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Videogame Places You're Not Supposed To Go
Ssquared22 writes "The eight far-off realms in this article exist for different reasons. They could be developer test areas, or forgotten pieces of landscape that somehow made their way into the final code. Whatever their reason for being, they all have one thing in common: they weren't meant to be explored by the likes of you and me. But through persistence, hacks or some combination of the two, you can take in these rare delights for yourself. Pack your bags."
What odd, interesting, or funny game locations have you wandered into?
Hot Coffee
I once stumbled across what I nicknamed "The America Room" in the original Splinter Cell. Inside the CIA level, turning on ghost mode allowed me to find a small room floating in space, covered in the U.S. flag.
>What odd, interesting, or funny game locations have you wandered into? Slashdot ?! Oh wait, that's not a game...
Years ago, I got up to the lighthouse on the island in Portland beach in the first GTA3 by getting a boat to it, and then jumping _backwards_ all the way up to the lighthouse.
If you face the slope, the game slides you down. Not sure why it doesn't when you're facing backwards - maybe they designed it that way for people like me.
Apparently there are plenty of other "easter egg spots" in GTA3.
In the old Sierra games (King's Quest, Colonel's Bequest etc), you could enter the debug mode easily - like pressing both shift buttons and the minus key for instance - and go to places never intended for gamers. You could read debug notes, supply yourself with inventory items etc, and of course transport to any place in the game that you wanted.
Not my idea of a good time. I'm hard pressed to find games that keep me interested in the places I AM supposed to go.
All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be. -PF
When you turn no-clipping on and try to explore the levels, you can very often see (especially at the wild territories and at the brain scorcher) that the levels were originally meant much larger and the story was meant larger, too (what's with the helicopter behind the fence at the radar site?)
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I read the title and thought it was talking about places in real life. When I was living in Tokyo, I went to Squaresoft's headquarters. Totally could have stolen some videogame award trophies right off their front desk, assuming I completed some sidequest to distract the guard first. On the next floor there was a taped up piece of paper with a moggle on it pointing to the left and saying something in japanese, probably something like "That way to accounting."
Pretty boring, plus I felt like a huge nerd. Then again, it was only 3 blocks out of my way.
Anyway, I'm not sure how many other real videogame related places you aren't supposed to go there are.
For anyone who's been doing exploration in World of Warcraft for a long time, the name Dopefish has additional meaning. Wall walking to places was amazing, and 1.9 was a sad sad day, except wall jumping took it's place! Hyjal, above/under Orgrimmar, on top of zeppelins, epic levitate jump from Hyjal to Orgrimmar, above and 2nd floor of Undercity, under Stormwind and behind the gated instance portal, Ironforge airport, Wetlands farm, Elwyn house/retreat/pond, the Dragon-Dwarf fight on the flight to Searing Gorge, Troll village, half-existing Gadgetzan from ZF, outter edges of the BE starting zones, middle part of Eastern Kingdoms, smiley face under Karazhan, and the Crypts next to it, outside the Karazhan instance, most especially the large area where you fight Prince, underneath all of Outlands (except for Netherstorm, damn bridge) especially behind Black Temple, outside the playing parts of CoT: Hyjal, inside CoT pre-BC, top of CoT, on the hourglass (old and new), behind AQ (which allowed zoning in before the Wall opened), North Plaguelands, behind the Greymane Wall. So much amazing exploration over such a long time.
Only 2 things I've never done that I really want to is get to Old Ironforge on my guy, and outside of Deadmines.
I vaguely remember someone finding the head of one of the triads on top of one of the buildings, walking around in a loop before his official apparition ingame. He fired up the editor, teleported him, made him 50ft tall and got him to walk around the level Godzilla-style. Funny stuff.
They chose by far the most boring of all the 'secret' locations in WoW.
To list but a few (all of which are much harder to get to these days):
Hyjal, Azshara Crater, Dancing Troll Village, Programmer Isle, etc.
From "Old Iron Forge", to the top of Iron Forge Mountain where the airplanes are, to _under_ Stormwind, and before BC, you could actually travel N along the shore from Hinterlands and see "behind" Stratholme.
Thankfully the WoW Map Viewer lets you explore the world (& zones) offline.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Or something like that. It was at the end of a very high tunnel type thing that could only be reached be using a flying cheat.
Currently I am addicted to a game called 'reset generation' which you can play on your nokia or online http://resetgeneration-site.arena.n-gage.com/
You play against 3 players who all have the goal to steal each others princess, they mix the game play up by you having to lay a path using tetris bricks to the other castle. Also there are 10 classes so each character plays differently.
So if you get the last princess then you win.
However since I play not so much online but against AI players I try to survive as long as possible. I do this by eliminating all but 1 player, then I make sure the playfield is only covered with my tiles which limits the movement of my adversary. At his time the ai player mostly gives up, however sometimes wierd stuff happens like chickens turning into zombies or just giant monsters appearing destroying everybody.
Ah, the other 3 people that bought the N-Gage?
Oblivion has a nice place you can teleport to.
Its a room full of doors.
Behind every door, there is something developers used to test, like items, enemys, even a whole test city :D
When talking to test npcs there can be very funny messages ^^
Anyone know about the Nali and other easter eggs in DM Peak of Unreal Tournament?
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
Using the Alt-214 cheat in Savage Empire lets you explore the "top-most" part of the world.
Us old school gamers will remember stacking crates in Trinsic to climb on the roof in order to access the teleporter room in Ultima 7. :-)
I remember being giddy when I saw the debug menu (and warp map) in Ultima 7 and figured out how to access it. i.e. ultima7 abcd
For Monkey Island 1, Zak McKracken , Maniac Mansion, Loom, Last Crusade, Monkey Island 2, Fate of Atlantis, Day of the Tentacle
Enter Debug Mode to use the Goto-Room.
My brother used to use the (PS2) Baldur's Gate built-in warp menu cheat to run the Gauntlet. (Warp In, Warp Out :)
Hell, just check gamefaqs for your favorite game.
--
Dark Energy by any other name is still the Aether.
I know n-gage is not popular, however I think for about of 80% of the time that I do go online I have no problems finding other players.
And it did had a shitty start and although I did expect more of them, they are continiously pushing new games.
it certainly is not the quality of n-gage.
The top of Blood Gulch in Halo 1 for the xbox.
This looks like a subset of a previous story:
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/04/06/0344206/Strange-Glitches-In-Games?art_pos=1
Next time you're near Megaton, fly up to the inaccessible catwalk over the gate to see what the guard has to say.
UO: "Green Acres"; dev area where many of the dungeon levels were build/saved. Get summoned by a GM, mark a rune. Probably fixed that now, but the old runes still work/exist...; inside various unfinished temples, accessed with teleports and clipping. Many others.
EQ: Behind the geometry in Grobb (levitate up the side walls); The "eye" above the zone in to PoFear (lev + climbing up the dead trees there); the top of the outside of the Tower of Frozen shadows. Top of the volcano where the epic quest fishie spawned (eventually); many others, reachable with levitation and the wonderful, epic BFG.
WoW: "Green Acres, V2". Unfinished areas north of EPL, south of silithis, between feralis and tanaris, outside the nagrand arena, many others. Not like the airport and other "finished but only intended as eyecandy" locations, these are raw unfinished terrain, sheer walls, missing textures/colors. The bottom of the geyser in ungoro (it's DEEP), etc. All accessible without any type of exploit btw...
I vividly remember playing Ultima VI on the PC, and learning to use the debug mode. Entering codes you could create any "item" in your inventory, including walls of buildings etc. (Isometric 3D game.)
I sunk a huge amount of time into building my own castle or something, only to have it vanish when I wandered off somewhere else... :(
.: Max Romantschuk
You're SO not supposed to go there! But if you do, a secret screen comes up with a bunch of cryptic text that nobody has yet been able to decipher.
Theres this level where you assault a chateau in some large grounds full of formal gardens and theres a wall/fence around the grounds and beyond that is a forest. You start the level in the forest. I wandered around the forrest probing its depths and somehow I fell off the world and my soldier character was able to manoeuvre around in a kind of grey screen area. I could run quite far and as I ran I was still on terrain and was able to be running up hill and as I looked back there was the chateau and forest area small and far in the distance. No I was not on mushrooms at the time....
http://www.anticharisma.com/
Who can forget John Romero's head on a pole, hidden behind the boss demon in the last level of Doom II? Or the level full of Wolfenstein 3D Nazi's, with Command Keen hanging from a noose!
The most sacred place must be when I was creating maps for DN3D, Blood & Doom, browsing the sprites you'll find a few that were never used in-game.
There's a very interesting technique you can use to move pretty much anywhere you like in Thief 1 & 2 due to a physics bug or feature. Until it was discovered by Luthien, fans of the games (at www.ttlg.com) stacked enormous amounts of crates on top of each other to explore different places in levels but one player discovered a trivial method to move like that (crate stacking is somewhat difficult). For those interested, here's how to move through flare elevatoring (the same can be done with keys in Thief 1 but note that you must always have one object of the kind you use, in your inventory all the time so you need at least three). It's easier if you have very low mouse senisitivity so adjust it before trying this.
1. look straight up and drop a flare in the air so that it lands on your head (note: do not throw it but drop it, check your key configuration, if necessary)
2. look straight down and jump, the flare you threw will become "stuck inside you"
3. you can jump once or twice more to gain more height
4. again look straight up and drop a flare in the air like in 1.
5. look straight down, you should see the flare you dropped in 1. below you
6. jump and when doing so also pick up the flare below you
7. jump once or twice more to gain more height
8. goto 4.
You can climb as high as you like but if you're close to the edge of a wall, you'd better not face it since the result of jumping might become an attempt to climb (mantle) it instead. It's better if you wait until you're high enough to mantle it easily.
This technique can also be used to move horizontally in the air but it's quite difficult (at least for me).
A first suggestion of a place to visit is of course the roof of Angelwatch. In the demo they have even placed some AI there but it's not there in the full game version (in neither one are you supposed to actually get there). And in case you didn't know it: The Thief 2 demo is quite a nice playing experience otherwise too, it is a version of "Life of The Party" but with quite a lot of modifications. Very much worth playing, if you liked the full game. You can also try climbing the lighthouse in "Kidnapped" from the outside.
Beware that when you visit locations that you're not supposed to, the game might crash because the polygon limit might be exceeded. In the editor, it's possible to have more polygons on screen than in the actual game and thus some places like that have been possible to design and the level designers have only taken into account from what directions you should be able to see them.
More about the technique here.
