How Did Games Update Before the Internet?
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- Опубліковано 20 вер 2024
- Today I wanted to talk about Early Game Updates.
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Patched versions or ‘ Revisions’ were never announced or advertised back in the day and it’s crazy how we are just now realizing that certain old games had different versions. Star Fox snes had different revisions but only a couple of differences are known, I’m sure there are more undiscovered differences
And those minor changes are what would later inspire the Mario 64 creepypasta that led to the "every copy is personalized" meme. There actually were times when your friend's copy of a game would be slightly different to yours.
Mario 64 didn't have any major revisions after its initial release, but other games like Ocarina of Time did. There are at least 3 versions, not counting the updates made for later rereleases on later consoles.
re-releasing games is not DLC.
@@chickenwings6172 who said it was
@@TheJinx64 The guy that made the video tried to insinuate that it was for clickbait. He knows he'd get more views if people thought they'd be seeing dlc. dlc actually did exist for computers and a few console games. But theyre lesser known and more people care about mario. I really dont care tho, the wording is all semantics. There's probably people that learned stuff and enjoyed the video, thats all that matters
@@DavidLopez-rk6em you mean expansion packs?
I'm surprised you didn't mention the berry program update for Pokémon ruby and sapphire, where due to an oversight with how the real time clock in those games worked, berries wouldn't grow for an entire year if the clock was reset. This problem was so bad, that if you had a copy of emerald, fire red, or leaf green, Nintendo included a small program to "update" any ruby and sapphire cartridges that were connected via link cable.
This "update" also didn't actually change anything in the code; it just changed the internal clock to work around the bug.
You could also fix by connecting to Colosseum iirc
@@MrStaffy3 yeah, I think both colosseum and XD had the update on their discs
@@renakunisaki I mean, technically? The RTC was included in the actual game pak, (and controlled a plethora of game mechanics) so In my opinion, that would count as an update even though it wasn't the actual ROM being flashed or anything like that.
Yeah, you could mail your cartridge in for a patch (and a free pokemon), but connecting to other games would fiddle with the clock to fix the glitch otherwise.
Fun Fact:
There where Updates!
The Sonic and Knuckles Cardridge had also Updates for Sonic 3 and Sonic 2 in it
Some small Bugfixes for both Games, and a small revision for Sonic 2, because it wasnt designed with Knuckles in mind
Pokemon emerald did that for ruby and sapphire too!
S3K is literally just S&K running with a specific flag enabled that's set depending on whether it's locked onto sonic 3 or not
Already knew that
Yeah
@@TorutheRedFox Pretty much. It's just S&K with the ability to load S3's assets off the other cart. This is why the S&K music still plays for things like Knuckles and the Act 1 boss, and also explains Tails's improved behavior since it's still using S&K's improved computer-player code.
Life before the Internet is crazy to imagine tbh
Yup,
The internet has made a lot of stuff very simple to do but at the same time, it's cool seeing how people found creative ways to solve problems before the internet was a common thing.
Six likes? Nice
Yeah,but what about life even earlier! Dont u see old movies? The world was black and white!
Vailskibum comment moment
Fun fact, in the mid-2000's, Nintendo had these things in stores like Best Buy or Walmart where if you brought your DS with you, and used DS Download Play, you could play demos of games, but sometimes, you could also get new characters and power-ups in games. That's what I think of as one of the first ways to get DLC in a video game.
Oh yeah, I remember this. You could do that through the Wii's Nintendo Channel, where you could connect your DS & Wii together over the internet, & send demos of games straight to the DS.
The Dreamcast had the earliest example of dlc on console
@@koolaid33 I used to download the sonic colours demo and kirby mass attack all the time
@@Brushedmetal69 Sega also technically had the earliest ways to download games called the sega (I think the snes had one to)
@@ajaxmaxbitch yes the Sega channel and SNES satellaview were ahead of their time for sure but super costly
Swordless link was the most game breaking bug that was fixed after 1.0. If you saved after Gannon knocked the sword out of your hand and reloaded you’d come back without a sword, letting you use all items on epona and it also triggers a ton of other crazy things
I mean you can still do swordless link on 1.1 and 1.2 but that specific method doesn’t work.
How did it break the game?
@@r0bw00d it's another method to do BA and RBA
@@r0bw00d
You could do things like use C-button items while on Epona. This could then enable you to remote control Epona while on foot, teleport to Epona with the press of a button, and a bunch of other things. It also made it possible to turn OoT into an FPS. Also, I don't know why people say you can't do these things outside of version 1.0. I have both Collector's Edition and Master Quest, and you can do the Hover Boots trick to steal the Fishing Rod, and save and reload for Swordless Link, and the versions on GameCube are version 1.2.
I actually just read a very pertinent article a few days ago about this. I'm pretty sure it was an interview with a Metroid Prime developer who talked about a game-breaking bug in some versions, and he mentioned that their solution, pre-internetted console, was to contact them and have a new disc mailed to you. He said it was one of the only ways to "patch" a game back then. Of course, I can't find the interview now, so you'll have to take my word for it
Oh! I just found it. It's a note on the bottom of an article about how the dev kit would have issues running for more than a few minutes, so they had to put it in the freezer for a while before they could take it back out and use it for a few more minutes. The bug wasn't game-breaking, but it involved graphical issues that occured when the game was played on certain Gamecubes that were shipped with faulty CPUs.
On diskett games that was commonplace since the 80's
In Japan there was digital TV earlier than in the U.S., and you could get game content from a local TV relay.
Sounds like BS to me but a radical dream to be sure
@@mosquitopyjamas9048 he might be getting it mixed up with the satelliview, which did let you "download" (more like stream) broadcasts of certain games at certain times of day to the Famicom.
@@mosquitopyjamas9048 BS The Legend of Zelda, normally called the 3rd quest
@@NotOkayChamp I know, I was referencing BS Radical Dreamers which was on that
@@mosquitopyjamas9048 I saw what you did there, lol. The games from Satellaview were called BS games, I do believe.
Kirio: The most iconic remixes are of course...
Me: The Street Fighter II series! (Championship Edition, Hyper Fighting, Super, Turbo, etc)
Kirio: The new versions of the Pokemon series.
