Thread: Times the game froze or glitched out

Franky Family

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You're playing a video game and making great progress in a particular area, level in the game and then the unthinkable happens. The game freezes and it's stuck on one screen no matter what you try to do to fix it. The only solution is to restart the game

How many times has this phenomenon happened to you? When you're in a game, playing a great game and you lost substantial ground because of the game or something else ends up freezing and/or glitching out?

Three times in my life. Once with Ocarina of Time. Once with Majora's Mask. And once with Super Mario Sunshine. I'll tell the story of me losing my progress in TLoZ: Majora's Mask. Well this game is very special to me as a gamer. I can speak at length about how the game came into my life and all the stories but for this thread's purpose, I'll only focus on what took place one evening while I was playing the fourth dungeon. Deep into the Stone Tower Temple I got one evening, I think this was during a weekend I was playing so no school to worry about. The entire fourth level is a classic by the way. But I spent the better part of two hours navigating through the puzzles and tricky upside down maze that is the Stone Tower Temple. I was about 98% finished. There was this room now that I was in, and from what I remember… there were platforms or maybe even just ONE platform above; as well as rotating, wooden, spiked logs turning like cogs below. Imagine on the left side of the room, two very long spiked wooden logs beside each other and they rotate in opposite directions both left and right to create a brutal grinding death if Link were to fall below. It was like being thrown into a meat grinder if Link were to fall below. And there were like sets of these dangerous spiked logs. Well anyway, the path to navigate to the end of this room was tricky and I fell down below at one point, onto this brutally dangerous system of spiked logs, maybe 60% of the way into room on the left side. Link starts glitching out and stutter-yelling out in pain that sound he makes when he gets stabbed or hit or whatever and he's just glitching out rapidly, stuck on these spikes. I couldn't press start, I couldn't move Link, although he was moving and the animation was taking place but he wasn't getting hurt or losing hearts, so it was going to last forever I assume. I was in complete disbelief. Was 9 or 10 years old at the time, and just couldn't believe it lol. I think I left it on for about 5-10 minutes testing my luck at maybe getting Link to respawn. But nothing brought Link out of the trap. He was stuck good, and it wasn't gonna stop so I eventually conceded to the fact that I wasn't going to get the Master Key in that room or reach the door to use it which might have been that room if memory serves right. Turn the N64 off and restart the game ready to give it another try. I select my file and was surprised to see that the first scene is Link, walking into the very beginning of the Stone Tower Temple. Thought I'd be the same room as before the glitch occurred. Not only was Link at the very start of the Temple, all my progress in the Temple was wiped lol. Back to the very beginning with nothing to show for the two hours I spent trying to make my way through it for the very first time 🥹
 
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Stone tower was no joke, sucks you had to do it from scratch lol. My 8-10 year old self could not figure that dungeon out.

I think N64 games froze on me a few times as a kid, but funny enough they never freeze now as an adult. Maybe it was because I blew on them back then, messing them up temporarily? lol.

I think the most memorable freezes I've had were in Pokemon games, and most of the time id been playing a long time without saving 🥲
 
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I can't remember some unintentional classics like in your paragraph of doom, but recently Elden RIng gave me my first actual BSOD since I built this PC the best part of a decade ago. I've had plenty of CTDs and freezes, even complete system freezes, but never an actual BSOD. The irony is that it happened after removing the mods that were giving me regular CTDs. Clearly the lesson is to never play vanilla.

The only classic one that comes to mind is when I used cheats in Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven on PS2 and placed about 30 mines in one spot because I noticed explosions caused slowdown and wanted to see how slow I could make the game. When I blew up the mines my game instantly froze. I guess the engine couldn't handle creating that many particles.
 
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Fallout 3 on the PS3 made me smash about 3 or 4 controllers because of crashing. Also, got several companions stuck in vaults which were impossible to get back out. I'd say in just that game alone I had 1,000 crashes. Surprised it didn't 8001050F my PS3.
 
Fallout 3 on the PS3 made me smash about 3 or 4 controllers because of crashing. Also, got several companions stuck in vaults which were impossible to get back out. I'd say in just that game alone I had 1,000 crashes. Surprised it didn't 8001050F my PS3.
Wow I thought Vegas on 360 was bad.

That reminded me though, I crashed in Vegas quite a few times but one time it lost an 35 hour autosave, I was pissed.
 
Fallout 3 on the PS3 made me smash about 3 or 4 controllers because of crashing. Also, got several companions stuck in vaults which were impossible to get back out. I'd say in just that game alone I had 1,000 crashes. Surprised it didn't 8001050F my PS3.
I must have gotten extremely lucky, because I had two different characters that I maxed out and did all quests with and I don't remember a single crash. I'm not saying they didn't happen, but if they did they were extremely rare to the point that I don't remember them. I do remember jumping a rail and getting stuck "floating" on something and losing some progress because I was unable to do anything, though.

Either that or your PS3 hated you.
You would think that these are bad memories, but no, I think many people look back fondly on these unfortunate game freezes lol
Mate, back when I was noticing slowdown I thought it was just the game pushing the console too hard. I didn't see it as a negative. A few years later I built a PC to chase a locked 60fps. Innocence is bliss!
 
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