Another location: In case you didn't know it, there's an easter egg in "Framed" in Thief 2: If you throw a scouting orb over the fence to your left in the beginning of the level, you'll see something funny (a couple of dancing zombies) and you can even visit them (without flare elevatoring). One of the buildings in front of you has a roof object instead of a real roof and that object has no physics properties so you can climb onto it even though it looks too steep and high to allow it. I don't remember exactly which building it is, probably the tavern you can enter. From its roof you can then jump over the fence. I don't remember if the zombies will care about you or not.
And one more: In Thief 1 (and Thief 1 Gold), you can enter the cathedral during your first visit to it too. If you go behind the cathedral to the window (which isn't even there when you visit it again in "Return to The Cathedral"), you can enter the cathedral through it like this: Jump up to it so that you're "in it" but can't squeeze through since you're not meant to. Turn 180 degrees and jump. You'll fly straight into the cathedral. This jumping backwards with higher force feature, is probably meant to stop you from getting stuck somewhere but you can exploit it like this. The haunts inside won't see you since the level has their vision off to reduce CPU load but they will hear you
There is a lot of fun exploration in Halo 1, and even some in Halo 2. In the second level of Halo 1, there are numerous places you can get to using the Warthog, the easiest of which is the plateau between the central valley and the valley where the UNSC men are hiding under ground. It is also possible to get up the sides of the valley with the first pulse generator, though it can be difficult, because the action freezes in most situations when the pulse generator fires. Also, using co-op and some clever grenade work, you can get yourself and a Warthog on TOP of a pulse generator. Finally, in that level, it is pretty easy to get to the bottom of the underground cave where the light-bridge is.
It is also possible to get on top of the island in Silent Cartographer and roam around, and if you are tricky, you can also get a warthog up there. Also, though I've never managed it, it is possible to get down to the bottom of the deep shaft in the Silent Cartographer. You can surf the Pelican and jump off a the right time to land on top of the cliff on the level 343 Guilty Spark as well. From there you can walk all the way around the beginning of the level, and you will come across a non-responsive Pvt. Jenkins up there as well.
You can do quite a bit of exploration in Assault on the Control room, especially if you can steal an early Banshee. A fun thing about this is that you can use the Banshee to get to places without activating the enemy spawning, and then you can move things like vehicles around and use all of this to help set up one of the most amazing mega-battles of the game. Also, if you can manage to get a Banshee in the final part of the level and fly up above the control room to one of the ledges of the upper structure, you can find a nice Easter Egg: you can hear the music of "The Siege of Madrigal" from Myth. Finally, it is possible to get outside on various places of the Pillar of Autumn in the final level of the game.
There wasn't a lot of exploration possible in Halo 2 because there were several insta-kill zones, but sometimes, if you could manage to stay off the ground (either using a ghost or a banshee, you could do some exploration). The most notable exploration is in the level Delta Halo. If you nab a Ghost and then head about halfway back towards the first area, there is a place where you can ride the Ghost up the cliff and explore the top of the level.
Sadly, I haven't played Halo 3, so I don't know what, if any, opportunities it has for exploration.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
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.
A secret area in Quake II with a stash of ammo, that you could only get to by rocket-jumping.. acknowledging a unintended trick that started with the original Quake. The message printed on the screen was, "This is for you, you crazy rocket-jumpers."
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
I remember a great one of these in Ultima VII. Basically, there was a certain building in the first town, which had an invisible portal hidden behind its chimney. To access it, you had to either cheat (which is... well... cheating), or else build a staircase out of crates to get onto the roof. To do this, you needed to pretty much scour the entire town for crates, as you would need every last one to get up there.
Once you went through the portal, you found yourself in a strange sci-fi type area, with the Kilrathi theme from Wing Commander 2 playing as BGM. There were chests containing multiple sets of the best equipment in the game, a huge variety of useful magical items, as well as most of the plot-related items. There were also teleporters that could take you to most of the key points of interest around Britannia.
This one was so cool because it didn't require the use of a cheat or clipping exploit to find it. Sure, nobody was ever going to find it on their own accord without having been told about it in advance, but you could get in there without typing in any special commands or cheat codes.
What are you doing on Slashdot when you could be supping ale in a tavern in a made up angular world?!
If you ride north along the shore from undercity you'll come across a clearing with a night elf styled doc called Quel'Thalas. Nothing much there, but your probably not supposed to be there.
There's a better version of a zone called the same thing in the blood elf starting zone.
In the book "Ender's Game" by Orson Scott Card, Ender keeps exploring the super video game the kids are given beyond what anyone else does. Since the game "engine" is very sophisticated it keeps generating new territory and challenges for him (sometimes based on his alien influenced "dreams"). Not only does he eventually successfully complete his self-driven quest but the computer creating the game becomes sentient! Of course this is just one of several important "games" in the book.
So, maybe if you go places in your videogame that you're not supposed to go, you'll create new territory not imagined by the designers of the game and cause the game to become self-aware!