Me: Sure...
Don't worry, I didn't forget about those games! In fact, originally I was gonna talk about them in this video, but the video got waaaay too long cause the backstory behind those games and why each version was made is super interesting. I'll be sure to bring SF2 up in a follow up video!
@@kirotalksyt A follow up video? Or...dare I say...a video patch?
@@NickWrightDataYTa REMIX
@@ChunkPlay Super How Did Games Update Before the Internet Turbo
@@kirotalksyt This video wasn't long bro, it could have went on another 20 minutes and it would still be short for a video on this topic
This is quite the coincidence. My wife and I had a wonderful time this morning before I went out to work and I decided to surprise her by turning on the switch and loading up the N64 online service because I know she loves ocarina of time. She's used to the 3DS version is that's the one she was familiar with even though we both grew up in the 90s, but yeah she's now playing the N64 version on the switch now and then you upload this video and you mentioned the different versions of the original ocarina of Time which even more funny my wife and I had talked about how there are different versions of the game and that I'm quite certain it's the final version of ocarina of Time where they took out the Islamic chants in the fire temple. I remember playing ocarina of Time on an N64 cartridge that had that original chant. I think it's awesome and I think it's too bad that Nintendo felt the need to remove it.
@@SheepStar8 To those who are sensitive.
@@SheepStar8fact’s do not care about you’re feelings. And never will in any matter.
@@SheepStar8 eh I dont think people cared too much, I think its just because Nintendo just wanted to
@@unemptie The reason no one cared is because it wasn't released in islamic countries at the time. And those "chants" are very holy in islam so just using them in remixes is very disrespectful.
So when you might not care. Which is 100% reasonable and your right, someone else closely indulged in that culture might be offended and Nintendo didn't want to upset anyone.
@@zkaine7083 So by that logic saying racist stuff isn't bad. People are just too sensitive.
Speaking of the n64...
Developer Rare (also known as Rareware) while developing banjo Kazooie
the devs discovered that when you remove a game from an n64 (that's still on)
The console's memory will still contain data from the game
the team realized that you can transfer the data From the game you removed into another one
by simply removing the cartridge and putting in another one quickly
So this means if you have a specific item that tells you to "stop n swop" in banjo Kazooie, remove the cartridge of banjo Kazooie then put banjo tooie (for example) in your console then the game will reward you for "stopping n swopping" and give you a particular item in banjo tooie
This was going to be used in other rare titles like...
Blast corps
Donkey Kong 64
Conker's bad fur day
Banjo kazooie and Banjo tooie
Perfect dark
Unfortunately, the feature never happened because when they told Nintendo about this they told them that this could eventually brick some n64 consoles
Another reason why stop n swop didn't happen is bec it took older models of the n64 10 seconds to clear data from the last game you put but on newer revisions of n64, these took about 1 sec to clear the data/ram of the game which made stop n swop technically impossible
Edit: stop n swop ended up happening in the xbox 360 release of banjo kazooie and tooie (plus banjo kazooie n&b),
Later edit: I added another line of why stop n swop didn't happen
No, the problem was that the "data swapping" was possible because the ram took around 10 seconds to clear its data after you turn off the game
But in newer n64 consoles the window of time was only 1 seconds because of minor differences in the newer models
@@antusFireNova That's actually the second reason why stop n swop didn't happen
Maybe it can be brought back for the Nintendo Switch version.
I was just about to comment about this exact... feature, or unfeature? haha
You beat me to it.
Yeah, the feature was programmatically disabled in the final ROM releases of the Banjo-Tooie game, since the swapping ability was an undocumented feature and not part of the console's actual hardware specification. After Nintendo improved boot times in the N64 hardware revision, this made the Stop'n'Swop feature practically impossible to activate and could cause unwitting consumers to break their game or N64's cartridge ribbon connector and in worst case scenarios cause shortage and potential injuries.
Nintendo is very serious and strict when it comes to differences in hardware revisions and undocumented behavior. They reject games during LOT checking if the game's program performs these 'illegal operations' (hence the name, though they didn't coin it).
On a similar note:
The original GameBoy had an area of RAM-memory that acted as a mirror, essentially. Writing to, say address $C390 would cause the same data appear, or “echo” at address $E390. That's because the DMG only had limited work RAM to reduce cost and the unoccupied memory addresses would loop back around.
[I believe development units actually made use of this extra address space.]
Since this was a quirk of the first model GameBoy and not a hardware feature, Nintendo warned developers not to read from our write to this “mirror RAM” as future GameBoy revisions that don't feature this quirk will cause to game to no longer operate.
I love how, to this day, Nintendo puts disclaimers on their boxes warning against the usage of unlicenced third party peripherals, stating they may cause the system to become “unoperable”. That might actually be the case, though they just want to scare people away from committing piracy...
That was my grandpa story time. Time to go back to complaining about modern games, lol.
If only they managed to implement the feature using memory paks or something similar. Ratchet 1 and 2 did something similar to this with the weapons.
A lot of ideas for Ura Zelda ended up in Majora's Mask too! Stuff like the Bottom of the Well and the Spider Houses were originally part of Ura Zelda, which we learned from the Gigaleak.
I'm glad they put the well in the normal game. I have treasured childhood memories of getting traumatized by the Dead Hand. (At 8, I was not ready for a gross hand thing with _flat_ teeth the size of my torso.) I've loved horror games ever since.
@@wareforcoin5780 At least it shows up again in the Shadow Temple, so you would've gotten to meet it regardless.
American Pokemon Red and Blue use Japanese Blue as the base. It's rumored that Japanese Blue came about because Green/Red's programming was so weird that the game couldn't be translated to English without causing major bugs and had to be completely reprogrammed. So they took the time to fix the sprites and things for the English release as well.
The bugs themselves were thought of very differently by the players in the era before patching was available. Because most of us were kids who knew little to nothing about software development and because the bugs that made it into releases were rarely game-breaking and often hard to trigger by accident, they were often referred to as secrets or tricks rather than bugs and even official publications like Nintendo Power acknowledged them and framed them this way.
