Do you remember game-ending glitches fifteen years ago?

Straight Busted

Do you remember game-ending glitches fifteen years ago? Personally, I can't recall a single game found on a cartridge that suffered from a crippling bugaboo. (PC games have long endured a reputation for shipping before being completely stable.) But in the last few years, more and more video games have hit retail before being fully tested. Recent offenders include Metroid: Other M and Fallout: New Vegas. Really, a Nintendo game with a game-ending bug that stopped players cold? Nintendo eventually offered a fix for the bug, but how many Metroid fans just threw up their hands and moved on to another game? There's now an over-reliance on the ability to patch a console game after it ships via the console's Internet connection.
Another fun-killer is the suspicion that a video game is playing from a loaded deck. Rare is there a game like Mario Kart that is so fun you can overlook insanely unfair artificial intelligence from computer-controlled characters. ("Hey, I'm in first place. Blue shell in three… two… one… And I'm in last place.")
A fantasy board game card battler? That's totally my speed, so I was eager to get into Culdcept Saga. About halfway through, however, I realized the game was broken. Players take turns rolling dice and moving their characters around the game board, but it turned out the dice rolls were all pre-determined. If you played a round multiple times you'd see the rolls come up with the same numbers in the same order each time -- there was nothing random about them. The game was ruined and I moved on."

Video games are supposed to provide a challenge. Cake walks are boring. But there is a massive difference between a difficult game and one that deals from the bottom of the deck, whether it's because of poor programming or the hope that an ultra-hard segment will somehow extend the longevity of an otherwise short game. Would you read a book that printed an entire chapter in reverse just to slow you down?