Power Button - Episode 252: Thanksgaming
Power Button - Episode 253: Super NES Classic Plays It Loud

Dirty Coding Tricks Fix Glitches

Mega Man Legacy CollectionEven the most polished game can hide a variety of odd glitches and quirks under the surface.  Over at Gamasutra, Brandon Sheffield has compiled an entertaining list of all of the outside-the-box ways that developers have solved their glitch issues.  Super Time Force is prepared for your madness, an undisclosed multiplatform racing game performs better with a frame rate counter, and Mega Man has to scream at you in silence before his game can begin.  Here's Keith Kaisershot from Digital Eclipse explaining that last one:

When working on Mega Man Legacy Collection for 3DS, I encountered a sound bug I couldn’t track down. Basically, the first sound would either get garbled or not play properly, no matter what sound it was. 

Basically-- 9 out of 10 times when you launched the game, the stinger sound that accompanies the Digital Eclipse [developer of the collection] logo would glitch in some way-- it'd stutter or just not play at all. This was the first sound you’d hear in the game, and I discovered it always affected the very first sound played-- subsequent sounds were fine.

When loading the game before playing that first stinger, play a second of silence. And that shipped.

I love stories like this.  Sometimes a project comes down to the wire, there's an outstanding issue that just can't be properly solved in the time allotted, so something has to give and creative hacks and kludges can achieve the same basic end goal as a time-consuming code teardown.  I wonder what kind of quick fixes are hiding under the surface of my favorite games.  If you can't get enough of this stuff either, there's a discussion happening at MetaFilter that lists more examples.

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