In the 90's, magazines like Computer Gaming World, PC Gamer and a few others had CD's where you could find demos, and patches for popular games.
The fact that they literally re-release games but with a few fixes is something big brain.
This dude can always show us something new and i love it.
re-releasing games is not DLC.
@@chickenwings6172 this ^^... Calling this DLC is lying or at least being dishonest. These were bugfix releases, enhanced editions, etc sold AS THE SAME PRODUCT as the original version. In general, there was no indication on the packaging of which version was inside - you had to look on the startup screen for any hints. Sometimes there were no obvious version numbers, etc displayed on screen so you had to look for minor gameplay changes and similar. For PC games, there was a small amount of patching available to power users - but 90% or more of people had no idea they even existed. BBSes and FTP servers were where you'd go to get a patch for Commander Keen from early 90s through the whole early Internet era. I remember getting a lot of patches for friends - I'd see a patch for a game or program I knew somebody owned, I'd grab it and pass it on. Sneakernet for the win most of the time back then.
Also, sometimes Computer Shopper and similar magazines would release compilation CD-ROM discs that contained thousands of patches to popular software. You'd get it for free with the magazine.
Sometimes the bugs were really bad. I remember bugs that had games that could delete save data. Glad those can be patched nowadays.
@@chickenwings6172 you fucking destroyed him lmao
Street Fighter 2: buy an entirely new fucken cabinet for this shitty rerelease of a game that will take up so much fucken ass space just so that you have more than one version of the same bullshit in this arcade that you have to pay every square foot for!
I remember the DLC in the original Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast. Crazy to think that it was actually data already on the disc the entire time, just unlockable through prompts downloaded from SegaNet. Still a cool early form of DLC though. 😌
Amazing and informative video! It was a joy to watch something like this. Keep up!
An example I can think of is the Silent Hill 2 greatest hits version or the director's cut in other regions. This version added a completely new side story called Born from a wish where you play Maria before she met James. It also introduced a few minor enhancements which pretty much makes it the superior version.
Same with #Fable Vs Platinum;
"Fable; Lost Chapters" Version!
The Xbox version of the game got those extras for free which it was common back then XBOX and Gamecube ports usually got extras the Ps2 lacks
Weirdly, the pre-1.2 chanting version of the Fire Temple song still exists in the 3DS port's filesystem, with the samples re-run in higher quality just like the songs you _do_ hear!
The Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire berry glitch fix was a cool example of this. You could connect your game and GBA to a newer Pokemon game, a GameCube Pokemon game, or an e-Reader card in Japan
the good old days, where when you bought a game, you got the whole game and weren't constantly being tapped for DLC
Miss the 80's/90's
The good old days when games were more expensive than they are now and the majority could be finished within an hour or two? And as stated in this video, you would need to repurchase the entire game in most cases if you wanted a bug fix? Or before the internet was mainstream and you would purchase demo discs fot PC in order to get patches (so essentially paid patches) or wait until the game hopefully got an expansion which would cose more than most full game releases now and generally add about as much content as a 20 dollar DLC these days? The good old days when games were made to be extremely difficult just to add to the low playtime, and to encourage peopel to spend money phoning their help lines to get tips and cheats?
I'm being facetious of course, and obviously my points don't ring true for all old school gaming, but I just like pointing out that not everything was roses back then too. Nostalgia makes the past always seem better. It's 'back in my day' syndrome, and I do it too haha... But I try to be critical and realistic when I can. The facts are: Gaming was more expensive in the past, the games were much simpler and shorter, the games weren't frequently updated and there were other predatory things happening (artificial difficulty to sell guide books and overpriced phone tiplines). Not to mention that games back then were SO simple they were made with a smal lhandful of people compared to literally hundreds of people these days. Games now generally requiring so much extra budget for professional sound stages, hiring bands and orchestras, getting A-list actors for voice lines, and all the pay for the hundreds of specialist devs, all in a much more competetive market than back then.
With all that said, there's plenty of indy games these days that don't go too crazy with DLC... Or companies like Fromsoft with Dark Souls, Sekiro, Elden Ring etc only having large expansion style DLC. So all is not lost if you know where to look!
I feel like today's update patches have become both a blessing and a curse. They allow for frequent updates, some larger scale than others. However, because they exist some publishers simply don't prioritize releasing generally bugfixed products, but rather opt to rush the games out so they can start earning money and use the early sales as ways to identify bugs to patch later. I'm okay with early access when they are up front about it, but if something is being sold as the full, finished game then yes, it's reasonable to expect patches to come later, but the game should be held to a much higher standard of quality and completion compared to early access as well.
Not to mention that a lot of glitches were either minor or cosmetic in older games, or if they were game-breaking, you'd get a completely new revision released, and you still had the entire game on a cartridge or disc. These days, you're much more likely than in the past to get a game that is so buggy it feels unfinished - or actually IS unfinished - to the point where the game is close to unplayable or completely unplayable without downloading updates. If you don't have the ability to update the game for whatever reason, or you decide to revisit the game in the future after updates for the game are no longer distributed(this is rare on consoles, but it's not uncommon to have to get patches for old PC games from sites meant for no-CD patches), you straight up won't be able to play the game.
@@Unregistered.HyperCam.2 There's also the case of games simply getting abandoned before they're fixed/finished. They release, advertised as the full game but riddled with bugs and etc. and then never actually get all of these issues fixed before the devs abandon support for the game.
actually the date for when the first super mario bros game came out isn't known, it's just known it was sometime september or october 1985 (can't remember which month but it was confirmed one of those)
Yeah, that is really weird! In the video I just used the official date Nintendo gave.
Honorable mention- Halo 2 had an update where you had to buy a different disc, the Multiplayer Map Pack. It would install on your xbox hard drive
I had that. Seemed odd they couldn't just patch the game via Xbox Live in retrospect.
@@Syndicate_01 i have a friend who said you could download it from live for free, but I didn't play online and played with lan setups
Fun fact, in the early 2000's, Nintendo put out these cards for the GBA that you could scan with a special card reader called the E-reader, and you could get new levels and stuff in games if you scanned a certain card. That's what I think of as one of the first ways to get DLC in a video game.
the Pokemon games had a whole area which was kinda empty but got rare pokemon by scaning cards. And new trainers ....
