If These Bugs Are Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right
10 classic glitches that improved games
2/16/2009 6:38 PM | 28 Comments | Page 3 of 5
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Lumines (PSP): Downgrade Your Unit
The bug: Copy a specially crafted, hacker-certified executable file from your computer to the PSP. When the game attempts to load save data, it runs the code in the file instead, allowing you to downgrade your PSP's firmware to an earlier, more liberated version. The exciting process is documented in the footage above, part of
Fidgety Kid With a PowerShot: The Criterion Collection (available on DVD and Blu-Ray this fall).
It's a feature because: This bug doesn't make the games better; it makes the platform better. The arms race between PSP hackers and Sony was a bizarre battle between customers who loved the device and a company that hated them for it. Annoyed that users were playing emulators and homebrew on their PSPs, Sony frantically issued firmware "upgrades" to close holes in its code. Fittingly, the anti-authority Grand Theft Auto gave us the means to flip Sony the bird and revert to firmware 1.5 in all its exploitable glory.
In 2007, when hackers found a similar glitch in
Lumines, the three-year-old puzzle game shot to the top of the Amazon charts, enjoying a sales spike of almost 6,000 percent.
Tecmo Super Bowl (NES) and Super Tecmo Bowl (SNES): Nose-Tackle Dive
The bug: On defense, select the nose tackle as the player you'll control. As soon as the ball is hiked, hit the dive-tackle button. As John Madden would say, "Boom!" Instant sack.
It's a feature because: If Tecmo Bowl is war, the nose-tackle dive is its nuclear option. Not just because it's crushingly effective, but also because this despicable tactic will blow your playing session to holy hell in a mushroom cloud of rage. See, seasoned players of the game tend to be evenly matched. They know every play, every technique, every little edge that can be had in
Tecmo Bowl. All that's left is the mind game, and on that count the nose-tackle dive adds a provocative wrinkle. Yes, you've both agreed not to use it, but can you really be sure? On fourth down, Super Bowl championship at stake, ball on the one-yard line, can you really be sure he won't push the red button? No, you can't, and that keeps an extra jigger of adrenaline pulsing through your bloodstream.
To sidestep the issue, some players enforce a house rule forbidding anyone from even selecting the nose tackle in the first place. Wimps.
