Super Mario 64(SM64) certainly has one or two things to talk about. Not only was it a game that introduced revolutionary mechanics for a newer system, it was also another iconic piece for Nintendo's Mario series. This game is rather well-known amongst all gamers alike.
The funny thing is that this game is completely broken. Sure, it has a bit of leeway since it was one of the first N64 games that came out. However, the amount of collision, geometry, and gameplay problems are hard to overlook.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then perhaps you should take a look at this...
Especially check out 2:02, 3:04, 9:22, and 9:42 as these are the glitches used in speedruns of this game.
Glitches in a game like SM64 can be seen in two ways: an indication of how bad of a job the designers did or simply more interesting easter eggs that the designers put there unintentionally. Depending on who you are, you may have the mindset that exploiting these game-breaking glitches is cheating or you may think it's the coolest thing ever. Whoever you are, these glitches are here to stay.
However, for how broken of a game that SM64 is, very few people could have possibly known some if any of the glitches portrayed above if they were just doing a casual play through of the game. Most people don't think that if you use Mario's long jump backwards that he can gain incredible amounts of speed because the programmers never put a limit on it. They never would have thought that catching the Bomb-Omb as soon as it explodes would aid you in clipping through thin walls. Nobody thinks of these things. And that's just it. Most developers won't make a game to be extremely broken. They make them for the entertainment value (and the money).
I played SM64 as a kid and, to be honest, I never really liked it that much. I guess I never really took the time to learn all of the mechanics and controls necessary to complete certain parts of the game. However, just recently I started playing it again. I can't stop. What got me back into it was the speedrunning communtiy. Something about exploiting major glitches in games to beat them faster than they were intended intrigued me to no end. I never could have imagined that you could squeeze so much replay value out of an old game.
And I guess that's the moral of the story. The glitches in a game are obviously an indication of bad programming, but rarely do we think that we can use them for extra replay value. That's essentially the concept of emmergence: making a game out of a game. It's not necessarily bad that glitches are in a game. There are some glitches that make a game implayable, but that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm not saying that the games industry should throw caution to the wind and program games with poopy framework, nor am I saying that they should odst every single glitch that they come across throughout the game's life. In fact, I don't think they should do anything astray from what they're doing already. It's not the developer's duty to break the game; it's the gamer's.
So the next time you encounter a glitch in your favorite game, don't rage because you may have just gotten the chance to make a game of your own.
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