The Super Mario 3 on GBA also got a BUNCH of new levels.
@@Zanji1234 It gets even better with Pokemon, as there were E-Reader cards for Colosseum as well.
And I can't forget about the Pokemon TCG having E-Reader codes on cards during gen 3, with a long code that had a mini game (or a part of one), and a short code that had pokedex information.
On some cards, instead of a minigame, there would be something that could help in an actual game, such as a coin flipper, or a battle timer, or even a hidden attack or ability that utilised random numbers for their effects.
Oh I remember those. Never used it but thought it was interesting back then.
Still have mine in actually. Just found it a month or two ago
curious if thats really DLC
and not just an unlocker...
Back in the early 80s developers used to publish 'patches' and 'bug fixes' as lines of code in computer magazines, and you would type the code in yourself.
while frustrating, having the limitations of (for the most part) not being able to update games then made it so they couldn't just release a half baked game then eventually update it later, which seems to be a popular thing with newer games
Yeah nowadays it's automatically updated before you play. IDK games had to be top notch before they were pressed on cds. On cartridges I guess they could be reflashed
games still had bugs but compared to today its like way way less. its like if the game already received over 10 patches, and only the minor ones are left.
Younger viewers don't know this, but it used to be that when you wanted a game, you gave someone money, and they gave you the game, and that was it. No exclusive pre-beta, alpha testing, DLC, addons, in game purchases, or anything else. Just a game. But, the games almost always worked.
Sonic and Knuckles is basically a DLC.
If you ever bring this topic up again as like a part 2 or something, you NEED to look into the Nintendo Satellaview, Sega Channel & eventual Sega Net on the Dreamcast. I only know so much about the first two, but with the Dreamcast Sega Net, they actually added brand new content to so many games through the console's built-in modem! Sonic Adventure & Phantasy Star Online are great examples, as both had seasonal updates that the company would release through the internet, along with new challenges to win items, new areas to explore in Sonic Adventure, and much more. Hell, Seaman had an official Christmas update published that you could get via a Christmas Dreamcast bundle in Japan, or (I believe) through Sega Net. Also, many PC games that came to the platform, like Unreal Tournament, used the internet to release patches too! Super cool what they used the internet for, and many games have added content very few own today!
Edit: I know it's been over a year since I wrote this comment, but I should include RANDNET for the N64DD, and the Sega Net Link for the Sega Saturn. Both sort of operated like the Satellaview, Sega Channel and Sega Net of the Dreamcast.
don't forget around the same time there was randnet for n64 dd
@@BASEDSAKRI RANDNET and the Sega Net Link for the Saturn were also good inclusions, thank you random internet person!
I do recall there being a ZX Spectrum game that launched with a game-breaking bug, so they ended up sending POKE to magazines that they would then print and tell users how to apply; not unlike an update patch.
I also heard somewhere that expansion packs for PC games were distributed on floppy disks (so, more like a DLC than Sonic & Knuckles was), and that there was a bug-fix distributed on E-Reader cards for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. As well as fixing the bug, it also gave you a free Shiny Zigzagoon. A similar patch patching tool was also included in FireRed, LeafGreen, Emerald, XD, Colosseum and I think the PAL version of the the best Pokemon game ever made - Pokemon Channel - for users to apply to their saves, but those games sadly didn't include the Shiny Zigzagoon.
Oh that's cool. I'm not as familiar with PC games, so that's one area I wanna explore more. I have heard of the bug fix you were describing for Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire! That's something I can talk about in a future video.
@@kirotalksyt yeap! He is right! Back in the day there's was a lot of expansion packs for PC games that were sold on big boxes like regular PC games, not even on the floppy era but on the CD era too.
So you had to buy the game and the expansions at the store.
I remember that happened with Diablo (idk if it's the OG or 2) and the first The Sims.
I didn't played on PC at the 90's~2000's but I had friends who did and I remember seeing these expansions packs at their places and talking about that and it was a novelty for my console focused brain! Having the same game updated with more features! It was just insane!
It was always funny to me how the first generations of pokemon kept updating the front facing sprites and ONLY the front facing sprites, specially in yellow it's really noticable how some pokemon back sprites make no sense if you're not aware of the original designs from red and green
I feel like you should have talked about the e-reader & gameboy player for a few reasons, it was one of the ways to fix the berry glitch in pokemon ruby & pokemon saphire, it gave us levels & powerups in SMA4, transfer chao from the advance games to the chao garden in the adventure games, unlockable content from the mario kart double dash bonus disk, unlockable jirachi from a gamecube disk. Nintendo hardware did alot physical dlc, thats still being used to this day in the form of amiibos.
Sadly the e-reader was never released in Europe, due to poor sales in the US. Nintendo even hacked out the e-reader functionality from the EU version of Mario Advance 4, so you couldn't import an e-reader and cards!
@@Tomsonic41 At least the rereleases of the port (🤨) on the Wii U Virtual Console and Nintendo Switch Online make the new levels available by default without any additional work.
In Gran Turismo 2, the NTSC v1.0 version had bugs.
One of the famous bugs was having the Vector M12 in the Trial Mountain Endurance race.
The Vector M12 had over 500hp, yet their was a HP limit for this endurance race of 295hp.
These bugs were fixed in NTSC v1.1 and v1.2, but PAL v1.0 did not have these bugs since PAL versions always were released later than the NTSC releases.
The greatest enemy of my childhood was always trying to figure out if I owned a 1.0 or 1.1 version of a cartridge when I was inputting codes on my N64 Gameshark.
As a kid I had the German version of Harvest Moon: Back to Nature on PS1. I'm not sure if other regions had this bug, but my version simply broke after the marriage and I couldn't play any further. I had to contact the German publisher and they sent me a new CD with the patched version for free.
I also live in germany but my father usually bought games from dubai due to his business trips (and since they were usually cheaper copies it was less costy than buying original ones in Germany and some games were existing that weren’t in europe yet)
I had the US Version of that Harvest Moon and didn’t have that problem at all
Back in the day companies actually cared about their games without monetizing the shit out of their IP
No, they just didn’t have a way to monetize the shit out of this IP.
