History GameBreakingBug / PlatformGame

* Not a Game Breaking Bug in the true sense of the term, but one that applies to OneHundredPerCentCompletion. In the original N64 version of ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'', all items collected in a level except for Jiggies, Mumbo tokens and extra honeycomb pieces will reset upon the player dying or leaving the level. The team that ported the game to Xbox Live Arcade changed this so that both notes and Jinjos will be saved by the game's autosave feature. The problem with this is that there's a mini-game in which you have to do a jigsaw based on a moving image of Banjo exploring an area of a level, and the moving image is made using the in-game engine. What this means is that if the jigsaw-Banjo picks up a note in the N64 version, it resets afterward, but if he does it on the XBLA version, it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]] and isn't added to your total. Infuriatingly, there's achievements for completing all the moving image puzzles ''and'' for getting all 900 notes, meaning that if you didn't complete the whole game before doing the jigsaws you'll have to start again right from the beginning if you want the last achievement. The real kicker in this whole scenario? A month after the glitch was first reported, a patch was made to fix it...''and it didn't work for existing saves''. You had to restart the whole game to get 100%.

** Downplayed in a glitch in Terrydactyland in Tooie (It doesn't break the game, but it forces you to reset it). As a big ''T. rex'', two of the things you can do are scare away a guy blocking the entrance to a cave, and press a switch to temporarily open a cage containing a Jinjo. Get unlucky enough to scare the guy away just as the timer for the cage runs off, and when the short cutscene indicating you the cage has closed again is over, you won't be able to move and will have to reset the game.

** In ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong64'', there is an obscure bug with the "Sneeze Alert" mechanical fish in Gloomy Galleon. If you get the Sniper Scope late in the game, then later go to the fish, the spinning fan lags, but not the timer. This makes the Golden Banana here ''impossible'' to get at this point. There is a workaround, where [[http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/191702-donkey-kong-64/53989112 you can disable the Sniper Scope while you are waiting for the fan to finish spinning]], but due to the sheer obscurity of this bug, most people won't know to do this at all.

** All three of the SNES games have ''CopyProtection'' that throws up a screen telling you piracy is bad. However, there's a small chance of running into the screen on a perfectly legitimate copy. If this happens, you have to reset the game. Hope you saved recently!

* The NTSC Atari 7800 port of ''VideoGame/ImpossibleMission'' has a bug that makes one of the puzzles [[UnwinnableByMistake literally impossible]] to complete. This was fixed in the PAL version.

* In the SNES game ''[[Series/TheAddamsFamily Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt]]'', it is possible to get Pugsley stuck in the Basement level by having him duck under the InvisibleWall and walk under it until he drops down and gets stuck, with no way to get out or die. The only way to fix this problem is to reset the game and start all over.

* ''Rastan'' on the Commodore 64 is fatally bugged on the second level. It is IMPOSSIBLE to make a jump over the flaming pit with two ropes. Try it on an emulator with save states and you'll see.
* ''VideoGame/JetSetWilly'':
** The famous Attic Bug on the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum version. An arrow that appears on this screen travels out of the screen memory area and into the game code, overwriting it and rendering the game {{Unwinnable}}. The first people to beat the game did so by hacking the code. Perhaps for that reason, it became famous as the most hacked game then in existence. A couple of hundred separate hacks were published in various magazines, including one that removed Maria, the housekeeper. (Since the entire purpose of the game is to get past Maria by [[GottaCollectThemAll collecting]] all the PlotCoupons, this hack makes the game pointless.) Even better, there's one that triggers the ending sequence when the player collects the first, very easy PlotCoupon.
** The programmer of the Commodore 64 version fixed the infamous Attic Bug, but didn't finish implementing the final cutscene, and so the game is ''still'' impossible to complete. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel: in 2010 a bunch of chaps from the forums of Lemon 64, a C64 fan site, transplanted some of the code from other versions of the game, thus making the game finally winnable. The 27-year-gap between initial release and final patch must be some kind of record.
** The original Dragon 32/64, UsefulNotes/BBCMicro and [[UsefulNotes/Atari8BitComputers Atari 8-bit]] ports ''all'' have one or more (different) game breaking bugs- despite the latter two having been converted and published by a different company- making this into something approaching a tradition for the game!
* In the N64 game ''VideoGame/SpaceStationSiliconValley,'' one of the game's bonus trophies is uncollectable, which makes it impossible to get the HundredPercentCompletion necessary to access the game's bonus level without cheating. The game can still be won and you can still gain EVO's bonus gold costume from collecting all the bits, but the bonus level will forever be lost to non-cheaters and you'll never fill in that last percent.

* ''Franchise/SpyroTheDragon'':
** ''VideoGame/SpyroYearOfTheDragon'':
*** A horrible, horrible glitch in the first editions of the game prevents you from gaining the second egg of the Speedway levels if you exit the level without getting it, ''even if you didn't even select the objective needed to get it in the first place''. Even if you ''do'' win the race needed for the egg after this glitch is triggered, it won't register, preventing OneHundredPercentCompletion. This can even happen in reverse: if you beat the race but not the time trial, then exit, the time trial egg will never register even if you do beat the objective.
*** The game's own difficulty system leads to a borderline example. On Fireworks Factory, a pair of ninja opponents are present on all difficulty levels, but on Easy they don't jump down to fight Spyro. It's necessary to fight them for two gems. It ''is'' fixable by using a cheat code to change the difficulty level or by playing well enough for the game to change the difficulty itself, but unless you know how, it can be a game ender.
*** It's possible to flame a cat-fairy named Fluffy in Cloud Spires, which will result in the cutscene being skipped; speaking with the fairy again will act like the cutscene did play, but he won't give out the egg, and will just disappear into an invisible portal. While you can use the nearby portal to respawn Fluffy, he cannot be spoken to, forcing the player to exit and restart the level. The person who discovered the bug, which she dubbed the "Fluffy Glitch", [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=156GVI5IQN0 even posted a video on how to trigger it]].
*** It's also possible to trip the game's CopyProtection feature if your disk is scratched or the lens of your UsefulNotes/PlayStation is dirty. Your only warning is that Zoe the fairy will warn you that you may have have purchased an illegal copy. However, if you disregard the warning (which odds are you will if you're an innocent gamer who bought the game fair and square) and face the end boss, BAM! ''All your data'' on that file is lost. Every single thing from gems to eggs goes back down to zero, and you go ''all the way back to the beginning of the game'' as if you deleted the file and started a new one.
** ''Enter the Dragonfly'' will occasionally freeze while loading levels. Because the load times are [[LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading very long to begin with]], you might not even notice until several minutes have passed.
** A rather irritating glitch can sometimes occur in ''Dawn Of The Dragon'', where even if you've completed the game and [[GottaCatchEmAll collected everything]] / [[EliteMooks defeated all the Elite Enemies]] / [[ElementalPowers upgraded all your elements to their maximum]], the file will only read 99%, meaning you can't open the final gallery.

