What if they held a boss battle and nobody came?  That's the quandary facing Taito and Codemasters as their latest release, Bubble Bobble Revolution for the Nintendo DS, includes a game-halting bug.  Apparently the big boss battle in Level 30 isn't much of a battle at all because the boss never appears, meaning that the game just sits there on an empty level waiting for a boss who will never come.  The remaining seventy or so levels are unreachable.  Oops!  Go Nintendo has this quote from the publisher and a rather shaky video of the empty level:

"We have been looking very hard into this issue with Nintendo and have now determined that all of the cartridges that have been shipped in North America are faulty.  Needless to say we are extremely sorry that this situation has arisen and would like to apologise to you for this issue.

We have already started the process whereby a corrected version is to be manufactured and will ensure that all customers have their copies replaced. Unfortunately this will take 8-10 weeks (simply because of the time required to manufacture new carts). We will update you with what you will need to do to get a replacement game, as soon as this has been determined."

Hmm, well, good luck with that.  I'm curious how this kind of issue was missed during final testing.  Did nobody on the testing team play Level 30?  I'm assuming here of course that this is an issue in which the game fails to load the Level 30 boss stored on the game card.  I really hope there isn't some programmer out there waking up this morning and slapping his forehead as he realizes "Damn!  I forgot to create the boss for Level 30!"

(via PoisonMushroom.org)