Glitches, unexpected and funny moments in Amstrad games!

[Xyphoe]

Glitch videos on YouTube seem to be all the rage today with modern games. It got me thinking about all the silly and unexpected moments, glitches and funnies in Amstrad games.

Or stuff you discovered you could do that you weren't supposed to in the game! (eg reach areas that should be impossible)

I know there are loads but my minds gone blank apart from a couple of things.

eg
Not a glitch, but something which was hilarious to an 8 year old at the time!
Like making Batman fart -




And going on 'things you shouldn't be able to do' how about 'James Bond descends to hell' -




I thought it'd be a fun topic!

What else?

[jbaudrand]

In the pink panther I remember you can use a "trampolin" (don't know the english word it's a jumper) to make Clouseau jump and if you put the trampolin correctly he fall on the wall and stay locked, so you can visit quietly the house

[||C|-|E||]

I remember one very frustrating glitch that usually happened in Camelot Warriors, Abu Simbel, Phantomas II and other games from Dinamic. It turns out that these games do not have scroll, so you go from screen to screen. Problem is that if you exit one screen jumping, for example to avoid an enemy, an obstacle or a trap, the jump continues in the next one. Although this is somehow logic, in many cases you just land on top of another enemy or another trap in the next screen, losing a live. If this happens, the main character will re-appear in the same screen jumping exactly as in before, time after time, always landing on the same enemy or obstacle until you lose all your lives. This is quite frequent, for example, in the second level of Camelot Warriors or in some screens of Abul Simbel/Phantomas II were you have two paths to exit and only one is right, while the other leads to some spikes. I am not sure if they were conscious of this and it was intended to punish the player, but it was really crazy.

I also remember bugs in text adventure games. For instance, you could finish the second part of "La Guerra de las Vajillas" just writing 5 o 6 commands. It happened to me once when I was a kid. Abracadabra also has a glitch when you are in the basement of the castle, I remember that you had to go to hell through a barrel and the parser was not able to understand the command at all, at least in the version I played. These kind of things, in text games, where somehow common, hehe.

[Singaja]

I recall in 1st part of Jack the Nipper occasionally it was possible to jump on the kerb (aka curb) and then keep traveling through the streets not bumping into any people.

[zeropolis79]

In the jungle level on MASK 2, you would fall into the ground and go back and forth so quick you would run out of fuel..

Thundercats level 4, you can go into a machine, go back to the beginning of the level, go up and into the ceiling and 'out' of the screen,  then you can go right until the end of the level without losing any lives.

[CraigsBar]

I remember a very rapid fire glitch in pang on cart.

1 get the Vulcan missile weapon
2 climb a ladder until you just don't come above the top of it.
3 hold down fire

I'll try and capture a vid of it.

[Xyphoe]

In the jungle level on MASK 2, you would fall into the ground and go back and forth so quick you would run out of fuel..

I remember this, can happen in several places - flippin' annoying in an already frustrating game!!

[AMSDOS]

In the opening Round of Codies Street Gang Football I can hold the Fire Button down (without letting go) and run the ball past the Goal Keeper for a Goal, depending on the Dialect from the players, sometimes I might have to fight to get the Goal which is easy enough, once it's in that Dialect phase I can let go of the Fire Button as soon as the Goal Keeper is about to Kick the ball out from his end, the ball reverses back giving me a chance of a second goal, this only works in the 1st Round cause in the second Round you have to Kick (using Fire) for the Goal to Register. Back to the 1st Round Depending on where I've placed the Ball in that Goal, if the Goalie decides to Kick the ball out a certain direction, the Ball Bounces of a Wall and (guess what), back to the Goals, and that will give me a chance of a 3rd unsure if I've ever got 4th, sometimes the Players just say, "Let Play Okay", which Sucks if that occurs & sometimes they'll say their not playing and the game finishes there and there. In the 2nd Round of the game, it's possible to have a 2nd crack of a goal if like in the 1st round it hits a certain part of the wall and bounces back into the Goals. The other Glitch I found in that game was if you scored 10 goals to the Computers 0, Computer would call that a Draw. Obviously the Programmer who wrote the game saw no possibility in anyone scoring 10 goals, I think 14 was about my highest and I also extend the length of the game to 5 minutes per round. 

[alex76gr]

Very interesting thread!

I have one for the Wonder Boy.
At the end of the stage, if you jump when your sprite covers the right edge of the "Goal" sign, the Boy flies up like a rocket.

[Xyphoe]

In the opening Round of Codies Street Gang Football I can hold the Fire Button down (without letting go) and run the ball past the Goal Keeper for a Goal, depending on the Dialect from the players, sometimes I might have to fight to get the Goal which is easy enough, once it's in that Dialect phase I can let go of the Fire Button as soon as the Goal Keeper is about to Kick the ball out from his end, the ball reverses back giving me a chance of a second goal, this only works in the 1st Round cause in the second Round you have to Kick (using Fire) for the Goal to Register. Back to the 1st Round Depending on where I've placed the Ball in that Goal, if the Goalie decides to Kick the ball out a certain direction, the Ball Bounces of a Wall and (guess what), back to the Goals, and that will give me a chance of a 3rd unsure if I've ever got 4th, sometimes the Players just say, "Let Play Okay", which Sucks if that occurs & sometimes they'll say their not playing and the game finishes there and there. In the 2nd Round of the game, it's possible to have a 2nd crack of a goal if like in the 1st round it hits a certain part of the wall and bounces back into the Goals. The other Glitch I found in that game was if you scored 10 goals to the Computers 0, Computer would call that a Draw. Obviously the Programmer who wrote the game saw no possibility in anyone scoring 10 goals, I think 14 was about my highest and I also extend the length of the game to 5 minutes per round. 

