jumping to propel them up and forward so that they can reach previously inaccessible locations and gain a hight advantage on their opponents. This eventually became known as rocket jumping.
Some ascended glitches have actually gone on to become intentional features in video games. Combos in fighting games wasn't a thing until a glitch in Street Fighter II was discovered. If players attack an opponent in the game and then canceled the move by launching a different attack, the player could hit their opponent several times while preventing their opponent from escaping. Another examples was when a difficulty curve was unintentionally added into Space Invaders. In the beginning of the game, the invaders moved slowly. However, as the player progressed, the aliens began to move faster and it become more challenging. This was never intended to happen. What the developers realized was that the hardware was unable to render all of the aliens properly and thus, the frame rate would drop in the beginning portions of the game. As players removed the aliens, the hardware would catch up and the frame rate would increase to its intended speed. One ascended glitch occurred in Super Smash Bros and eventually became a staple move in eSports. The Wave Dash is a move used by competitive players to get an edge on their opponents. This too was a glitch left in by the developers because they figured it wouldn't have any significant impact to the game.
There are two ascended glitches that have become so ingrained into their games that players might be surprised to realized they were glitches at all. In Super Mario Bros., if a player times their jumps correctly, they can leap off of a wall. This allows players to jump higher and farther than normally possible. However, in the original Super Mario Bros, this was a glitch and never meant to be an intended feature in the game. The second glitch is also my favorite ascended glitch. Team Fortress, originally a mod for Quake, designated its two combating teams by color coding their player names either red or blue. However, a glitch in the game would accidentally show one player as a member of the other team. This allowed for some sneaky gameplay to happen. The developers and fans loved the glitch so much, that it actually became a feature in the sequel. In Team Fortress 2, players can choose to play as the Spy and disguise themselves as members of the opposing team.
Of course, not all glitches are intentionally left in games and not all secrets are glitches. The Konami Code for example, was a cheat code used by developers during testing to help them debug the game. It was never meant to be a feature, but became one when the developers forgot to remove the code before it launched. Oops.
Whatever the case may be, glitches and secrets are an integral part of gaming. We can only hope that the glitches we encounter in the future won't break our games.
