History Main / OverflowError

** The mainline 16-bit games have a bug known as the "level wrap" glitch, which comes from being unable to put the player's X-axis as a negative number. So if the player goes further left than the leftmost pixel of the stage, their X-axis instead becomes a ''very large number'', and the player is suddenly teleported as far to the right as they can go. This normally [[EasyLevelTrick puts them at the very end of the stage]], where they completely the stage instantly if there's no boss, or fight said boss if there is one.

** The 16-bit versions of ''Sonic 1'' and ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog2'' feature a bug in which your character can lose two lives at once if they take damage while drowning. If you're on your last life, this causes your total number of lives to underflow, giving you 255 lives; this is such an absurd number that the game can't even display it correctly.
** The mainline 16-bit games have a bug known as the "level wrap" glitch, which comes from being unable to put the player's X-axis as a negative number. So if the player goes further left than the leftmost pixel of the stage, their X-axis instead becomes a ''very large number'', which usually sends the player to the very end of the stage, where they either immediately fight the stage's end boss or win instantly.

** This is done InUniverse in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' when Dimentio brings the heroes to a dimension of his own design that multiplies his powers 257-fold. Because of the overflow, his strength is reset. Not that it mattered; it also strengthened the heroes as well.

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'', the Thick Club held item can increase Marowak's Attack past 1023 (2^10-1), causing it to roll over to 0 and deal minimal damage.
** Also in ''Gold and Silver'', if attempting to catch a wild Pokémon with more than 341 maximum HP, the game glitches out because the capture formula assumes HP*3 is supposed to be greater than HP. This can't happen without cheating, but if you're unlucky enough to be playing a [[GameMod ROM hack]] which spawns something with 342 HP, [[RealityBreakingParadox have fun reverting to your last save]].

** In ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', [[GlitchEntity Missingno.]] will always be at an absurdly high level due to the nature of the variables being read - namely, the characters in the player's [[HelloInsertNameHere name]], which will always have a hexadecimal value above 100, the normal {{Cap}}. Attempting to level up your level 255 [=Missingno.=] with a Rare Candy, however, will reset its level to a pathetic 0, and attempting to train it at "legal" levels past this will prove difficult because without the advanced level multipliers, it's quickly found out the hard way that it has the 6th lowest base stat total of all Generation 1 Pokémon, only being beaten out by Magikarp and the not-fully-evolved [[ComMons bugs]].

** Also in ''Gold and Silver'', if attempting to catch a wild Pokémon with more than 341 maximum HP, the game glitches out because it doesn't know what to do if HP*3 is less than HP. This can't happen without cheating, but if you're unlucky enough to be playing a [[GameMod ROM hack]] which spawns something with 342 HP, [[RealityBreakingParadox have fun reverting to your last save]].

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' has the "64 Door Hierarchy Glitch" which works on this principal. In a nutshell, the world map is "Room 0" and doors are listed as "Go" doors (increment it by 1) and "Return" doors (decrement it by one). In certain places it's possible to keep going through "Go" doors and keep increasing this number, and if you get it to 64 the number will roll over and whatever room you are in will become the new world map (Room 0). When this happens, if you then go through a "Return" door (or use Warp), all hell breaks loose. This ''can'' [[GameBreakingBug brick the game]], but it can also be used to {{Speed Run}} the game [[GoodBadBugs in under 2 hours]].

* An early port of "Wizard's Castle" for Microsoft [=BASIC=] or [=QBASIC=] had the player's bankroll of gold pieces stored as an integer variable. Most players that survive long enough to find the Runestaff, and thence the Orb of Zot, usually do so with less than 65,536 gold pieces on hand. However, for hearty souls bent on a KillEmAll dungeon clearing, the game crashed on the 65,536th coin. Later updates changed this to a single-precision variable.

** This is done InUniverse in ''VideoGame/SuperPaperMario'' when Dimentio brings the heroes to a dimension of his own design that multiplies his powers 257-fold. Because of the overflow, his strength is reset.[[note:Not that it mattered; it also strengthened the heroes as well.]]

** The chance of a move's secondary effect activating is stored in one byte, so if it somehow reaches 256%, it'll be treated as 0%, and so on. (This does ''not'' apply to the move's accuracy itself; "100%" accurate moves can miss in the first-generation games, but that's an off-by-one error, not an overflow.)

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': A longstanding UrbanLegendOfZelda argued that UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, the in-game leader of the India civilization, had an AI aggression level of 1, but when a civ adopted democracy and thereby reduced its aggression two steps, it would cause the 8-bit variable to wrap back around to 255 and make him insanely aggressive. [[https://www.thegamer.com/nuclear-gandhi-meme-civilization/ The bug never actually existed]] according to series creator Creator/SidMeier: his studio in fact [[DevelopersForesight anticipated the problem]] and coded aggression to never go below 1. India ''is'' somewhat more likely to invent nuclear weapons earlier than other countries, but that's actually a result of its AI being coded to prioritize scientific advancement. The memetic error was in fact made up by an InternetTroll on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, irritated that AI Gandhi had nuked him (which is still pretty funny considering [[ActualPacifist Gandhi's real-world religiously motivated pacifism]]), supported by screenshots of the game's MadLibsDialogue.

