Videos by ComicBook.com
1) Space Invaders
When Space Invaders debuted in the late ’70s, it quickly became one of the most popular video games of the 1980s. It’s challenging in all the right ways, as the player must face off against an ever-quicker fleet of alien ships. As they get lower, they get faster, scaling difficulty. The funny thing about this was that it’s actually a glitch. When Space Invaders came out, it was coded for hardware that couldn’t handle all the necessary sprites at once. As a result, they begin slowly, but the longer they’re on screen, as more are destroyed, they speed up — the glitch became one of the best aspects of the game.
2) Super Mario Bros.
While it’s one of the most significant video games of all time, Super Mario Bros. is filled with glitches. This is evident in the Minus World and other areas of the game with clear issues. One of the best glitches is the wall jump, which is now a standard mechanic in almost every Mario game, but in the beginning, it wasn’t supposed to be possible. Players discovered that if they hit a vertical surface just right, they can time their next jump to have Mario scale up high walls, avoiding mobs and progressing. It’s not easy to pull off until you know how to do it, but once you do, it’s a glitch worth exploiting.