There was a benefit to being a gnome in EQ (yes, truly!) ... you got to see through walls occasionally due to the many & varied clipping bugs. Depends on how close you were, mostly. But in one or two of the original zones there were completely enclosed rooms with no apparent doorways where all walls were tiled with real-life photographs of someone's ginger cat. Very disturbing. I began to think that was how they started with wall textures - start with some photo image then photoshop it into unrecognisability. Either that or a very warped sense of humour.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the one I assumed was the well-known, the negative world in Super Mario Bros. It wasn't exactly fun and it was a one-way trip so you had to restart your game if you got tired of playing the same level over and over again, but it was a novelty and something I doubt was meant to be found by the average gamer.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
Level 30, with the Pacman ghosts.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
There was an even better one in one of the Quake II mission packs. In one of the levels you can barely glimpse an invulnerability power up high up in the ramparts...naturally an experienced player would identify that a rocket jump or two will enable you to get up there. But as you approach the power up after rocket jumping onto the ledge, it suddenly vanishes and the message "no prize for you, rocket man" pops up! If the developers had a sicker sense of humour they might have made a badass enemy or two suddenly teleport in too!
The original and best GTA had many of these. Some you were clearly supposed to find (like the island in Liberty City), as they had cars, bikes or tanks set up for you to jump or batter your way in. Others were genuine (?) glitches, like the areas you could enter by sliding under cars and thence under fences. I'm surprised no-one has yet claimed to have found the castle in Battlezone, which was variously supposed to be inside the crater or the volcano, or to be locatable by driving towards the moon for a very long time.
Ha, that's awesome. I have the mission packs but haven't played them yet. I still intend to someday. Loved the campaign for Q2, and I think it still holds up pretty well.
GameRanger - multiplayer gaming service for PC and Mac games
In Stonetalon Peak, slightly south-west of the Inn, my wife and I tricked-jumped on a spot of the mountain side that looked the most accessible, and we eventually reached the top. Right there, you get to a plateau on top of some of the highest mountains in the area, with a nice and beautiful view of the mountain ranges as far as your GPU will render. You can see various map areas all around.
Anyway, that's not the coolest part. The best part is what lies beyond. There is a cliff at the edge which brings you to a "secret" area. If you jump down from the left-most edge of the cliff, you'll fall down and die; but with persistence you can then come back the same way as a spirit, jump down and reclaim your body. Et voilá, you're in!
This area is a wide expanse of unfinished terrain between the various world sections that intersect there. It seems to be completely uninhabited and serene. It is vast and pretty, with a weird mélange of texture maps. you can explore this huge area and marvel at the beautiful collage of colors, textures, and terrain elements.
Eventually, you'll find a rather large, rectangular pit, where various areas coincide. It is like a huge deep pool drained of water. Its floor is composed of texture tiles from the different areas that meet at that point. But be careful! If you decide to jump in, know that there is no way out of it. You'll have to use your hearthstone (or call a game master). There is plenty more beyond that point which I haven't explored yet (as you may imagine, we dropped into the pit and got stuck).
All in all, it is one of the most strangely beautiful areas--hidden or not--of the World of Warcraft. So, be sure to pack plenty of sandwiches, your beverage of choice, and your video camera!
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
Ha, that's awesome. I have the mission packs but haven't played them yet. I still intend to someday. Loved the campaign for Q2, and I think it still holds up pretty well.
I played Quake II as soon as it was released...back in the day. But I only played the mission packs last month - got them for free with my copy of Quake 4. Both mission packs were really enjoyable - quite challenging for an experienced player and lots of hardcore action against enemies that can take quite a pounding. It's very satisfying when you unload 10 rockets or a handful of rails into a big bad dude and watch him keel over and blow up.
I made it halfway and gave up. One of the most tedious sci-fi books i've ever had the misfortune of reading. Hardly anything happens, just a lot of Ender self reflecting. Reminded me of the Thomas Convenant novels by Donaldson - endless verbiage about Coventants inner thoughts and feelings and blah effin blah and very little action. When I buy a fantasy or sci-fi book I want some action - if I want to read a load of girly navel gazing crap I'll go and get a copy of Bridget Jones!
Well, there's the classic island on the Dam level, accessible with a GS code, and the Citadel test level, similarly visitable. It's amazing the things that get left behind. Even cooler is the fact that new levels can be made for that game- google "goldeneye setup editor".
My friends and I have found several places that you're not really supposed to go to in Silkroad Online. These are mostly accessed through small invisible holes in a wall or bridge or similar.
- in Jangan, there is a river to the north. My guild used to go under the water to do Pandora's Box parties and the like where we wouldn't be disturbed.
- In Jangan, the mountains to the south can be climbed. There's nothing up there, but you can climb around up there to the edge of the map.
- In Hotan, if you run into the south bridge just right, you can go under the river that circles around the city.
- in Karakoram, there's a tunnel that leads to Takla Makaan (Dark Caves I think). There's a spot in the wall of the cave you can walk through if you do it right, and you'll end up on top of the mountains that the cave goes through. I'm told there's a good amount of land to explore there, just not really anything to do there.
- West of Samarkand at the ampitheater, you can walk under the theater... and get stuck.
Anyone know of any others?
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
In the Doom II final level "Icon of Sin", the boss is a giant goat's skull with a fragment missing from its forehead. It says, "To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero!", distorted and in reverse to sound like a demonic chant. One can use the "idclip" cheat to enter the boss and see Romero's severed head which is skewered to a post. The player defeats the boss (without the idclip cheat) by shooting rockets into its exposed brain after activating a lift and riding it; Romero's head functions as its hit detection point; when he "dies", the boss is killed and the game is finished.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero
(incl. picture)
LOOK IN HOLE
I once got into the bubble around Dalaran in World of Warcraft, before it floated away. I was pretty disappointed, there wasn't anything in there except dirt. :\
It also used to be possible to get underneath Stormwind and into Old Ironforge, but they seem to have fixed the bugs that let that happen.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I took a look at Second Life once and found all kinds of half-finished buildings and stuff!
Oh, wait...
The two examples that come to my mind but weren't in this article are the infamous "minus world" from Super Mario Brothers 1. The other one is the Test Area in Zelda: Windwaker. Linky here... http://www.zeldaelements.net/9testrooms.shtml I have never personally experienced either.
I always loved the secret Newcastle level that was in the PS1 version of Driver(Not sure if it is in the PC version). Screaming around a vaguely recognisable city in an old Jag was pretty cool. Needs an Action Replay code to work though, and my AR disk won't work in my PS3, so I'm SOL for now.
On the very first level, it is possible to go right past the flag pole and continue on forever. I stumbled by accident that you can 'fall' through the floor and have half your body in the ground. This can be done near the end (the last Goomba). If you run, jump hit the brick just above your head, bounce on the Goomba, and rebound onto the next brick you will fall through the ground. Strange bug (feature?). You can then run and slide under the flag pole.
What's interesting is, the castle that Mario enters to get to the next level, there is a hidden brick right after the door to prevent Mario from going past the entrance. You can skip this with above hack and walk on forever.
Funny,
that's exaclty what my web proxy tells me if i click on the link in the article "You CANT GO THERE"
How about a collision-detection bug turned in to an easter-egg?
In some cases, the collision detection is broken in Katamari Damacy, and you can end up falling through objects. (The easiest way I've seen this happen is if you're moving and some other object pushes you through a wall, but there's a video on YouTube with a simpler way to trigger it.)
When it happens, the screen fades to black and the King of All Cosmos apologizes for the inconvenience and uses the "Royal Warp" to put you back on the playfield. Looks like they caught a bug right before they had to ship and didn't have time to fix it, so they turned it in to an easter egg.
In level 3-1, at the end, you can get tons of 1-ups by stepping on a turtle on the steps, then jumping on the edge of the shell over and over, pinning the shell against the steps. Every time you step on him in a row without touching the ground, the points double, and eventually turn into 1-ups. My brother actually found that one before any books had published it (No interwebs back in 1985...) Old skool, dog.
So I was playing Oblivion on my PS3, and it I wandered into some cave (frostfire or something along those lines, the main point is that it's a separate min-map) for a quest. After getting bored and wandering the area for a bit, I decided to try and climb the steep slopes. Naturally, I was stopped after a certain height. But, I was able to force myself up the remaining slope with some creative use of trees and rocks to 'push' me. Surprisingly, there was land still around me. I jumped down a tall cliff (being a good gamer and saving before doing so), and started wandering out into the surrounding area. Naturally, it ended pretty quickly. But, as I walked off the edge of that, I bean to swim in mid-air. it was quite entertaining for a while, especially since I wandered onto the base construct for a map. Sadly, there was no way to get back, so I had to restore from my last save point. I'd link to the story of how I did it on uesp.net, but the company filter is as good as ever...
And let me correct my posting fail by adding my name to my post...
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
There's a section in the eastern borders of Cyrodiil, somewhere near Fort Scinia, where the box that prevents you from passing the boundaries of the gameworld is either missing or can be circumvented. I don't think I was doing anything particularly tricky, but noticed something was up when I'd travelled over the edge of the Jerall Mountains and was well into the off-map segment.
I've made a save of it and it's quite fun to roam around and drink in the scenery without being hassled by monsters. It's also amusing because you can get to a stage which on the map would put you well within Morrowind, but while you're still in the Cyrodiil landmass.
Once you got the ability to jump, there were spots in the game where you could jump right over the walls and run around outside the level
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
In the original Deus Ex you can use two sticky grenades to climb walls. I was able to explore parts of the Hong Kong map that can only be seen from a distance by climbing off of the bridge that goes over the canal.
I also found in the Paris map you can "push" through the wall at the hostel. It puts you in a passage between the wall and a second outer wall. The passage pops you out behind the cafe.
Strange there is no mention of the Dopefish.
On the 'scary crypt' level (sorry, can't remember its real name), of Donkey Kong 64, you can jump into the wall torches at the right angle and go straight through a wall. There's not much to see, but still slightly satisfying. In Superman Shadow of Apokolips on PS2 there's a few walls on the reactor level (by the big glowing-ball thingy), that you can fly through... but there really is no point at all (I found them too late for them to be fixed before the game shipped).
I remember one time me and my friends played Super Mario Bros with a game genie, and we got super jumping ability. You could then jump over the flag at the end of the level, which, if I remember correctly, just had you running through a repeated background with nothing to do except wait for the time to run out.
I suppose technically you were allowed there, but not in normal game play. For those who have never played it, Adventure was a rudimentary CRPG - there were two or three castles depending on difficulty and up to three dragons, assorted magic items like the spear and passwall, and your goal was to find the chalice and return it to the gold castle.
In one of the castles, there was a set of catacombs, and in the catacombs there was a magic item with no other purpose than this, usually referred to as the Dot or Grey Dot. It was one pixel and embedded in the wall in an area that you needed the passwall to get to. Then you brought that and other magic items to a certain area and you could go through a wall to a secret room that read 'Created by Warren Robinett'.
In addition, I used to be a volunteer guide in Everquest and occasionally had to help people who had fallen under the world. :)
I'm a sandbox/explorer kind of gamer and would much rather do stuff like this than engage in lame-combat-with-the-millionth-generic-NPC or go on let-another-fetch-quest. I really wish more MMO's would reward exploration. WoW should throw in a bunch of these hard to get to places and have a contest to see who can get to them first on each server (with no hints or maps) or have more quests involving such exploration. As it is, I get more pleasure out of Bethesda games like Oblivion and Fallout 3 than I do out of most MMO's. You've got this big world, why not encourage players to explorer, instead of just fight and fetch?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the very first Easter egg; the hidden room in Atari's 'Adventure', with the text 'Made by Warren Robinett' superimposed in it. That was a fun place to get into, and wickedly difficult if you didn't know about that invisible dot.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The Mario minus world is mentioned in another Crispy Gamer article: If these bugs are wrong, I don't want to be right.
Did you know that minus world is much cooler in the Japanese version? Watch the video!
As a Hobbit-eating Elf, I long to return to a place in Lord of the Rings: Online, where a hobbit was congregated with a gaggle of squirrels, north of Ost Guruth. They've since made it impossible to return to this land of Milk and Hobbits...
In LineageII, my favorite thing to do was to explore in the mountains, (something I quite enjoy IRL). I discovered a way to mysteriously pass through the mountains south of the Sea of Spores. Very weird!
In the early platforming game for the Atari-era consoles, Mountain King, there was a strange region that you could get to from jumping left from the highest mountain. Somehow if you did the jump right, you'd find a ladder hanging in the middle of space. You could climb up, and the platforms and ladders were semi-random and would appear or disappear depending on your position, making for a very treacherous climb. You could get up a fair ways, but eventually you'd reach a place from which there was no way to jump or climb higher. The area was very mysterious, but didn't seem to have any purpose.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The Guardian Legend NES game had a password system to save your progress. If you entered all Js as your password, you started in a strange location 80% of the way through the game with almost no health. I think the area was reachable in normal gameplay, but you needed a key that you didn't receive when using the password. (Therefore, you were locked in when using the password.) My friends and I spent much time wondering what it all meant.
Recently, zoogelio has reverse-engineered the password system and figured out how to get to off-map areas (he calls it the Lost Frontier, finding all sorts of glitches and weird places.
The first MS Flight Simulator had a setting (described in the manual) where you flew through foggy daylight (despite the 00:00 local time setting), and the plane flew itself briefly, heading for some sort of warp that dumped you into Chicago airspace.
I always had to resort to cheat codes, but there are several videos claiming to do it through ordinary means:
You can access the "cake room" in portal, seen in the final sequence after beating the game, containing a cake with a lit candle and a companion cube.
I tried that latest Simpsons game demo. There were one funny thing about it and that was that Comicbookstore guy giving me points for finding an invisible wall
This is going way, way back, but there was game called "Shogun" (made by Mastertronic I believe) for the Commodore 64. Anyway, If you walked into a wall diagonally in a certain room, you would end up walking through endless black screens.
Marathon 2 had a couple of terminals you could only read if you cheated: the second message of the second terminal in What About Bob? and the fourth terminal in Eat It, Vid Boi.
Does anyone remember how to get here?
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Metroid secret worlds. By exploiting a glitch involving the doors, you could get past some walls and ceilings. Fans discovered some very strange areas. There was discussion years ago whether the secret worlds were inserted intentionally, but disassembling the game revealed that it was just non-map data being loaded by the game in areas outside the intended path.
http://mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/?g=m1&p=secretworlds
A similar glitch was found for Metroid 2. http://m2sw.zophar.net/
Install Ubuntu in Android
In the first if you would start with the megahit option you could regenerate in one of the first levels en fall through the floor into a dark place where you had to fight a skeleton... I never managed to get out of there though.
Also, DoomII while cheating "shift L-ing" could bring you to levels 31 and 32, wolfenstein levels.
There was a game for the old 8-bit Atari computers called (I think) "Mountain King". It was a typical post Donkey Kong side scroller where you had to make your way through a mountain shaped maze to a flame at the heart of the mountain (avoiding the beasts along the way). I'm sure it was a bug, but you could somehow fall off the bottom of the maze through the mountain. If you did that, you'd wind up falling onto the title screen. Not exactly a developer area, but definitely somewhere you're not supposed to go.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
One of the best truck driving games. Tons of places where you are not supposed to go through.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB1zWEhgrLs
New Economic Perspectives
Modding Portal to import the maps from Half-Life 2 allows you to use the Portal gun to drop yourself into areas of the map that definitely not intended for a player to roam. None of it is that interesting, however you can jump your way through a map in about 2 minutes that way :)...kinda defeats the purpose of playing the game. Its far more fun to use the Portal gun to drop Combine troops into a loop so they just keep falling :).
There are many hidden areas located throughout Middle Earth that you aren't supposed to get to in Lord of the Rings Online.
One old favorite of the playerbase was Squirrel Valley. It was in a dangerous region of the Lone Lands. Basically, you had to know the exact location where to attempt to climb, and using any kind of speed boost while jumping up the cliffside you could get there after a couple hours of persistent trying.