* In the Genesis game ''VideoGame/GarfieldCaughtInTheAct'', occasionally the third boss will walk off the right side of the screen and never return, forcing the player to restart the game and start all over.
* ''Franchise/PrinceOfPersia'':
** ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersiaTheSandsOfTime''
*** One bug will stop the platforms in the observatory from correctly lifting (may have something to do with Farah triggering the switch instead of the player). A more infamous one occurrs in ''Warrior Within'', where the game will randomly teleport ahead when loading to a part far later, [[spoiler:when the Prince becomes the Sand Wraith]]. The only way to fix it is to load an earlier save. Don't have one? Sucks to be you!
*** For Heaven's sake, NEVER EVER save the game near a spike pit, especially with Farah. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQQh2yFLrxc JUST DON'T!]]
*** There's a horrible bug right at the end of the game where you try to run through the last sand portal to face the end boss and the portal will simply refuse to work. ''Play the entire game over from the beginning!''
*** An oversight allows you to reach an unreachable door and bypass a decent chunk of the game. Said occurrence forces you to run a massive disintegrating obstacle course, only to arrive at a wall which can only be broken with a sword you don't own yet. And unless you avoid the two saves along the nigh-impossible road to failure, you're forced into starting a new game. Worse still, you can stumble into this by complete accident with no indication.
** There's ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2: The Shadow and the Flame'' [[PortingDisaster on the Super NES.]] One specific standard enemy, when killed, ''crashes the game''.
** In ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia3D'', there is a spot late in the game where a moving platform will not be moving. It causes excessive frustration the first time around, since the player has no idea it is supposed to move. To make matters worse, once the player reaches the area, the platform will not move unless the level is restarted and the player gets lucky.
* Not a Game Breaking Bug in the true sense of the term, but one that applies to OneHundredPerCentCompletion. In the original N64 version of ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'', all items collected in a level except for Jiggies, Mumbo tokens and extra honeycomb pieces will reset upon the player dying or leaving the level. The team that ported the game to Xbox Live Arcade changed this so that both notes and Jinjos will be saved by the game's autosave feature. The problem with this is that there's a mini-game in which you have to do a jigsaw based on a moving image of Banjo exploring an area of a level, and the moving image is made using the in-game engine. What this means is that if the jigsaw-Banjo picks up a note in the N64 version, it resets afterward, but if he does it on the XBLA version, it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]] and isn't added to your total. Infuriatingly, there's achievements for completing all the moving image puzzles ''and'' for getting all 900 notes, meaning that if you didn't complete the whole game before doing the jigsaws you'll have to start again right from the beginning if you want the last achievement. The real kicker in this whole scenario? A month after the glitch was first reported, a patch was made to fix it...''and it didn't work for existing saves''. You had to restart the whole game to get 100%.
** In the first game, if you lay two eggs into Leaky the Bucket from a ledge above and then jump near a Yum-Yum clam nearby while Leaky is speaking, if the Yum-Yum clam attacks you, the game will crash on the spot.
** During the final battle with Gruntilda in the first game, if you fall off the tower and let Grunty hit you just before you hit the death barrier, the game will softlock because Banjo is stuck in his pain animation indefinitely and floats around the tower aimlessly, forcing the player to reset the game.
** Downplayed in a glitch in Terrydactyland in Tooie (It doesn't break the game, but it forces you to reset it). As a big T-Rex, two of the things you can do are scare away a guy blocking the entrance to a cave, and press a switch to temporarily open a cage containing a Jinjo. Get unlucky enough to scare the guy away just as the timer for the cage runs off, and when the short cutscene indicating you the cage has closed again is over, you won't be able to move and will have to reset the game.
** In Hailfire Peaks in ''Tooie'', be careful using the Snowball Transformation in tandem with the Honeyback Cheato code. The snowballs size is based in proportion to its health, and the only way to get it smaller and travel through some doorways is by decreasing your health—you do the math. Worst of all is if you go into Sabreman's tent just before the snowball grows to its full size, the subsequent growth spurt will trap you inside of it and force you to reset the game.
** In ''Nuts and Bolts'', if you're unfortunate enough to hit poor Clanker's eyes during Banjoland's Act 4 mission "Spring Break!" the Disc will become unreadable. It's unknown if this happens in the Rare Replay rerelease.
* The NTSC Atari 7800 port of ''VideoGame/ImpossibleMission'' has a bug that makes one of the puzzles [[UnwinnableByMistake literally impossible]] to complete. This was fixed in the PAL version.
* ''VideoGame/Sly2BandOfThieves'':
** Saving and quitting during the Canada Games section of of the game makes it impossible to complete the level, rendering the game UnWinnable. This has a fix built-in, though you do have to backstep a few missions. Just head to the house that contains the safe, and head to said safe. Once Jean Bison yells at his lackeys, you should be able to pull a switch and redo the laser mission.
** Although it takes some effort, it can happen in the "Leading Rajan" mission. If you set a bomb under Rajan right before getting the last blueprint, you will fail the mission but you will technically have gotten the blueprints. This results in the mission being [[UnwinnableByMistake unwinnable]], forcing a reset.
** Getting hit while looking through the binocu-cam can cause the camera to become frozen in place.
* ''Franchise/MegaMan'':
** In the first few screens of Ice Man's stage in the first ''[[VideoGame/MegaMan1 Mega Man]]'', if you move Mega Man back and forth at the very top of the screen at a specific point, a myriad of different effects can happen, from spawning random enemies or bosses, soft-resetting to the title screen, accelerating the ice physics, graphical glitches at varying levels of severity, counting the stage as finished, or freezing the game completely. In the best-case scenario, this can [[GoodBadBugs take you directly to the ending sequence]].
*** Another glitch exists in the first game where if you land on the ground during the second phase of the [[FinalBoss Wily Machine]] just as it dies and walk left, you will be stuck in the hallway before the boss with your controls locked, as the game normally does after the final hit. The only remedy is the reset button, since the ending won't play under these circumstances, and since the first ''Mega Man'' [[ContinuingIsPainful doesn't have passwords...]]
** ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' has a rather nasty glitch in the Japanese version involving the fight with Hard Man. One of Hard Man's attacks involves him [[GroundPound smashing into the ground]], causing an earthquake that locks Mega Man into his current position on the screen until he gets back up or if Mega Man gets hit. If the player were to kill him while Mega Man is frozen by say, using his weakness, Magnet Missile, which can hit him from anywhere on the screen, they would be stuck. In the fight with him in his home stage, this isn't an issue at all, since the game will automatically take control when Hard Man dies (''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' and ''3'' immediately lock your controls when you kill a boss for the "stage clear" sequence). However, if this is done during the rematch with him in the BossRush sequence in Dr. Wily Stage 4 near the end of the game, Mega Man will be permanently unable to move, since the game intends for the player to immediately regain control and exit via the nearby teleporter. The only way out is to reset the game and use a password to start all the Wily stages from scratch.
** In ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'', if you time a Rain Flush so that it goes off while Wily's escape pod is on the screen after defeating Wily Machine 4, it will destroy it, since it's not programmed to be immune to Rain Flush. However, the victory music and the lead-in to the final stage will not play if that takes place, meaning that you have no choice but to reset and continue from the last place you wrote down the password for, which is quite devastating at this point in the game since the final password is given ''seven stages prior''.
*** A similar glitch occurs if you use Flash Stopper to finish off the Cockroach Twins in Dr. Cossack Stage 3: the game will never proceed to the next stage. Thankfully, Flash Stopper is useless against this boss anyways, and there's a bed of OneHitKill spikes in the room.
** In the first [[VideoGame/MegaManX1 Mega Man X]], if the player kills the final phase of the FinalBoss, Wolf Sigma, and dies at the exact same time, since the game once again locks ''all'' of your controls upon death, the player cannot advance the mandatory dialogue afterward. Looks like it's back to the beginning of the fortress stages! Thankfully, later cartridge revisions fixed this, among several other more minor glitches.
* ''VideoGame/LittleBigPlanet'':
** Least severe was the terrible, horrible server lag that was apparent for the first few months of the first game, rendering it nearly unplayable online, despite the online connectivity being one of the main points of the game.
** Many players have encountered a bug that, when making a large grabbable material spin extremely fast in the level editor and grabbing on, they will no longer be able to respawn, stuck on some sort of infinite pseudo-death loop. Returning to the pod (main menu, basically) continues this, and this persists ''even upon resetting the game,'' rendering the game completely unplayable for those affected. The only way to undo this is to delete the entire save data.
** The "Info moon" on the left, which gauges your Play, Create, and Share points (among other things), was completely non-operational at one point (curiously, it was working fine before the official launch, I.E. before the servers were up).
** Still prancing around is the bug that makes your file completely unable to save new data (and gives no error indicating this. The game only autosaves), apparently brought on by having too many custom/community objects. It's supposedly fixable by deleting all of that and avoiding community objects like the plague. Obviously nobody wants to do this.
** "Spawn-Pop Cancer." Sometimes, when the player does the Lethal Sackboy Glitch that lethalizes Sackboy and allows him to touch objects of the same lethality without dying, they may become lethal to themselves. Meaning that they'll die every time they spawn, repeatedly. If this happens, you'll need to import an old save. Hope you made a backup!
** "Deep Freeze." When there are too many complicated objects in a small area, the game can freeze and you will have to turn off the console. This bug also happens in ''[=LittleBigPlanet=] 2''.
** In the second level, Get A Grip, items can disappear, with the only known cure being to start a new file and hope your luck hasn't run out. The "Moody Cloud" sticker is one of the more common disappearances.
** A common glitch in ''[=LittleBigPlanet=] PSP'' can render user-created levels unplayable and impossible to edit. Attempting to play an affected community level will softlock the game.
** In ''[=LittleBigPlanet=] 3'', a bug can occur in create mode where Sackboy will get stuck and start twitching wildly until you delete the glitched object. If you quit and restart the game, Sackboy will get stuck in the pipe of the Pod and make the game unplayable until you load a backup or delete the save data.
*** Seemingly innocuous actions — it's not known exactly what causes this — have the possibility of corrupting your profile. Hope you backed up all your levels and put all your costumes, captured and community items inside another backed-up level, because if not, you're never going to see them again!
*** In rare cases, loading the Ziggurat hub level can cause the player to repeatedly fall to their death.
* A [=PS2=] demo version of ''VideoGame/ViewtifulJoe 2'' has a severe bug that causes all other data on the memory card to be erased by just playing the demo.
* In the PC version of the 1994 platformer ''VideoGame/TheLionKing'', the second level requires you to roar at some monkeys so that you can get them to turn around, allowing you to solve a puzzle. Unfortunately, 90% of the time you enter this level, a bug manifests where your "roar meter" never fills up, thus making it impossible to affect anything with your roar.
* ''VideoGame/LostWinds'' is unfortunately affected with a bug where Toku occasionally gets stuck in the ground after a long fall. Effects can range from him being unable to jump (either over small ledges or with Gust) to being completely stuck. Sadly, the only way to get out is to reset. If you haven't saved recently, sucks to be you...fortunately, the game does autosave at various points in the game, and the game is short, so even if you don't use the save pillars, you'll probably never go that far back.
* ''VideoGame/JazzJackrabbit'':
** In the PC version, you can get stuck in walls and ceilings by jumping, teleporting (through a cheat code), or being bounced into them. You can escape using cheat codes, but if they don't work, your only other option is to restart the level.
** A worse one in some of the builds of the first game makes one of the levels in Orbitus nigh impossible to beat. The level features bouncy walls and a bouncy floor that also, unfortunately, acts as a ceiling that sucks you up to the level above if Jazz so much as scrapes a hair on it. Add in a few tiny holes the player has to navigate to without touching the floor or ceiling, and you get a recipe of pain. Players attempting this should turn on slow motion mode, as it's virtually unwinnable otherwise.
* The ''Wizard of OZ'' platformer on the SNES. As stated by WebVideo/TheAngryVideoGameNerd, one glitch that defies all gaming sensibility is the fact that you fall off any platforms that you try to jump on unless you land perfectly dead-center.
* ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry'':
** Donkey Kong runs into these nasty glitches more than once. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk2BCDaw5Dk&feature=related This video]] shows a number of glitches from the first ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry1'' game, most of them harmless, but the one starting at 8:47 is decidedly nasty. Rambi gets glitched as the cave is opened, and the game freezes when he tries to exit. On restarting, the environment is a mass of flashing error, rendering the game utterly unplayable. An ominous annotation near the start of the segment says the glitch was tested on an actual Super Nintendo and altered the system - whether he's just talking about the emulator or if it was tested on an actual system is unknown. Fortunately, unlike the Castle Crush glitch from the next game, this one requires enough set-up as to almost never happen by accident.
** An extremely serious glitch can occur in ''[[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest Donkey Kong Country 2]]'' on the vertically-scrolling Castle Crush stage. There is a barrel near the beginning which can be grabbed and broken without being thrown. A demonstration of the glitch can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D95R9h7Jqw here]]. The glitch can cause the game to crash in some cases, but this could end up being worse than a simple restart or even losing save files (which is another potential result of the glitch). In some cases, the glitch's effects are so severe that they damage ''the cartridge itself'' beyond repair, usually by corrupting its ROM. An example of the broken ROM can be seen ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS623XTmr04 here]]). Some accounts suggest that this damage can even extend to '''the console or emulator itself.''' The same issues do not appear to occur in the Virtual Console version. Somebody risked the life of his ''Donkey Kong Country 2'' cartridge and performed the glitch on a real SNES multiple times, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-16pMF1Mg here.]]
** All three of the SNES games have ''CopyProtection'' that throws up a screen telling you piracy is bad. However, there's a small chance of running into the screen on a perfectly legitimate copy. If this happens, you have to reset the game. Hope you saved recently!
** Vertically-scrolling stages in some ''Country'' and all ''Land'' games have a comparatively minor, but still frustrating, bug. If you fall too far or too quickly, the game will think you fell down a BottomlessPit and expel you from the stage minus one life (this is more common in ''Land'' because of the smaller screen size).
** ''VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountryTropicalFreeze'' had a rare glitch that prevented the player from advancing to level 3-4 after completing 3-3. The path would open up, but Donkey Kong couldn't move. While this didn't happen to most people, those that encountered the glitch had no way of completing the rest of the game. Fortunately this was fixed in a patch.
** In ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong64'', there is an obscure bug with the "Sneeze Alert" mechanical fish in Gloomy Galleon. If you get the Sniper Scope late in the game, then later go to the fish, the spinning fan lags, but not the timer. This makes the Golden Banana here ''impossible'' to get at this point. There is a workaround, where [[http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/191702-donkey-kong-64/53989112 you can disable the Sniper Scope while you are waiting for the fan to finish spinning]], but due to the sheer obscurity of this bug, most people won't know to do this at all.
*** According to former Rare developer Shawn Pile, a bug which would cause the game to randomly crash was the primary reason that the game required the Expansion Pak, as the developers couldn't find a way to remove the bug otherwise. Even with the Pak enabled, the game can still occasionally lock up. It seems to occur if you play the game for too long without shutting off the power (somewhere in the ballpark of 10 hours), which wasn't likely on the original console but is more noticeable with the use of savestates in UsefulNotes/{{emulation}} or UsefulNotes/VirtualConsole releases.
*** An even nastier thing happens if you try to use ''any'' [[NoFairCheating Gameshark code in the game]]--Donkey Kong will spasm out of control throughout the whole game, even in the opening. Also, your cartridge will be permanently damaged if you save. How damaged are we talking? Bad enough that you ''cannot pick up any items and you [[OneHitPointWonder drop dead from taking a single hit]]''.

