BUG

Bugs.

They’re a programmer’s nightmare and can be a Gamer’s headache. While some bugs are used by players to gain an unfair advantage, players “in the know” have been known to gain massive scores or even become invincible using bugs, there are other, more damaging bugs. These bugs can can do things like cause hardware to reset or force the player to restart the game, but probably worst bugs of all are the ones that mean a player can never complete a game.

Early versions of Asteroids in the arcades allowed players to "park" their craft in the score field making themselves invincible. Final Fantasy on the NES had an invisible woman character that, if you could find her, would converse with you. Arcade Tempest had a magical score that unlocked 40 extra lives. Impossible Mission lived up to it’s name on the Atari 7800. This game could not be completed thanks to some of the code pieces, required to solve the end puzzle, were placed under the computer terminals that your agent cannot search. Jet Set Willy is well known for it's bugs and is another example of a game that can't be finished thanks to the Attic Bug.

This week while I’ve been playing Just Cause on my 360 I've discovered quite a few bugs. I’ve seen my character, Rico Rodriguez, walk through a solid steel silo. He's look through solid objects and he’s suffered some dodgy collision detection - you know those moments when your character meets his maker and you just don’t know what went wrong. Very annoying! The worst bug I’ve experienced in Just Cause was when, by chance, I managed to lodge Rico on top of a wire fence. Despite much button pressing, analogue stick waggling and Rico's butch image he was stuck. Like a statue. On a fence. I was at the point of resetting the machine when I noticed that Rico was moving. Very slowly he was sort of sliding, pixel by slippery pixel, to the right and the edge of the fence. I sat and watched. I sat and willed Rico on. Eventually he dropped to the ground. I regained control ad Rico was able to carry on liberating the country.

There were a few other sticky moments in Just Cause but none as bad as the wire fence bug. But wait a minute, why are these faults called bugs? I mean in Scotland we know bugs as those evil, blood sucking, midgies or as a way to describe having the latest bout of sickness. Does a game bug suggest that the game is ill? Well, no it doesn’t. Apparently the story of the bug goes something like this; Grace Murray Hopper was working at Harvard University on the Mark II computer when she found a dead moth jammed into a relay. She removed the moth, wrote down what happened to the computer in the logbook, and glued the moth next to her written explanation of the bug that stopped the Mark II working. Since then, whenever the machine stopped working, the technicians would say that the computer needed to be "debugged." The page of the logbook, with the moth still on it, is preserved at the Smithsonian Institution.

So there you go then, the “real” reason that video game and computer bugs are called just that. Sounds almost too fanciful to be true eh? Ah looks, it’s Thomas Edison! Hello Mr Edison! Now tell me, what is it about these Gremlins that get into machinery?

Come and learn the truth about bugs, Gremlins and everything on the Gameov3r forum.

Spoil the illusion>>>>>Before the Mark II computer, the term "bug" was used by radar operators, during WWII, to describe technical problems. Further back, the OED has records dating back to 1889 describing a bug as “a defect or fault in a machine, plan, or the like”. In the same year, the Pall Mall Gazette (March 11) reported that "Mr. Edison...had been up the two previous nights discovering a 'bug' in his phonograph--an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble." I still prefer the Mark II story.<<<<<