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Pokemon GBA Bugs Out, Internal Clock To Blame
Thanks to 1UP for their article revealing the popular GameBoy Advance titles Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire have a time-unlocked glitch that's just been activated in Japan, since the game has features based on how long it's been played, and Nintendo have discovered there's "...an issue with its internal clock that can disable certain gameplay systems after a year's worth of playtime." Specifically, you can plant trees in-game which "eventually bear fruit, which you then feed to your pet monsters to cause them to evolve in useful and interesting ways." Unfortunately, after a year from the game's start date, "those trees are unable to grow." Nintendo has "...invited Japanese players to bring or send their game cartridges to one of many service centers around the country. The service centers will apply a patch that corrects the issue and return the fixed copy of the game free of charge." Finally, Nintendo of America have commented "The earliest the issue could appear [in the U.S.] is March 2004, which is the one year anniversary of the first sale in North America."
Personally, I'm glad Nintendo of Japan is providing this service to their users. Maybe things like this will get fewer buggy console titles out the door if it becomes expected that you'll exchange them for working titles.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
this problem doesn't appear in March. To play a single game for a substantial portion of a day everday for a year is... yikes.
How many people can his possibly affect? How much can you do in a video game in a 8,544 hours? It boggles the mind.
Dude, you are missing the point. On PC or Xbox a lazy publisher can release an unfinished game, because you can release a patch with minor inconvenience.
This is going to be massively expensive for Nintendo. I expect they just copy the savegame to the latest version of the cartridge. As the game code is stored in a masked rom, there isn't much they can patch.
Sounds like the cartridge might be flashable, then? If so, it's a cheap way to get a flash cartridge, if we can figure out how to program it.
Is the real time clock in the cartridge itself? It must be if you can use the game on one gameboy, then resume gameplay on another gameboy. Could make for some interesting hacks.
-Adam
Please see Unreal Championship, Capcom Vs. SNK 2 EO, NFL 2K3, Crimsons Skies, and a host of other Live games that have been patched. UC and CvSNK were the only two games that were publically announced as having patches (tarnishing MS' promise of no patches on XBL); but Microsoft does mandate that all XBL games have the ability to be patched.
Instead of announcing a patch, publically, what will happen when you try to connect to XBL when a patch is available is that you will get is a screen that says "Xbox Live has an update available, you will not be able to connect to Xbox Live until this update is installed." Yet, if you pop in another XBL game, you can connect fine. That's how they're hiding the patches now.
XBL has patches. You just didn't realize you were seeing them.
Food would not grow, and Pikachu began to look for new food sources...
Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal and Ruby/Sapphire have two internal clocks actually--one records total playtime, and the other regulates the day cycles in the game.
The berry system in either case is dictated by the Daily clock, and in all the history of Pokemon, I can't think of a single thing based on the total playtime. I think it's just there to remind kids when they've been playing too much and for bragging rights.
In fact, most of the game's timed functions are either based on the daily clock or the number of steps taken between the trigger of one event and its resolution. I remember, in the first series of games (Red/Blue/Yellow), the step number system was the only way they could keep track of time for game functions.
So the amount of gameplay is completelty irrelevant... though that other reply is right: If you give a kid a Pokemon game, they don't put it down. When I was little I played constantly--while on the toilet, while eating, while on the computer (though after a week or so of that I'd leave it alone for a month or so). And even in the last year there was an incident where I played for a total of over 80 hours over the course of six days.
And for the record, it takes a long time to truly conquer a Pokemon game. You have to spend hours outside of the main plot training for boss battles, organize all your 150+ Pokemon into neat boxes, and of course collect all 151/251/182, many of which are nearly impossible to obtain.
Of course I'm talking about NOA, but every experience I've had with them has led me to believe that the NOA tech people really put the customer first. They'll chat with you about games, etc. and tell you whats up with bugs and things on the line. They even replaced a couple of N64 controllers for me (one with out me even having to send it back!)
My personal favorite console tech support thing is when Capcom's Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo for the SNES would freeze older SNES machines; they sent me a new model SNES and asked for the old to be shipped back to them, all free of charge for me. I did so and they sent a little token; coins featuring the SF2 characters. It's a cheap little thing, but I was a kid back than and really enjoyed it.
It's not the same thing, but PC publishers could learn a thing or two from the guys over on the console side.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
First X box live allows it, and now gameboy games are getting patched. I think it's great that Nintendo is going the extra mile for it's customers, but as soon as console game makers get the idea they can rely on patching, shipping games broken will be as prevelent as on the PC.
Hooray. At that point, consoles get added to the list of vices i'll be able to cut out of my budget.
Every time someone talks about this bug or that bug on a console game it seems like people start complaining in the way that you are now complaining. "Oh no, patching will mean that formerly bug free console games will now have bugs. Why oh why are PC game makers so lazy? Blah blah blah."
Bugs have been with us in consoles for a very long time. Remember Enter the Matrix? It's not alone. SSX Tricky has bluescreened my GameCube, people have already mentioned KOTOR and Crimson Skies, the list goes on.
And it's not limited to modern games. Bugs have been around for ages, just we called them 'glitchs' and wrote them up in FAQs as cool things that people could explore. Here are a few, to refresh your memory:
NES Metroid
On most levels with the doors you shoot to cause them to open you can use a door to climb up many many walls/levels above. Simply shoot the door and stand with the front 1/2 of Samus wedged where the door will reform. After you are partially ''sealed'' by the door just quickly tap up and down on the control pad. You will slowly climb up the wall. It is possible to get stuck while using this trick.
Super Mario World
Go to World 1-2. At the pipe that leads to the flag, break two blocks so there's one at the end touching the pipe. Now duck and jump backward toward the brick (don't break it!). You should go through the wall and pipe into a warp zone. Jump down the first pipe you see and you will be in the Negative World (-1)!
And so on and so on.
Which brings me to my second point. The reason that there are more bugs on PC games is because there are a lot more ways that things can go wrong. On a console you have one set of hardware and maybe a few different controllers. You have a very small OS and no other programs running.
PCs have untold billions of possible configurations, countless types of inputs, a very large and complicated (and buggy!) OS competing for RAM and mediating between your program and the hardware and who knows what other programs running in the background. There is no way that you can adequately test for this wide a variety of conditions and it is inevitable that you will run into unexpected problems when you ship the game.
What have we learned today?
1) Console games have lots anf lots of bugs. Anyone who says they don't is lying to you or stupid.
2) PCs have more bugs than consoles because they do not have a unified configuration and there is lots that can go wrong.
Thanks for coming out.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects