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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?
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>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.
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.
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.
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 ^^
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.
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Dark Energy by any other name is still the Aether.
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.
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."
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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.
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 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!
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.
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I took a look at Second Life once and found all kinds of half-finished buildings and stuff!
Oh, wait...
I'm a cheap date: I'm one of the guys who when he was a kid kept driving towards the volcano in Battlezone.
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.
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/
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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
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.