* ''VideoGame/{{Rayman}}'':
** In the earliest copies of ''VideoGame/Rayman2TheGreatEscape'' for the PC, at the beginning of the level "The Top of the World", a message will pop up with a picture of a [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot robot pirate]], telling you the CD is missing and that you have to insert it to keep playing, even if it's not. As [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efXgUGGYpt8 this video]] shows, however, the level's still fully playable (should you not trigger OTHER glitches) when this glitch is active. The only issue is that you can hardly see shit when there's a gigantic robot pirate face blocking most of the screen.
** In the HD rereleases of ''VideoGame/Rayman3HoodlumHavoc'', attempting to revisit any world before completing the game results in the last world becoming permanently locked, forcing the player to restart their save.
* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}''
** A rather nasty bug appears in ''VideoGame/KirbysAdventure'' in relation to the Stone ability. Upon getting to the room with a mini boss in Orange Ocean 1, Kirby is standing right on a block that can be broken with the Stone ability. Using the ability to break the block will leave Kirby splashing in a single block of water, and attempting to use the ability again will result in the game glitching out. However, if B is pressed followed immediately by Start to pause, a variety of effects can happen, including the game crashing. In a best-case scenario the game can randomly warp to different areas including the Credits sequence, which counts as the game being beaten.
** The game can be softlocked in the fight with the Fire Lion boss in the level 6 arena. If Kirby has the Cutter ability, gets the boss down to two bars of health, and then uses the Cutter at the same time the lion grabs him, the game freezes.
** In ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'' it is possible to freeze the game during Milky Way Wishes. If Kirby inhales one of the Noddies at the start of Planet Hotbeat, then immediately pauses and exits the stage, going to NOVA next will cause the cutscene to play like normal but then the game will lock up when the level begins.
*** The Japanese version of ''Super Star'' also has a particularly nasty glitch pertaining to the SA-1 chip included on the cartridge. Under certain circumstances (the exact nature of which is unknown, considering that the glitch seems to occur at complete random), the chip and its associated programming can end up corrupting the game's save files so that all three of them display six stars, 0% completion, and no icon. Aptly called the "0% 0% 0% Glitch", the sheer ease and randomness regarding its triggering has made it quite infamous among Japanese ''Kirby'' fans, to the point where it got parodied in the second episode of ''Manga/PopTeamEpic''. Not helping matters is the fact that the glitch was '''never fixed'''; all re-releases of the Super Famicom version, be it Virtual Console, ''Kirby's Dream Collection'', or the Super Famicom Mini, retain the glitch, with the DS remake being the only version to lack it (though developers have joked about including a hidden ClassicCheatCode to replicate the glitch, indicating that they're fully aware of its existence yet haven't done jack about it). Thankfully, Nintendo's international divisions managed to catch and remove the glitch ahead of time, meaning the Japanese version is the only one affected.
** In "Dyna Blade" the game can also freeze during the auto-scrolling part of the second level. If a Helper takes enough damage from a particular enemy to be defeated but Kirby manages to make it to the warp star just ahead by himself and jump on, the game will softlock as it waits for the Helper to also interact with it, even though it is technically dead. This will leave the screen to keep scrolling endlessly, even wrapping around itself at the end of the stage.
** Even the DS remake ''Kirby Super Star Ultra'' is not immune to game breaking bugs. If Kirby uses the Suplex ability on a Bomber enemy in a particular part of Stage 2 of Dyna Blade, right as the enemy is about to fall of an edge, he will grab the enemy with the Suplex ability like normal and land on the ground below, but the game will lock up if he jumps to throw the enemy.
* In ''Cool World'' on the NES, there's a glitch where, if you manage to store up at least ten lives and then die, it's an instant game over.
* Due to a poorly coded physics engine, some levels in ''Super VideoGame/MeatBoy'' are literally impossible when playing on a slow computer. This can be mitigated to some extent by switching to a lower graphics resolution, but if it still isn't fast enough on 640x480, you're out of luck. Hope you weren't planning on ever seeing 2-18x.
* ''Film/HomeAlone2'' for the NES has a fatal bug where, if you manage to get through the game with the Bell item intact without getting hit and spin jump into Marv ''or'' Harry in certain parts of the third level, the game freezes.
** The Game Boy version of ''Film/HomeAlone'' has a game-breaking glitch where, if Kevin climbs up the ladder to the right side of the attic in the fourth level, the game freezes due to an error with a warp.
* This is deliberately invoked in ''Dungeon'', a game by Creator/{{Cactus}} and podunkian. The game plays differently on every computer without telling the player. So, for some players, the game is unwinnable or unplayable as it's impossible to get past a certain room (or even to clear the first jump), or the game lags horribly.
* ''VideoGame/SpeedyGonzalesLosGatosBandidos'' manages to crash less accurate SNES emulators when a vital switch in the first level of the sixth world is pressed. Why an actual SNES can break out of the (probably unintentional) infinite loop baffled emulator writers [[http://forums.bannister.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=60550 until 2010]].
* Due to a bug in Round 7 of ''VideoGame/MonsterParty'', you earn the key to finish the level after fighting only two of the three bosses. If you face the third you'll lose the key, and your only choice is to reset the game. This is due to there not being a boss in that room in the unreleased Japanese version (there was planned to be, but it ended up being [[DummiedOut Dummied Out]]), and the game's programming was not changed to accommodate for this in the English version, as it only checks for exactly two keys in the player's inventory.
* ''[[VideoGame/LEGOAdaptationGame TT LEGO Games]]''
** ''LEGO Jurassic World'' just ''loves'' to crash at inopportune times, often when an EventFlag is supposed to trigger but doesn't. It is also easy to crash the game by enabling too many Studs X cheats (which compound), which will make the game freeze during the end level tally. At best, this will cause oddities like having officially beaten the level but ''not'' earned the gold brick or any unlocked characters, minikits, or amber, and at worst (since it auto-saves during the tally), it can [[IncrediblyLamePun brick]] your game.
** ''[[VideoGame/LEGODimensions LEGO Dimensions's]]'' ''Film/Ghostbusters2016'' Story Pack has one on Wii U. Every time time you complete a level in that Story Pack, you are taken to the ''Ghostbusters 2016'' adventure world. You are always required to solve a puzzle or a quest in that adventure world before progressing on to the next level. If you leave the adventure world during one of these quests and then return to the ''Ghostbusters 2016'' portal in The Shard, you are offered to either continue the story or go straight to the adventure world. If you choose to continue the story, you immediately start the next level, skipping the quest you have to do. If you do that and then try replaying the level later after completing it for the story, the game will still think the level is locked, even though it will show you have clearly played it, collected minikits, got a Rule Breaker status and rescued the civilian in peril. This then makes it impossible to 100 percent and collect the Gold Bricks for the level if you didn't get everything.
* ''VideoGame/MightyNo9'' has two involving the final boss. The only solution to either is to quit the level and start the whole grueling process over again.
** The first happens under some specific but easily exploited circumstances: When the arena forms stairs going up one side of the floor for the boss's wall attack, climbing the stairs before the boss emerges can cause them to drop down and switch sides. Doing so at the wrong time can get the boss stuck and never emerge.
** The second is more specific and rare, where beating either of its forms prevents the next scene (either the second phase transition or the ending cutscene) to not load at all.
* In the original version of [[VideoGame/YoshisIslandKameksRevenge Kamek's Revenge]], a hack of Super Mario World 2, in 4-3 (Green Green Bay), entering one particular room (required for 100 points) would make Baby Mario fall below the screen instantly without even getting hit, and it would be impossible to die. This meant that you had to restart the game. Thankfully, this bug was fixed in Kamek's Revenge 2.0.
* The current version (8.7.5) of ''VideoGame/MegaManRevolution'' has a nasty bug where the game crashes if you try to save after getting a game over. Thus, the only way to save your game is to complete a level and ''then'' save.
* In the Capital Cashino level of ''VideoGame/YookaLaylee'', for most of the Pagies, you have to find enough casino tokens and cash them in at the cashier near the entrance. In the initial release of the game, if you cashed in the tokens and quit the game before triggering another auto-save anywhere else, you might wind up with a file that saved after removing the tokens from your inventory but ''before'' awarding you the Pagie(s), leaving you that many Pagies short of HundredPercentCompletion. Fortunately, a patch fixes this, and also detects if this happened before to correct your Pagie count.
* In ''VideoGame/GunstarHeroes'', after defeating Orange, his helicopter blows up and player characters start falling as the screen scrolls rapidly. Normally it's NotTheFallThatKillsYou, but when the bug that sometimes kills {{Speedrun}}s of this game happens, the game fails to load the correct environment and scrolls through empty or garbage screens for several minutes before finally killing the player.