In many ways, I prefer how things were in the 90s where games were shipped and it wasn't possible to update them. This meant that the games HAD to work at launch. No patches, no roadmaps, no excuses. Of course, games were also far simpler back then than they are now, on average. Each era has its pros and cons.
One of the last cases like this that comes to mind is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. 1.0 discs came with a bug that basically rendered the savefile unfinishable if you did the dragon missions in a certain order (I don't remember the specifics, my copy came already patched, I tried doing that), a patch was created through a channel on the eshop, which allowed your save file to be completed, kind of janky if you ask me, and later prints of the game came with the issue already fixed
through the official eshop or through homebrew launcher?
@@SAZERU through the official Wii shop. Since the Wii could not do patches in the way the other consoles did, the Skywards Sword Update Channel was a way to fix your save file AFTER you triggered the bug.
If you happen to have a launch copy of the game, your disc will always do the game breaking bug, as the patch only fixes a broken save file, it can’t prevent it from breaking in the first place, that was fixed through later prints of the physical disc
@@DocTime56 that's wild!! what triggers makes the game breakjng bug occur? i feel bad for the kids who got stuck there and never beat the game
@@SAZERU IIRC, it was the dragon missions, but don’t quote me.
At some point past mid game, you have to visit 3 dragons (one in each region of the surface), and you are free to visit them in whatever order you want.
If you did the lightning dragon first, then the other two would not appear, thus rendering you unable to advance further into the game.
@@DocTime56 thank ya dude!!! hella cool n informative info drop, thank ya!!
I liked gaming on PC because back then you could install updates from the publisher's website. Mafia 1 originally released in 2002 and actually had a PC patch you could download that made a difficult racing mission much easier. Rayman 2 on PC released in 99 and I remember downloading a patch because I kept getting anti-piracy message even though my CD was in the drive, so the patch fixed the false alarm. There's probably hundreds of PC games that got patches in the dial-up era, there were definitely a lot of the original MMORPGs that had constant updates.....
But for consoles it's so strange to think that it took until the PS3/360/Wii generation to get online patches for games (edit: not counting exceptional circumstances like Nintendo Satellite or Dreamcast). There's a lot of PS2 that had game-breaking bugs that could never be fixed unless you mailed your memory card to Sony during that time period. Like Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy on the PS2, it had a game-breaking bug where if you saved, then got a game over before the next save point, then loaded the save a dor required to progress would be permanently shut for that save do you'd have to start an entirely new game. Thankfully fixed with its GoG release!
Yup, as somebody who grew up in the 90s (yes, I'm old)...they generally didn't. The game you got was the game you got, if there were problems hopefully they got fixed in the sequel.
They might do a re-release later in rare cases but you'd have to buy the game again and games were actually more expensive back then.
Did you watch the video though? Revised updated versions were pretty common, they just didn't didn't make it well known. It's why you often see (Rev 1) and such in rom filenames. Disk and tape games for home computer formats also were often easily fixed by sending the game back to the publisher and they'd send out a fixed version. Even if it was a game that had no fault on it's original release but had become incompatible with a later model of the same system. Like I've said elsewhere on here, I bought Lotus 2 Turbo Challenge for Amiga but it didn't work on the Amiga 1200 I owned which came out long after that game had (which worked perfectly on the Amiga 500). Most Amiga 500 games worked fine on the 1200 but for Lotus 2 (and a few other games) I sent the disk to the publisher (in this case Gremlin Graphics) and they sent me back an updated version that fixed that issue and worked perfectly on my Amiga 1200 (and still worked on the A500).
@Carn I think both of you are right. As the video and you both mention, revisions would patch issues, but I think their point is that the physical copy of the game in your possession isnt likely getting patched.
Only because £30 bought you more.
A couple of fun update you didn't mention:
Jet Set Willy's 'Attic Bug' was fixed via publishing a series of POKE commands in magazines, basically meaning players had to type the code for the patch themselves when loading the game.
Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire had a berry glitch where after 365 days the berries stopped growing, with the fix being disseminated mostly by connecting to other pokemon games (Emerald, Fire Read/Leaf Green, and basically any Gen 3 Gamecube game I think were the main ones).
2:49 The first Little Big Planet game had basically the same problem back roughly around 2007 or 2009, the music track _Tapha Niang_ was originally lyrical but they had been given death threats from extremist Muslim groups due to the lyrics referencing the Quran, they switched to the instrumental version in future releases.
So there's still disk versions that have the lyrical version that you can find, I'd imagine that would be talked about in lost media videos here at some point if nobody had archived it already.
Pokemon Blue wasn't just an update to Red/Green; It starred as itself when it came to the US and obviously shared its codebase with our version of Red. Never knew it was that hard to get a copy in the old country, though.
I've always wondered about this,cause they couldn't give up updates or patches back in the 90's and early 2000's like we can now,this answers alot of questions I had over the years
Don't forget, they would do updates through sending your cartridge in. WWF No Mercy had a bug that deletes your mall cash if you grind a bunch of matches and do certain things, this was big enough that the company did a "recall" and the players had the choice where they could send their copy in and have a new one sent back with the updated rom on the chip. This made the usa-01 versions of this game which are grail like and rare. I couldn't imagine sending my game in back then for mail order repair.
I did have a storm short my n64 and I sent it in for repair. I really want to check the serial on that one to see if it matches my launch box.
I hated that about No mercy. I could never unlock the Godfather's ho because she was the most expensive character in the shop. How was a kid supposed to know that we could send in the cartridge for a repair?
The takeaway is that updates where either very low-key, or rolled into special events/gimmicks. For the majority of gaming, it was important to iron out game breaking bugs before the inevitable perma-shipping.
incredibly engaging video 😭
As early as 1992 I was downloading fixes for PC games from BBSs, and I imagine someone on the Web was cataloging them already by that point. Unpopular does not mean nonexistent, haha.