Squirrel Valley had nothing more than a single lone Hobbit playing the flute while several squirrels gathered around him. They weren't interactive in any way, which led many to believe that it was an Easter Egg for Chicken Play (an Instanced Questline where as a 1 Hit Point Chicken you must brave danger to wander throughout all the lands of Middle Earth, avoiding the likes of orcs, goblins, and anything else that may find a chicken tasty, to talk to the animal denizens to warn them of the coming danger posed by the rise of Sauron). After a year of people trying, a few of us got in as chickens and still couldn't interact with these squirrels.
Eventually the Devs got upset with people making it to their secret place, and made it totally inaccessible to players.
However, we've found literally dozens of areas like that elsewhere throughout the game since.
The Devs finally accepted this behavior and even gave an in-game achievement (Deed) for those who participate in Seam-Walking to find areas normally inaccessible.
In Mirror's Edge on the PS3, I somehow managed to run to the bottom of the mall and find an odd room in the sequence where the cops start storming the mall. Most of the textures were reversed (mirrored)in the room.
It was as if I was in unused space looking through textures on the outside of the walls as if the textures were translucent. It's more accurate to call the room a courtyard. There was an entrance, two walls, and a ledge that led to a platform. I hopped onto the platform, looked into the gray abyss and jumped. I fell for a minute before I tried to pause and that's when the game hung. I think the timed events in the sequence were there in part to keep me out of that room.
If you noclip on one of the last levels in Portal, you can find the cake. It's in the room that is show around when the credits roll.
It wasn't meant to be found - it's actually a bug in the game. It's related to a space optimization used in the programming: rather than having a special type of Warp Zone for 4-2's warp to world 5, which unlike the other warps had only one pipe, they did a trick to make the world 5 warp still be a three-pipe warp zone. The trick they did was give the left and right pipes, which don't exist in the map data part, world targets of 36. 36 is the number of the blank display tile, which hides the number for you.
The bug essentially just causes the 36/5/36 Warp Zone data to be used in 1-2. Taking the left or right pipe causes the game to send you to world 36-1. As mentioned above, 36 is the tile index for blank, so you end up in " -1", giving rise to the name "Minus World".
The world number 36 overflows the index into the world table. In the cartridge version, it ends up mapping world 36 to the water area used by 2-2 and 7-2. Because 36 is greater than 4, it spawns the extra enemies used in 7-2's version of the level.
The world repeats forever because of how the "set pipe target" command in the object data works. The object data script says, "if world number is X, the next usable pipe sends the player to level Y". The object data only has such commands for worlds 2 and 7 of course, so nothing happens in 36-1. The particular RAM variable set by the command starts off a level set to the ID of that level. Thus when entering a pipe without such a command setting the variable, it reloads the same level.
The Famicom Disk System version of the game acts differently because the data past the end of the world table is different. It ends up loading a different level as a result. That sequence is a series of glitched levels that eventually lead to "beating the game".
Japan had both an FDS and cartridge version of SMB. The cartridge version is bitwise identical to the American version, thus containing our Minus World. In fact, early American versions of the game have the Japanese version inside along with a pinout adapter.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
When I used to play World of Warcraft, I found an undeveloped area that looked like it should not have been accessible. I found it by going to that beach in the far south of tanaris and heading west. I got up into some hills after swimming and riding west along the shore. I was eventually able to find a path through the hills and up onto a plain. It was VERY flat. Nothing was there. no decor of any kind. It led further west and eventually dropped down a massive cliff to another even larger flat plain south of the southern rim of ungoro crater. I was able to drop off the cliff w/ slowfall (mage spell) safely. I ran around the area for a while but found nothing interesting so eventually dropped down into Ungoro and moved on... Still interesting as I should not have been able to get there. It was undeveloped area.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
There used to be a place that some player vendors would sell runes to called "Green Acres". It was a giant open grassy area where they would test out new monsters and such. Somehow players got in there and started making runes. I think eventually the GM's cought on to this and started removing any runes that went there though.
There are places you can go in World of Warcraft that are more secluded than Newman's Landing. For example; the Dun Morough Airfield or Quel'Thalas or Shatterspear Village. Some of them are easier to get to than others. Newman's Landing (mentioned in TFA) is certainly easier to get to than any of the above.
JSL
This topic reminds me of the final scene from: Buggy Saints Row: the Musical, by Cabel Sasser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l_YN-yRCVY
Lose essential liberties to get temporary safety = get only hassles and security theater.
Of course, whether it deserves that celebration can be questioned.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
There was one level with underwater accelerators you were supposed to use to launch yourself into the air to grab high altitude items. I launched and swam with just the right timing that I actually bounced over the background mountains and into an "endless ocean" area with the negative contours of the island behind me. I had to reset the console after swimming around for awhile because there was no way back in. I tried to do it again afterwards, but only managed to do it the one time.
A member of our crew (guild) in The Matrix Online discovered a way to clip out of the world by getting hit by a car and knocked inside part of the world geometry. Once you were outside the world geometry you could walk around in the greyspace until you found odd little places like the interogation room from the original film, a loading construct that was all white with a couple of chairs, and the "Hall of doors" from the 2nd and 3rd films.
Shame that the game was such a letdown in terms of the monthly content updates and events that were prommised.
I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.
Did you know that an audio archive of nearly all of his radio shows is available? It's for sale on some vintage radio sites and is otherwise, ummm, "available" as well.