* ''VideoGame/Stinkoman20X6'' has two. First, if you die to either of the first two bosses, losing results in the game respawning you in the boss room as expected... except there won't be any ground, and you will immediately fall to your death. The other is that it is impossible to complete level 4.1. The last button you need to press will not move the platform, so 1-Up will fall to his death.
* In ''[[VideoGame/{{Bubsy}} Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tales]]'', the final level has a checkpoint where if you don't kill the enemy on top of it before dying, you will be caught in a loop of dying immediately after respawning until you game over.

*** It's possible to flame a cat-fairy named Fluffy in Cloud Spires, which will result in the cutscene being skipped; speaking with the fairy again will act like the cutscene did play, but he won't give out the egg, and will just disappear into an invisible portal. While you can use the nearly portal to respawn Fluffy, he cannot be spoken to, forcing the player to exit and restart the level. The person who discovered the bug, which she dubbed the "Fluffy Glitch", [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=156GVI5IQN0 even posted a video on how to trigger it]].

*** A horrible, horrible glitch in the first editions of the game prevents you from gaining the second egg of the the Speedway levels if you exit the level without getting it, ''even if you didn't even select the objective needed to get it in the first place''. Even if you ''do'' win the race needed for the egg after this glitch is triggered, it won't register, preventing OneHundredPercentCompletion. This can even happen in reverse: if you beat the race but not the time trial, then exit, the time trial egg will never register even if you do beat the objective.

** "Deep Freeze." When there are too many complicated objects in a small area, the game can freeze and you will have to turn off the console. This bug also happens in ''LittleBigPlanet 2''.

** A common glitch in ''LittleBigPlanet PSP'' can render user-created levels unplayable and impossible to edit. Attempting to play an affected community level will softlock the game.
** In ''LittleBigPlanet 3'', a bug can occur in create mode where Sackboy will get stuck and start twitching wildly until you delete the glitched object. If you quit and restart the game, Sackboy will get stuck in the pipe of the Pod and make the game unplayable until you load a backup or delete the save data.

** In the earliest copies of ''VideoGame/Rayman2'' for the PC, at the beginning of the level "The Top of the World", a message will pop up with a picture of a [[NinjaPirateZombieRobot robot pirate]], telling you the CD is missing and that you have to insert it to keep playing, even if it's not. As [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efXgUGGYpt8 this video]] shows, however, the level's still fully playable (should you not trigger OTHER glitches) when this glitch is active. The only issue is that you can hardly see shit when there's a gigantic robot pirate face blocking most of the screen.