Yes I remember requesting patches via irc. That and the era of open source software where you could fix it yourself if you knew how then distribute it to others
Really surprised the berry glitch and pokemon Emerald being used to update pokemon Ruby and Sapphire to fix the berry glitch wasn't mentioned
Edit: it may have been fire red leaf green, not emerald
However pokemon colloseum and xd gale of darkness will also automatically fix the glitch if ruby or sapphire are linked
Very interesting! I never knew that people downloaded new pokemon into their cartridges during special events. I also think the lock-on technology used for Sonic & Knuckles is really cool and unique.
fun fact: Pokemon on gba GOT updates.... Ruby and Sapphire had a bug were the ingame time stopped. Therefore the Update was on Emerald and fire Red leaf green which could easily be accessed. Also you could send your cartridge in to get a shiny pkm.
Turok: Rage Wars for the N64 also had a gray cartridge variant which was meant to be a replacement for the black cartridge.
The black cartridge variant was the retail version. It has a bug in it that prevents you from completing certain missions. Those missions will say that you failed them every single time even though you actually completed them successfully.
Back in the day if you called Acclaim, they would have you ship them the black cartridge, and they would ship you back the gray cartridge variant with the bug fixed.
Most people didn't know about this program because Acclaim was in the process of going under so they didn't advertise this replacement program.
Back in 2012, somebody bought a storage unit previously owned by Acclaim, that had about 120 of these gray cartridges in plastic baggies brand new. They sold each cartridge on eBay for $15 each not knowing what they had.
A few years ago they were going for $180 each. I managed to find two of them in the wild.
They now go for closer to 900 bucks
Back in the the day games released and they were final, there was not such thing as update patches or DLC if a game had bugs or glitches then that’s just how the game would be (for better or worse) and there likely would be no saving it, unless it gets a remake.
Sonic 3 and Knuckles
Yeah, nah. It's impressive how many of these "updated versions" actually existed back then. They don't nowadays for the most part, specifically because it is so easy to patch a game in real time now.
Did you not watch the video?
@@theonecallednobody9772 lmao. Right?
Brandon, watch the video. Countless games got updated and fixed and sold but most consumers didn't know about it and they were sold in the same box (usually with only a serial number being the key difference) When you see roms with (Rev 1) in the filename showing it's a revised version. Cassette and disk games on home computer formats also got updated usually by the customer sending the game back to the developer. Even if there was technically 'nothing wrong' with the original release. For example I had Lotus 2 Turbo Challenge for Amiga 500 but it didn't work on the later Amiga 1200 even though that computer should run most if not all Amiga 500 software. I sent the Lotus 2 disk to Gremlin Graphics who released it and they sent me an updated Amiga 1200 compatible version.
This was really interesting and really well made. 👍 I can see your channel blowing up eventually if you keep going. Only 32 videos and 25k subscribers is huge.
This video is very interesting, has a ton of insight.
Another game that had a re-release was Fable. I have both versions. After beating the original game, there wasn't much to do except mindlessly exploring the world as the game was essentially lacking in content. At some point, the game was eventually re-released, and its title was changed to Fable: The Lost Chapters. Adding a second expanded story right after the end of the first one, adding new areas, weapons, spells, and other content that wasn't in the game originally. As well as removing some rocks in the guild, which restricted where you could go just before the end of the game and made Jack's voice deeper to sound more menacing to list a couple of changes. Fable Anniversary also adopted the content in The Lost Chapters as well as updated graphics and bonus DLC in the xbox 360 store. Funny enough, certain glitches in the game are still possible to do in The Lost Chapters and in Anniversary. Halo 2 was another game that had bonus dlc, but in the form of a second install disc called the multiplayer pack. This would not only add extra maps but also come with bonuses like behind the scenes content and patch the game to a 1.01 version.
TLDR: Fable was re-released with extra content and a slight name change.
Halo 2 got a second bonus disc that added content and updated the game.
I always look forward to watching these, your videos are super informative and interesting!
The reason we never saw many game breaking bugs in these old games is because they were much smaller in scale than nowadays and the developers were much more passionate, their teams would have very good testing phases. What is astonishing to me is the fact that the games from 2000 to 2012 or so were huge bug didn't have so many game breaking bugs either, that was probably one of the best gaming eras for me.
terraria at the end holy shit
it doesn't beg the question. it raises the question
_Revenge of Shinobi_ saw multiple revisions no thanks to Noriyoshi Ohba’s self-confessed lack of creativity. Sega had to release amended versions of the game which altered the appearance of several enemies that bore a bit too much of a resemblance to the likes of Spider-Man, Rambo, Godzilla, etc.
In a more controversial example, Team Soho was forced to omit references to BT in _The Getaway_ after the British telco took offence at a mission where you have to kill a BT driver and take his van. A newer pressing had to be released because of it. And I’m sure you all know what happened with the console releases of GTA San Andreas too.
2 years ago, I saw a video about Pokemon Crystal I think it was from did you know gaming. The game allow you to download exclusive content for the game by connecting a cell phone to the Game Boy Color however this was only available in Japan.
People meme all the street fighter games for super, champion edition ect but that was actually the only way to update games back in the day 🤣
fantastic video! love that it was just 9 minutes too! i enjoy long videos but so many video game videos are unnecessarily long
Notice how, with a few notable exceptions, the games were all playable and usually able to be completed, despite the bugs. Usually, the bugs were minor things that you MIGHT encounter. Unlike today where games are released in a totally broken state where you encounter problems within just a few minutes of starting the game. Often the games CAN'T be completed without a patch.
It is my firm, personal opinion that the ease of patching has made developers lazy. They don't care too much if they release a broken game because they can just patch it later.
Yeah, this is cherrypicking, survivor bias (we do not remember all the games that were terribly broken because they were so bad) and rose-tinted glasses all in one. Most games today are also not released in a "totally broken state" with problems "within just a few minutes" and where they "can't be completed without a patch". In this ocean of more games than ever, those cases are still rare - we just a) talk more about it, especially content creators who benefit from drama and negativity. (Example: CP2077 - often bashed heavily in social media as being as bad as Anthem, NMS and Mass Effect Andromeda - was consistently around 75% positive user score on PC and most players encountered bugs, but not as game breaking as youtube made it out to be ... of course still not an excuse for a company like CDPR) and b) see them more often because there are just more potential games with such problems because of the amount of releases as well as entire groups living from showing those glitches (ranging from SpiffingBrit to the massive popularity of speed runs).