I read once of an EvE player who one day noticed he could set his clone location to a system within 'Jove Space'. He then promptly killed himself and woke up in Jovian space where he was able to purchase ships and items never before seen in game. For those of you who don't play EvE Jovian space is the region where the Devs and GMs live.
I for one am very jealous of this mystery player.
Now there's some serious-assed Easter Eggs!
it's a hole in the floor, every time I play, I find it, it's always in the same spot.
Xaotik Designs
Anyone remember that room underwater in the middle of an ocean in Everquest? Had firepots around the walls and clicking any one of them would teleport you to various cities. I actually bound my guy in that room, before they disabled binding there. I quit playing EQ soon after but it was fun to jump around the world with ease.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned the original Metroid yet. When you effectively glitched out the game to reach the secret zones, there was more glitched out content than was in the actual game itself. It was a pretty impressive glitch.
Make a hard left turn at the very start of the game (or on any lap where you know you're not going to make your checkpoint).
You'll go down a long straight road that leads to a skid pad.
I was running an emulator of I believe FFIV? or some other sprite turn based RPG. The emulator let you save at any point, so I could pretty much not die. There was a cave that went down 99 floors to some "impossible" boss. Technically you shouldn't have even been able to get a fraction into the cave. Anyway I don't think you were supposed to get to the giant slime at the end, the maps were really weird down there and I forget what it said when I beat him, but it wasn't supposed to happen.
Anyone else know what I'm talking about? This was when Napster was still free and legal...
I remember you could do a trick in Sim City for the SNES where you would pan and move the cursor at the same time, and if you released the button at just the right time the cursor would go off the map. Go far enough off the map and you would find a mutant version of your original map that you could manipulate.
3A 4E 22 05 C1 83 0B 7A
It's random, but my posting it here is probably considered illegal to someone.
Hey, Ender's Game isn't that bad. Compared to Speaker for the Dead, that is, which is all you said, cubed. ;)
So I got bored with leveling my first character at some point in the low 30s, and found a mountain to climb in the northern area of Stranglethorn (you start right where the road cuts through the mountain). From this starting point you can cross all the way into the Dead scar area of the blasted lands and find areas where the textures are all smooth and merging together from the different zones, as well as entering into the non-instanced version of zg. Having a turtle to scout pit traps and a parachute cloak to fall off things is very handy for mountain goating.
That's the plot to the 2001 movie, Avalon. Every sci-fi/gaming/anime geek needs to go watch this now.
Travelling from IF to Stormwind travel points, I used to go over a spot in the Burning Steppes where 10 or so dwarves were fighting a dragon and then a waterfall dropoff...a tranquil little hut by a river awaited at the bottom. I always flew over it but couldn't figure out how to get there. Finally, I went through Burning Steppes, found a fairly low spot in the mountains and timed a jump just right and was able to run through the mountains, go by the dragon and dwarves, jump down the waterfall and if you follow the river, you get to a geometrical junkyard where you can't really go any farther.
Most all Marathon Easter Eggs were there on purpose, but still. Almost every map had some kind of secret.
sonic the hedgehog #1 for sega genesis. stage select- in the sound fx option press sounds 19,65,9,17. hear a bell, hold select when u press start. should bring you to level select. using the sound fx in the level select, press 1,9,9,2,1,1,2,4. should hear another bell. hold select and press start to choose the level. you should be able to move to anywhere in the board as well as placing enemies and objects anywhere you feel like it. as far as i know it only works on the sega genesis version. if anyone still has this game
Right after Glados accidentally tried to kill me, I found myself wandering about the inner areas of Aperture Labs. I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to be there. At least she kept telling me I wasn't. But then I found cake!
Way back when EA was a small-ish independent company, and was run very very differently from how it's run now, they issued a really fun little game entitled Sentinel Worlds I: Future Magic. At one of the locations in the game universe that was relevant to the overarching plot, there's a large laboratory and underground/underwater cave complex. At one point, as your team moves through a set of corridors, there's a fork in the corridor. Taking the left fork keeps you in the game world; taking the right fork sends you down a corridor that eventually brings you to the offices of Electronic Arts itself, a maze of cubicles where you find yourself engaged by "EA Rowdies," bands of programmers with Nerf guns (which were indeed popular in the EA Offices back then). Very very funny. And who knew how badly you could get hurt by Nerf guns!
And John Carmacks head on a corpse in a Quake 3 Arena level if I remember correctly...
http://www.freakygaming.com/gallery/action_games/quake_3/john_carmacks_head
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
We're movin back into granmammas basement to play hidden levelz ;>
like I did
In Link's Awakening, if you have the Roc's Feather equipped and fall into a platform area while holding the use button for it down, you'll jump up as soon as the screen changes back off the top, and end up in glitched areas.
There was also one level in SML3: Wario Land where there was an area three screens tall with a secret exit at the top, where you needed to bounce up off several spring blocks to get up there. But if you held down duck, when springing off the bricks the screen wouldn't shift upwards as it was supposed to. So you start off on the bottom screen and spring up to the top one, release duck and the screen will shift upwards, but only by one screen instead of both. Enter the secret exit and you'll be brought back to a glitched version of the same level.
Half-life 2 had some interesting areas for cutscenes that you weren't supposed to be in. So did Portal.
I'm surprised this list doesn't include the famous chris houlihan room from the SNES zelda game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXp124VgFrw
This made me go into nostalgia mode, I remember how me and my friends played console games together and systematically searched for exploits like that... those were the days ;)