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Most of my favourites are the stuff that is left in some Nintendo games (Zeldas in particular) - debug or beta versions of some levels that the developers somehow left in. Not that I've seen them personally, and the website I was about to point people to is dead. *sigh*

As for the rest, I really recommend people to check out this guy's anti-walkthroughs and findings. A lot of this stuff is absolutely brilliant.

This is immediately what I thought of. I really enjoyed reading this guy's Deus Ex "walkthrough" where he breaks the hell out of the game. Similar things exist for most first-person RPG-esque games, where the possibilities to totally destroy the game mechanics are there.

The fiasco that was Ultima IX: Ascension had so many bugs on its release in 1999 it's not even funny. Or is it?. Someone actually played the game in such a twisted way taking advantage of these bugs to hilarious effect.

A detailed and humorous examination of the player's physical presence in System Shock - probably the earliest 3D FPS/RPG combination to hit our screens: (Warning: contains game spoilers and possibly other content that's bound to be offensive to someone or other.) http://www.it-he.org/sshock.htm#hacker

Whoa, you need to read some funnier stuff. Good god man, this is the information age!

Get started at:

http://www.notmydesk.com/
http://lileks.com/institute/index.html
http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html

If gaming articles are more your style and you've played Ultima 7:
http://www.it-he.org/ultima7.htm especially "Further drug experiments" http://www.it-he.org/u7_drugs.htm

Whoa, you need to read some funnier stuff. Good god man, this is the information age!

Get started at:

http://www.notmydesk.com/
http://lileks.com/institute/index.html
http://www.ironycentral.com/babymain.html

If gaming articles are more your style and you've played Ultima 7:
http://www.it-he.org/ultima7.htm especially "Further drug experiments" http://www.it-he.org/u7_drugs.htm

My favorite Tim Rogers piece was in - on-topicly enough - Journalism: the Videogame.

Though, the only bad thing about that is how he babbles about how his Animal Crossing review was sooooo cool compared to that other writing. That article actually reminded me a lot about Doug the Eagle's anti-walkthroughs and silliness.

But there's still more to DX than just blowing stuff up. Any game with such wonderful intricacies also lend a chance to misbehave and see how far the game understands the diverging consequences.

My favorite cutscene comment in Deus Ex:
Paul: You're a real jackass, you know that?
(Getting your goodbuddy Paul to say this takes some *severe* behavioral problems)
A nice anti-walkthrough is here:
http://it-he.org/deus.htm

Now, the immature fun of popping tranquilizers into your co-workers isn't going to last any longer than the fun of blowing things up in the first place. But for games to even be able to comprehend that you're doing a bad thing and still allow you to do it is a big step. Fallout 2 was another great example of a truly open-ended game, even after you've played through it there's still so much to find that replaying it with a different approach can open up all kinds of possibilities you never though of before.

In one of the early missions in DX, you have to assault Castle Clinton with Anna Navarre. Now, at the end of the mission, when you see Sam Carter (the quartermaster), you can get a different speech and different goodies, depending on whether you go in all guns blazing or whether you sneak in and avoid killing people.

So ... I sneak in the back way. But I still want to get all the loot, so I head round to the front as well. Then, using my crossbow, I tranq everyone.

I think the Unatco agents might've killed one or two, but I DIDN'T KILL ANYONE.

Unfortunately, when I go back, I still give Sam Carter the speech about how cool it was to charge in there and kill everyone ...

Oh well. I guess it's true when they say that death is like sleep. In Deus Ex, this is backward; sleep is like death.

The ultimate Deux Ex walkthrough.

From it's loose concept of "virtues" to it's world simulation, most of the Ultimas have been worlds apart from the fictions most games take place in.

Ultima IV was an amazing concept for it's time, and remains revolutionary as far as a game plot goes. There is no big "Foozle" to kill, you just have the archtypical midieval land to fight through... but the goal is to make a respectable character out of yourself. Sure, you could cheat the system like anything else (See Doug the Eagles page for many examples in the Ultima series), but it actually offered a somewhat meaningful system of judgements about your actions in the game. Sure, you could steal and cheat others in deals, but you would not be walking the path to Avatarhood... it was a pretty large impact in an age when games were so private an experience on home computers.

The later games left a VERY minor aspect of such karma in the game, but the effect lingered, as gamers continued to think of themselves as the Avatar. In a sense, the lack of judgement improved later games. Having concepts like Humility being important, not for religious reasons, but because you are role-playing a character who went to such pains to represend himself one way... 'tis a very unique thing.

Of course, beyond Virtues, the Ultime series is as historic as a game series can get. Ultima Underworld was pretty much the first fully-fleshed out first person simulation game out there - from the deep interaction of objects in the world, to many factions of creatures in the Underworld... when it all came into existence BEFORE Wolfenstein 3d... it was truly an awesome thing to behold. And still to this day, the mixture of plot and characters (after you get past the kidnapped-princess thing) makes the game worth re-playing just for the entertainment of the writing.

And of course, on the same lines, Ultima 5 through 7 revolutionized games in ways that have yet to be matched even in other RPGs. The deeply pervasive NPC schedules, the complex mixture of dialogues and plots, the wide variety of dynamic object interactions, and of course the humor and the unique technicalities that come from exploring the absolutely huge acts of creation that went into these games... it's truly amazing. ...Just a ending note: If you're thinking of playing the Ultima Series though, I'd definetly suggest you ignore 1-3, and 8 and ESPECIALLY 9. Each of them, while not absolutely bad games (alright, 9 is just bad), are pretty much just average games, dramatically separate in quality from the others. Other than that, find them where you can, check them out, and have fun!

Ryan Fenton