On the other hand you ignore old games which were not "few" or "situational bugs": Age of Empires 2 came with a game breaking bug where the AI would give up instantly in skirmish games - a very popular and central mode - if you even became slightly proficient with the game; Daikatana, Vampire Masquerade and others were totally busted and were not remembered because of being "unusual" for that but because they were at their time just as much important titles like CP2077 or Andromeda today; Baldurs Gate 2 was bugged enough that a host of players couldn't even start the game without crashing and the first pokemon games are riddled with bugs that the normal gamer (at the time often enough very young) just didn't register (like moves that doubled the crit rate instead of halving it) - MissingNo. is even a known bug so popular that it is basically a feature of those old games; Kill screens in games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong; the goddamn original Space Invaders that was glitchy from the very first second because the hardware couldn't handle it (which conveniently became a feature with the faster moving enemies - but by today standards would be indeed an inexcusable bug); GoldenEye is an outright mess of problems that would be bundled as bugs, glitches, unfinished/untested games in today's standards; The corrupted blood incident in WoW 2005; Gran Turismo 2; Fallout New Vegas; Atari Port of Pac-Man; the importance of buggy/glitchy releases during the video game crash in 1983; Divine Divinity where a staff glitch can make the game inwinnable; and so on and so on.
@@BlackChrom3 I dont buy games at release anymore because of too many bad experiences with launch day releases. Dlc has made devs lazy. I haven't even bought Cyberpunk 2077 yet. I hear they still haven't fixed that game.
I believe they just actually released a quality finished product. Good times
All of the bugs in these games were extremely minor compared to what we're forced to accept as normal nowadays.
no they don't. stop acting like the cartridge age was flawless products.
@@jamesbrice3267 normal?
you mean swordless link? no respawning berries for pokemon gold/silver?
In 1994 (or 95, cant remember anymore), I worked for Origin and was doing our final 16 hour playtest on Ultima 8: Pegan, and I was the only one who discovered a bug that prevented the endgame cinematic from playing. After everyone discussed it over, it was agreed that I was a rare edge case and that very few people would encounter it. Little did we know that the next few weeks we would be plagued with several calls about that same bug.
They ended up posting a patch on the Origin BBS but like the video goes, they wont miss a deadline if they dont have to.
The good old days when games were actually finished ;)
What was the saying a good game is forever good and a delayed game is eventually good but a bad game is forever
There was nothing “bad” about the sprite you showed, it just literally wasn’t drawn in the modern style and thats pretty much it. I think its quite cute.
I love your videos Kiro!! Keep doing what you’re doing❤❤
I remember only being able to get mew by connecting your Gameboy to a kiosk at Blockbuster. I was pissed because my town didn't have a blockbuster, just a Hollywood video. We finally got one like a few years before they started going out of business but that was long after the mew promotion had ended
I am happy that digital update patches exist now because it sure beats wasting money on an updated physical copy of a video game.
The differences in updated versions of pre-internet-connected consoles were so subtle, and so seldom publicized, that the first people to know or care were ROM pirates. Literally nobody gave a shit back then because you either released a working game, with or without bugs or glitches, or nobody bought your broken-ass game.
Too many modern games have been released in terrible shape because publishers push unrealistic deadlines and _maybe_ expect the product to be fixed after it's already in the hands of consumers.
Digital update patches are a blessing and a curse
@@ajaxmaxbitch Why are they a curse?
@@TheRealDustinNunn because some companies will release a game way to early and be like "We'll just patch/fix it later"
@@ajaxmaxbitch True. For example, Street Fighter X Tekken did not get an update patch not until 2013.
The European version of the original Mario Bros. was also updated to make the turtles look like koopa troopers from Super Mario Bros.
Also that Euro box for SMB you used was weird, I live in the UK and the SMB box here was exactly the same as the US version.
I think different parts of Europe got different box arts. Yeah the UK box art is basically the same as the US.
@@kirotalksyt There was PAL A and PAL B NES'es, and PAL A was manfucatured by Mattel, rather than Nintendo, so it could be that.
I'd imagine that not being able to fix things later also gave them incentive to get things right the first time.
Of course there were bugs.
But they usually required some non-obvious actions to trigger. (E.g. use fishing rod while using hover boots on water)
Gran Turismo 2 went through something similar with it's Simulation Mode discs. There was a bug with the max speed test records where the game would save 10 entries while only having room for 8. If you saved the game after recording a 9th or 10th speed test - it would cause a data overflow that affected your cars saved in your garage.
They did 2 revisions of the sim mode discs, version 1.1 (where I believe the issue still can occur) and 1.2 (later also reprinted as greatest hits) where it was resolved. So remember being a kid and seeing a car with (R) No Name No Name and being scared lol.
I think pre-ordering games is one of the main reasons so many get released buggy and unfinished these days. By pre-ordering, you're committing to buying something whether it's finished or not and it enables the developer to just say, "Screw it, we'll fix it eventually."
It's funny. We usually tell by the case/disk/cart design, but some are no different then their launch copies.
Before online updates, publishers didn't have the luxury of prioritizing deadlines like they do now. Releasing a broken game with no way to fix it would destroy their reputation. Games absolutely had to be in some form of finished state when they released. Sure there were bugs but you usually had to be very unlucky to find them or straight up try to break the game. It sucks that people let these companies get away with selling unfinished products. And videos like this have me worried that younger people don't realize that this isn't how things always were or need to be.
What I thought was cool was some games would load an update in their disks, so once you loaded the disk it would have a system update in it.
Super mario 64 got a japan-exclusive update that has bug fixes and added rumble pak support.
I believe this is the basis of the 3D All Stars version.
@@lpnp9477 yep that was the basis for both the DS and 3D All Stars versions of the game
Main bug most people look at as a feature that this update removed was the blj
@@lpnp9477 Yeah, they just threw the unaltered japanese rom in there and patch the other languages in through the emulator.