* A GameBreakingBug in ''VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog1'' causes the final boss to be [[UnintentionallyUnwinnable unbeatable]] if you hit Dr. Eggman while his HP's 0. His programming doesn't check to see if his HP's already at 0 when you're hitting him, thus giving him 255 HP, which can't be depleted within the time limit the game imposes on each level.

* The famous KillScreen in ''VideoGame/PacMan'' was caused by attempting to proceed to Stage 256 -- the game keeps track of the stage number by the fruit icons in the corner, and there's always supposed to be at least one.

* A GameMod for ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'' raises the game's AbsurdlyLowLevelCap to 29 from 20. Reaching level 29 requires over 2 billion XP,[[note]]There isn't enough available XP in the game to do this: the time limits on the main storyline quests [[AntiGrinding discourage excessive level-grinding]], capping the de facto maximum level around 24.[[/note]] and [[https://www.nexusmods.com/pathfinderkingmaker/mods/121 the notes for the mod state]] that a level cap of 30 would have an XP requirement higher than the 2.15 billion limit of a 32-bit integer.

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': A longstanding UrbanLegendOfZelda argued that UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, the in-game leader of the India civilization, had an AI aggression level of 1, but when a civ adopted democracy and thereby reduced its aggression two steps, it would cause the 8-bit variable to wrap back around to 255 and make him insanely aggressive. [[https://www.thegamer.com/nuclear-gandhi-meme-civilization/ The bug never actually existed]] according to series creator Creator/SidMeier: his studio in fact [[DevelopersForesight anticipated the problem]] and coded aggression to never go below 1. India ''is'' somewhat more likely to invent nuclear weapons than other countries, but that's actually a result of its AI being coded to prioritize scientific advancement. The memetic error was in fact made up by an InternetTroll on Wiki/ThisVeryWiki, irritated that AI Gandhi had nuked him (which is still pretty funny considering [[ActualPacifist Gandhi's real-world religiously motivated pacifism]]), supported by screenshots of the game's MadLibsDialogue.

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': A longstanding UrbanLegendOfZelda argued that UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, the in-game leader of the India civilization, had an AI aggression level of 1, but when a civ adopted democracy and thereby reduced its aggression two steps, it would cause the 8-bit variable to wrap back around to 255 and make him insanely aggressive. [[https://www.thegamer.com/nuclear-gandhi-meme-civilization/ The bug never actually existed]] according to series creator Creator/SidMeier: his studio in fact [[DevelopersForesight anticipated the problem]] and coded aggression to never go below 1. The memetic error was made up by an InternetTroll on this very wiki, irritated that AI Gandhi had nuked him (which is still pretty funny). India ''is'' somewhat more likely to invent nuclear weapons than other countries, but that's actually a result of its AI being coded to prioritize scientific advancement.

* ''VideoGame/{{Civilization}}'': A longstanding UrbanLegendOfZelda argued that UsefulNotes/MahatmaGandhi, the in-game leader of the India civilization, had an AI aggression level of 1, but when a civ adopted democracy and thereby reduced its aggression two steps, it would cause the 8-bit variable to wrap back around to 255 and make him insanely aggressive. [[https://www.thegamer.com/nuclear-gandhi-meme-civilization/ The bug never actually existed]] according to series creator Creator/SidMeier: his studio in fact [[DevelopersForesight anticipated the problem]] and coded aggression to never go below 1. The memetic error was made up by an InternetTroll on this very wiki, irritated that AI Gandhi had nuked him (which is still pretty funny). In any case, India ''does'' have nukes [[UsefulNotes/TheThirdEyeOfBharat in real life]]. The developers, for their part, found the misconception amusing enough they turned it into an AscendedMeme by giving Gandhi a penchant for nuke stockpiling, turning him into a nuclear-powered MartialPacifist.

* Many electronic scoreboards only have room for two digits, meaning in the event of a team reaching 100 or more points, the scoreboard will display "00" again, and it'll be up to the coach and audience to keep track of what the true score is.

* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'': An overflow error in some versions allows leaders to become immortal. Each leader has a maximum lifespan, at which point their chance of dying from old age is 100%. Playing with policies to extend and then reduce the lifespan can create a leader whose chance of dying is greater than 100%. A leader who is about 24 years older than their maximum lifespan causes an overflow where their chance of dying resets from 100% to 0%.

* InUniverse in ''VideoGame/SlapCity'' story mode: A cop attempts to write up Business Casual Man, only for his offenses to roll over to zero in database.