** In rare cases, loading the Ziggurat hub level can cause the player to repeatedly fall to their death.

** Least severe was the terrible, horrible server lag that was apparent for the first few months of the game, rendering it nearly unplayable online, despite the online connectivity being one of the main points of the game.

* ''Harley's Humongous Adventure'' on the SNES has a nasty tendency to crash by merely ''jumping or walking to certain locations during normal gameplay''.

** There's ''VideoGame/PrinceOfPersia2: The Shadow and the Flame'' [[PortingDisaster on the Super NES.]] One specific standard enemy, when killed, ''crashes the game''. Then again, it can be argued that the port is a giant bug with bits of game in it.

* In ''BubsyInFracturedFurryTales'', the final level has a checkpoint where if you don't kill the enemy on top of it before dying, you will be caught in a loop of dying immediately after respawning until you game over.

** In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioMaker2'' there is a game-breaking bug any any stage based on ''VideoGame/SuperMario3DWorld''. If Mario is wearing a cat suit and enters a warp block that is right next to a standard block and then immediately goes down a pipe, Mario is despawned from the game and the game softlocks.

*** It's actually possible to crash the game just by [[https://youtu.be/EKc6sWmljsc messing around with the file select screen.]]

*** In ''Vanish Cap Beneath the Moat'', if you try to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2-K2zBzoU perform the backwards long jump glitch on one of the rotating platforms]], the game will crash. It's been said that locking the camera in place will work around this and let Mario just fly out of the levels bounds instead.
*** In ''Bob-Omb Battlefield'', if you ground pound on the floating islands item box [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjpjdqyUtB0 while exploiting the Dead Flying Mario glitch]], both Mario's death animation and the cutscene of the Star appearing will trigger at the same time, softlocking the game and forcing the player to reset.
*** Also in ''Bob-Omb Battlefield'', if you [[https://youtu.be/uxYO-JJH8H4 sandwich Mario underneath the level's first bridge and a cork block]], the game will crash.
*** For some reason, ''Big Boo's Haunt'' [[https://youtu.be/F68a40OfDvs has a glitch]] in the room that lets you fall down to the basement that causes the game to crash if you're up against a wall and fall in a certain way.

* Not a Game Breaking Bug in the true sense of the term, but one that applies to OneHundredPerCentCompletion. In the original N64 version of ''VideoGame/BanjoKazooie'', all items collected in a level except for jiggies, Mumbo tokens and extra honeycomb pieces will reset upon the player dying or leaving the level. The team that ported the game to Xbox Live Arcade changed this so that both notes and jinjos will be saved by the game's autosave feature. The problem with this is that there's a mini-game in which you have to do a jigsaw based on a moving image of Banjo exploring an area of a level, and the moving image is made using the in-game engine. What this means is that if the jigsaw-Banjo picks up a note in the N64 version, it resets afterward, but if he does it on the XBLA version, it's [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost forever]] and isn't added to your total. Infuriatingly, there's achievements for completing all the moving image puzzles ''and'' for getting all 900 notes, meaning that if you didn't complete the whole game before doing the jigsaws you'll have to start again right from the beginning if you want the last achievement. The real kicker in this whole scenario? A month after the glitch was first reported, a patch was made to fix it...''and it didn't work for existing saves''. You had to restart the whole game to get 100%.

** ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' has a rather nasty glitch in the Japanese version involving the fight with Hard Man. One of Hard Man's attacks involves him [[GroundPound smashing into the ground]], causing an earthquake that locks Mega Man into his current position on the screen until he gets back up or if Mega Man gets hit. If the player were to kill him while Mega Man is frozen by say, using his weakness, Magnet Missile, which can hit him from anywhere on the screen, they would be stuck. In the fight with him in his home stage, this isn't an issue at all, since the game will automatically take control when Hard Man dies (''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' and ''3'' immediately lock your controls when you kill a boss for the "stage clear" sequence). However, if this is done during the rematch with him in the BossRush sequence in Dr. Wily Stage 4 near the end of the game, Mega Man will be permanently unable to move, since the game intends for the player to immediately regain control and exit via the nearby teleporter. The only way out is to reset the game and use a passowrd to start all the Wily stages from scratch.

** ''VideoGame/MegaMan3'' has a rather nasty glitch in the Japanese version involving the fight with the EarthquakeMachine Hard Man. One of Hard Man's attacks involves him [[GroundPound smashing into the ground]], causing an earthquake that locks Mega Man into his current position on the screen until he gets back up or if Mega Man gets hit. If the player were to kill him while Mega Man is stuck by say, using his weakness, Magnet Missile, which can hit him from anywhere on the screen, they would be stuck. In the fight with him in his home stage, this isn't an issue at all, since the game will automatically take control when Hard Man dies (''VideoGame/MegaMan2'' and ''3'' immediately lock your controls when you kill a boss for the "stage clear" sequence). However, if this is done during the rematch with him in the BossRush sequence in Dr. Wily Stage 4 near the end of the game, Mega Man will be permanently unable to move, since the game intends for the player to immediately regain control and exit via the nearby teleporter. The only way out is to reset the game and use a passowrd to start all the Wily stages from scratch.
** In ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'', if you time a Rain Flush so that it goes off while Wily's escape pod is on the screen after defeating Wily Machine 4, it will destroy it, since it does not programmed to be immune to Rain Flush. However, the victory music and the lead-in to the final stage will not play if that takes place, meaning that you have no choice but to restart from the last place you wrote down the password for, which is quite devastating at this point in the game since the final password is given ''seven stages prior''.
*** A similar glitch occurs if you use Flash Stopper to finish off the Cockroach Twins in Dr. Cossack Stage 3: The game will never proceed to the next stage. Thankfully, Flash Stopper is useless against this boss anyways, and there's a bed of OneHitKill spikes in the room.