Dang, this makes me feel old, now that it actually has to be *explained* that videogames were self-contained back in the day.
This is a stupid question. Why is there a presumption something needs to be updated? Because young gamers are conditioned to accept unfinished projects.
Not really, there were plenty of unfinished games way back then, people just don’t remember it because they were garbage money grabbers.
Ever heard of action 52?
@@taherbertolinirodrigues9104 That is a false equivalency. Games like that did not make much money, and most importantly, did not use the same deceptive marketing tactics they do today.
In addition, many unfinished games were still finished, just not the way the developers had planned because of how the project went. That is totally different than the crunch culture that exists today, which is driven entirely by executives and shareholders, and basically decided at the onset of development.
@@nickelbutt because the market was smaller, it’s not a thing to blame gamers for
@@taherbertolinirodrigues9104 I didnt blame gamers. I said gamers were conditioned to play unfinished games. That puts the blame on the publishers, the ones doing the conditioning.
Market forces inevitably wake the consumer up. Thats why I am voicing my opinion; the market has negatively affected me, so I am voicing my opinion to fellow consumers.
Obviously this is a problem with proper regulation in an unregulated industry, but I dont have plans to run for office, so I try to change what I can.
@@taherbertolinirodrigues9104 And all markets are smaller when you go back in time. Youre gonna have to be more specific to make that argument. The time period I am referring to is roughly 1996-2006, and video games were still a huge market then, even if its smaller relative to today.
Zelda Skyward Sword actually shipped with a game-breaking bug near the end, if you did things in a certain sequence. Nintendo actually put out a special patch on the Shop Channel that would modify your broken save data so you could progress. There was no 'update' mechanism for the Wii though; this was a quick fudge to avoid them having to recall the game and make new discs.
i remember when games were actually playtested and mostly polished befire release due to updating games not being as accessible as they are today. sure we got revised cartridges but even most 1.0 versions still when it came to glitches needed to do certain actions just to get the glitches to even appear. now we have games like pokemon scarlet, calisto project, cyberpunk (before the many patches), security breach, the list goes on, where you could just walk through walls, fall through the floor, have the world deload around you, and start flying, just because you dared to buy the game on release
From my own personal experience, X-Men Legends 2 on PS2 had a nasty bug that corrupted save files. Was stuck with it. But back in the 80s and 90s there were many games that required fixes and WERE updated. Many cartridge games were stealthily rereleased as if nothing had happened so customers were unaware. Cassette and disk games on home computers could be sent to the developer/publisher and replaced with a fixed version where possible. Some games though never were fixed and were just uncompletable or crashed frequently.
Games are gigantic these days. Absolutely huge behemoths of code that make old games look as complex as an average person's tweet. It's almost impossible a game will be absolutely glitch free on release.
the answer is mailed out floppies or newer versions. Either that or a complicated guide on how to mod the game to update it yourself.
Short Answer: Revisions and additional cartridge pressing, probably. Snarky Answer: They actually had to finish a game before it shipped out to the public.
Basically:
True answer vs. what annoying people on the internet claim happened
The actually completed games back in the day and you spent $30 and got the entire game finished with everything for it. Occasionally they released something special or extra with a game but it was not required to enjoy the game
How old are you? Yeah thats def not what happened. We still paid 40 to 50 bucks and often the games were not complete at all.
Tldr; they didn't.
I come from that time. Back in that time they did something incredible. Something so big brain, you wont believe it to avoid that problem. Its called: "Releasing finished and well polished games". Sick right?
How do you have so many viewers under 13 haha
An early revision that I know of is from Spyro 3. Wasn't such massive changes but basically some levels had music play that was from another level despite the intended tracks being on the discs. It was pretty funny how the music for the final boss in the 1.0 version just played music from the first homeworld. Imagine getting to the end of the game expecting to listen to sick final boss beats then you hear the music from the first level. And in the PAL version the speedways all have the same music play but the NTSC version all speedways have their own music. Also a cutscene that shows how a boss was born doesn't play in 1.0.
For PC games, people who didn't have internet could order floppy disk/CDs to patch their games with any updates or fixes from the developers.
Square were infamous for their expansions that only released in Japan, like Kingdom Heart II Director's Cut which contained new fights, new cutscenes, new skills, and the full set of Org13 bosses beefed up to level 99. You had to import it and mod chip your PS2 to play it. It's a good thing that DLCs exist now.
Two decades earlier they also released Final Fantasy VI with a critical buffer overflow bug in it that would overwrite your inventory with garbage. They secretly released a version 1.1 of the ROM and you had to hope you got version 1.1 when you bought used.
This was more rare than anything else and when they released a game or an expansion it came with so much. Now every damn game has a day one patch and update and comes barebones with alot of cut content i.e. fighting games. Also never had to worry about server shut downs and not being able to play ot properly. It is easier now but the old times had better approaches to gameplay and dollar
Yup, life before the Internet was something else. For those of us who grew up with games on cartridges, life wasn't always better. Some of the cheaper games were sent out without being completed or had so many bugs in them that they made the launch of Cyberpunk look like it was in perfect condition. It's pretty wild what we had to put with back then when there was no fix for the games we could get. It really cannot be understated how much the Internet changed gaming.
It's kind of wild to think back at how many games were released in Japan over a year in advance of Europe. I remember reading the Nintendo magazines as a kid to get news on the new Pokémon releases, because they'd already have been out in Japan, and then North America, long before I could get a copy.
The difference between bugs today and bugs back then is, back then you usually had to go out of the way to try and break the game or just mess with things in general in order to spot the bugs
Most bugs back then didn't show up if you played the game "normally". It made bug hunting a fun thing to do after you've beaten the game the "normal" way
Bugs today, though, are inescapable even if you tried to play the game as normally as possible. CDPR's Cyberpunk had day one bugs where NPCs would randomly t pose. You don't even have to look for today's bugs, they're just in your face and sometimes they made the game unplayable but these devs don't even care
Quick Correction: Ura Zelda =/= Master Quest
While Master Quest has some of the ideas of Ura Zelda. Ura Zelda was meant to be a full expansion, not just a dungeon remix.