Ah yes - this was riddled with bugs!

Check out my vid of it (it should jump to 9min03secs) - [AMSTRAD CPC] Amstrad Soccer Games : A to Z (Part 9) - YouTube
It crashed!

They used the same engine for 2 other football games like 11-a-side Soccer which is exactly the same but on a full size pitch and no fighting!

I do remember another strange bug where the [1] cursor above the player you're currently controlling's head suddenly becoming detached and flying around the screen rendering you totally not in control!

[Xyphoe]

Very interesting thread!

I have one for the Wonder Boy.
At the end of the stage, if you jump when your sprite covers the right edge of the "Goal" sign, the Boy flies up like a rocket.

HA! Awesome, I'll check that out later!

[EgoTrip]

This one I  saw on yolkfolk.com. On Magicland Dizzy, If you drop an item in a specific place on the screen with the devil, you fall through the scenery and down through blank screens past a 31st diamond and onto the haunted swamp: Impossible Dizzy Screenshots! - Page 2

[robcfg]

On Silent Shadow, by Topo Soft, you can assign the same keys/joystick to both players.


Then, when you start playing, just move both planes to the screen border until they overlap. Now you move both planes as a single one, and only one of them takes damage, so you just have 2x number of lives 

[Optimus]

In Barbabarian, the Melbourne House version, I remember there was a way to pass through the wall in the left in the beginning on the game, making you fall in some screens with glitchy tiles (spoiled graphics we used to call them, "xalasmena grafika"). I might try to reproduce it.


Then, Kung Fu master, you have the gorilla boss in the 4th level, and the gameplay rules saw that somehow he is invulnerable to kicks, so you have to use your punch to do damage, and that's fine. But if you decide to use the kicks, besides not damaging him, sometimes there are some weird glitchy graphics on the sprites and once I got a freeze or reset to main screen, so I practically lost my game. I don't know if this is a bug, or some programmer thought "Yeah, he is invinsible to kicks, but what if we do something more cool, more mindfuck to the player, like glitching the game like you broke it or something?".


p.s. Actually my weirdest experience, and I don't know if it was a dream or imagined it, was when something happened with the fruity frank disk, maybe magnetic corruption of data or we imagined it was virus (I didn't know much then), but somehow I saw the purple enemy sprite moving out of the main game area and walking above the scoreboard. I do remember this vividly. It scared the shit out of me, and given we where small, I thought in wild ways about computer viruses, like it's some scary ring shit. But still, don't know if this was possible without corrupting/crashing the game, and maybe I imagined it or dreamed of it.

[VincentGR]

"xalasmena grafika"

[TFM]

In Antitiad you can also move slowly through walls

[Nich]

This one I  saw on yolkfolk.com. On Magicland Dizzy, If you drop an item in a specific place on the screen with the devil, you fall through the scenery and down through blank screens past a 31st diamond and onto the haunted swamp: Impossible Dizzy Screenshots! - Page 2

I remember playing Fantasy World Dizzy when I was young and misjudging a jump on to the crocodile's nose. However, instead of dying when Dizzy fell into the water, he continued to plummet into the upside-down world that lies down the well - except that the world was now displayed the 'correct' way up!

Sadly I've never been able to reproduce the glitch since then.

[TFM]

Is this a bug or a feature?

[AMSDOS]

I do remember another strange bug where the [1] cursor above the player you're currently controlling's head suddenly becoming detached and flying around the screen rendering you totally not in control!

That reminds me a couple of times I used to play that game a lot, I could control the Ball without any help from a player!


It's funny when the game crashes the Timer still continues to count down (even in the video you produced).

[Nich]

Is this a bug or a feature?

If you're referring to my post about Fantasy World Dizzy, then yes, it is definitely a bug. The only way you're supposed to access the upside-down world is by going down the well.

[AMSDOS]

If you're referring to my post about Fantasy World Dizzy, then yes, it is definitely a bug. The only way you're supposed to access the upside-down world is by going down the well.

I think from memory, once I took the existing egg from the 2nd dragon and began breathing fire. I tried bribing the troll with the Apple when he returns later in the game, but it didn't work & I also wanted to hand all sorts of stuff to the storekeeper, but was only interested in the lamb. Love kicking Dozy into the water though, I wanted to see if I could use him as a raft once, but drowned instead.

[remax]

In Vigilante, there was a glitch that allowed to become invulnerable : go to the left, jump in place until you're killed and then you fall to the bottom of the screen and that's it.


You can now walk till the end. I had this game in a compilation, discovered this glitch totally randomly on my first game and finished the game after approx 15 minutes of play... 

[TotO]

Is this a bug or a feature?

A feature, if that deserve the player!
What about the fact to cross the walls (Bruce Lee), when you "bed down" close to them? 

[Shaun M. Neary]

Very interesting thread!

I have one for the Wonder Boy.
At the end of the stage, if you jump when your sprite covers the right edge of the "Goal" sign, the Boy flies up like a rocket.

I used to do this all the time!!



Paperboy: If you timed it well enough, you could cycle on the very edge of the kerb and nothing could knock you off the bike
Shinobi: My CPC464 tape version used to always lock up before I got to the bad guy of level 3.
Treasure Island Dizzy: Used to nuke with a reset anytime I entered the water
Bruce Lee: Keep all your lives, hit 40,0000 and survive to the section where you get five extra lives, your life count goes from 9 to 99.
Bruce Lee: It was actually possible to smell the bulls ass on the first screen!
[attachimg=1]

[Gryzor]

I had played Wonderboy a lot, but don't remember that issue. Lovely


...as is the farting Batman, I guess I wasn't as naughty!