* In ''VideoGame/MegaMan4'', if you time a Rain Flush so that it goes off while Wily's escape pod is on the screen, it will destroy it. However, the victory music and the lead-in to the final stage will not play if that takes place, meaning that you have no choice but to restart from the last place you wrote down the password for. Thankfully, this is more of a [[UnwinnableByDesign deliberate undertaking]] than an accidental one. There is a similar bug in the original ''Mega Man'', where if you get hit by the final boss just as you defeat him, the screen will glitch and the game will never proceed to the ending. The only remedy is the reset button.
** A similar glitch occurs if you use Flash Stopper to finish off the third Cossack boss: The game will never proceed to the next stage. Thankfully, Flash Stopper is useless against this boss anyways, and there's a bed of instant-death spikes in the room.

* Due to a bug in Round 7 of ''VideoGame/MonsterParty'', you earn the key to finish the level after fighting only two of the three bosses. If you face the third you'll lose the key, and your only choice is to reset the game.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMario64'': Due to being an early 3D game and having numerous glitches and design oversights, there are many ways to mess up the game:
** It's actually possible to crash the game just by [[https://youtu.be/EKc6sWmljsc messing around with the file select screen.]]
** In ''Vanish Cap Beneath the Moat'', if you try to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om2-K2zBzoU perform the backwards long jump glitch on one of the rotating platforms]], the game will crash. It's been said that locking the camera in place will work around this and let Mario just fly out of the levels bounds instead.
** In ''Bob-Omb Battlefield'', if you ground pound on the floating islands item box [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjpjdqyUtB0 while exploiting the Dead Flying Mario glitch]], both Mario's death animation and the cutscene of the Star appearing will trigger at the same time, softlocking the game and forcing the player to reset.
** Also in ''Bob-Omb Battlefield'', if you [[https://youtu.be/uxYO-JJH8H4 sandwich Mario underneath the level's first bridge and a cork block]], the game will crash.
** For some reason, ''Big Boo's Haunt'' [[https://youtu.be/F68a40OfDvs has a glitch]] in the room that lets you fall down to the basement that causes the game to crash if you're up against a wall and fall in a certain way.
** Using the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlcu6AbisUc Hat Factory glitch]] in ''Shifting Sand Land'' can crash the game if you grab one too many hats.
** In ''Tall, Tall Mountain'', if you let the Monty Moles [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPzVVAYKoqE throw too many pebbles with Mario standing nearby]], the game will run out of memory and crash. This is due to a design oversight--pebbles deactivate when they are more than 4000 units away from Mario. Hence, a deactivated pebble won't hit the ground and unload, but instead just remain invisible and unmoving in midair. So by having Monty Moles continually throw pebbles off the edge, the pebbles will keep loading into object slots but never unload. Since the game only has 240 object slots, eventually all the slots become occupied and the game crashes.

*** It's also possible to trip the game's CopyProtection feature if your disk is scratched or the lens of your UsefulNotes/PlayStation is dirty. Your only warning is that Zoe the fairy will warn you that you may have have purchased an illegal copy. However, if you disregard the warning (which odds are you will if you're an innocent gamer who bought the game fair and square) and face the end boss, BAM! You lose ''all your data'': every single thing from gems to eggs goes back down to zero.

*** According to former Rare developer Shawn Pile, a bug which would cause the game to randomly crash was the primary reason that the game required the Expansion Pak, as the developers couldn't find a way to remove the bug otherwise. Even with the Pak enabled, the game can still occasionally lock up. It seems to occur if you play the game for too long without shutting off the power.

** In ''Bob-Omb Battlefield'', if you ground pound on the floating islands item box [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjpjdqyUtB0 while exploiting the Dead Flying Mario glitch]], both Marios death animation and the cutscene of the Star appearing will trigger at the same time, softlocking the game and forcing the player to reset.

** An extremely serious glitch can occur in ''[[VideoGame/DonkeyKongCountry2DiddysKongQuest Donkey Kong Country 2]]'' on the vertically-scrolling Castle Crush stage. There is a barrel near the beginning which can be grabbed and broken without being thrown. A demonstration of the glitch can be seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D95R9h7Jqw here]]. The glitch can cause the game to crash in some cases, but this could end up being worse than a simple restart or even losing save files (which is another potential result of the glitch). In some cases, the glitch's effects are so severe that they damage the ''game'' beyond repair. An example of the broken ROM can be seen ([[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS623XTmr04 here]]). Some accounts suggest that this damage even extends to the system or emulator itself. The same issues do not appear to occur in the Virtual Console version. Somebody risked the life of his ''Donkey Kong Country 2'' cartridge and performed the glitch on a real SNES multiple times, as seen [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo-16pMF1Mg here.]]

*** An even nastier thing happens if you try to use ''any'' [[NoFairCheating Gameshark code in the game]]--Donkey Kong will spasm out of control throughout the whole game, even in the opening. Also, your cartridge will be permanently damaged if you save. To such level that you ''cannot pick up any items and you drop dead from taking a single hit''.

** A worse one in some of the builds of the first game makes one of the levels in Oribitus nigh impossible to beat. The level features bouncy walls and a bouncy floor that also, unfortunately, acts as a ceiling that sucks you up to the level above if Jazz so much as scrapes a hair on it. Add in a few tiny holes the player has to navigate to without touching the floor or ceiling, and you get a recipe of pain. Players attempting this should turn on slow motion mode, as it's virtually unwinnable otherwise.