I dont know why Im so amped about this post, probally because its the first one in what seems to be a century, and Ive finally got time to do it.

So im guessing you are wondering what this feature is, well, good question.

Glitches.

We've all been there, seen one or at least experienced them in some way.

They are pot holes in the road of a game but when do we ever hear about them being celebrated?

To be fair, never, and (from a development point of veiw) they shouldnt be. But when your character gets flung 50 yards accross the map because he got snagged on a tree, when is that never fun.

Glitches although bad in programming terms, and sometimes actually quite dangerous, are mostly hilarious events which make a game more memorable. Today, I hope to write about the wonder of glitch.

In this first part of a 2 part series, Ill be looking at the small bugs that make experiences in their own right.

Im going to start by covering what can easily be the most memorable glitch of all time.

Missingno, If you havent heard of this guy, youve been living under a rock. Missingno (of Pokemon Red/Blue fame) is a perfect example of a somewhat creepy glitch, and also a quite dangerous one.

This fellow appeared in the game due to a programming error, which left a column of "tiles" to the right of Cinnabar island open to the player when it shouldnt have been. The column was a data area where pokemon information could be saved, unfortunately this was stored in a "wild pokemon" zone, so the player was basically fighting scrambled data.

This produced the name MissingNo or "Missing Number", as the pokemon didnt exist, and wasnt defined as anything in-game. Creepy huh?

Upon levelling the creature up, it would evolve into Kangaskahn, and 9 times out of 10 it would also corrupt the game cartridge if the game was saved afterwards.

So why celebrate this guy? Well, it was one of the first (mainstream) glitches that everyone knew about, and used. Once one person found it, everyone else wanted to know how to do it. But apart from the fact it corrupts the game, it also duplicated items.

Wanted 255 master balls? You got it! This baby could do it. For that alone, this guy is awesome.

Check out this videoif youre interested. Disclaimer: I do not, and will not take any responsibility for any damage to your cartridge arising out of using this trick.

Sticking with pokemon for now, there was also another pretty weird glitch that had people talking, glitch city.

Thats right, a city of glitches. Well, not quite, it was one big glitch. Getting to this place required doing some walking about, saving where you shouldnt be able to, hard re-setting the console, and then walking around some more. The player would then be forced into this area of nothing but spam and data. Corrupted tile sets and would more often than not, get snagged in some geometry.

It was possible to surf there, however this always led to getting snagged on invisible geometry as well.

See this videoto check it out.

So upto this point we've seen some pretty awesome stuff. We've seen total destruction and strange environments. The fun in these glitches was finding them, or actually achieving them. The feeling "oh it actually works" and seeing all this messed up stuff is quite exciting.

But what about getting to areas you werent meant to get to? GTA 3 had a great example of this, the Ghost Town.

This area of Liberty City, really isnt a recognised area at all in the terms that it doesnt actually belong in LC geographically. For those of you who havent played GTA 3, the opening cutscene shows the protaganist "claude" chasing a woman named Catalina out of a bank that had obviously just been robbed. She shoots him, and he ends up getting busted.

This whole cutscene was shot in the "Ghost Town" area, but Rockstar must have thought it was not possible to put this area into the game anywhere. It is not known why it was removed into an instanced area.

The greatest thing about this was that the method of getting here was extreme. First off the player would have to fly high into the air using a wingless plane called the do-do. This thing was so hard to fly, it was damn near impossible.

Once at a high altitude, the player had to fly over one of the tallest pieces of geometry in the game, and then continue on to the Town.

The town itself was small and was fully functional. However, some peices of "land" had no collision map attatched to them and additionally there was no traffic.

Check it out here

Additionally, another great one is the "you werent supposed to get here" easter egg, but thats not really a glitch, still, fun to find.

Finally, to wrap this rather lengthy post up, there are glitches that just put the player into an impossible situation, but because theyre so unbeleiveable, nobody cares:

Enough said really.

Well thats it for part one, see you in part two!