Exploits you discovered on your own that completely trivialized a game

[Phediuk]

I.e. the sort of exploit you don't need to be any kind of expert to do, and not stuff that was obviously intended to be game-breaking (like late-game equipment.) We're talking tactics that even a first-time player could do and still win easily.

For example, I remember in NHL 94 for the Genesis, you could beat the CPU about 40-0 every time by getting the puck, wrapping around the back of the other team's goal, and chipping it in the other side of the net. The goalie would usually fall for it.

Another one is the original Mortal Kombat in the arcade. Pick any character, hold up-left, and kick as you descend from each jump. You'll win almost every time. You only ever have to stop jumping against Scorpion and Kano to block their grappling hook and spinning-ball moves, respectively, after which you can continue jumping.

Or the original Virtua Fighter. Pick Akira, crouch, and continually jab at about 0.75-second intervals. The CPU will walk straight into your punches, over and over and over again. This was the first 1CC I ever got in an arcade game, with many perfect rounds.

what exploits have you found?

 

[Kamagii]

Chaining the grid to make the arena give an insane amount of XP vs the unkillable blob to the point I could one-shot everything in resonance of fate

 

[Zippedpinhead]

Vanish + x-zone from Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

You can beat literally any enemy that is capable of vanish status (which is everything except the final boss tower)

 

[karnage10]

Total war. The AI will rarely focus on your leader and will rarely protect their leader. This way you can jsut focus on taking down the leader. His loss will rout any early game army and mid game armies will still rout easily if you are not losing the battle. Late game armies will need the death of the leader as well as a rear charge which is extremely easy to do during late game when cavalry is super strong.

This unfortunaly doesn't work in warhammer total war because many leader can beat several units by themselves but in any other title that strategy can trivialize any battle.

 

[RedStep]

NHL Hitz! The CPU could never defend against the One-Timer.

 

[CorpseLight]

The only thing that really sticks in my mind, when i was 16 years old and playing FF7 for the first time. You come across this giant undead boss at the end of the Cosmo Canyon area. Well in alot of FF games, healing undead enemies damages them, so I just threw an X-potion at him and killed him instantly.

 

[Phediuk]

Double Dragon arcade: elbow everything.

 

[FinKL]

In Killer Instinct arcade, as Orchid, if you used B+HP, she would do a turn around twirl attack with her sabers. Against Sabrewulf's, this was unblockable if you aimed for the tip of his nose.
I used this in a tournament and won a Sega Genesis

 

[delete12345]

Not me who found it first, but it was the first exploit in 10 years where I'm able to battle at high-speed in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

During that time, I had my internet cut off, so meh... worth it.

 

[MetroidPrimeRib]

For Indivisible if you just put all the people who do a ton of damage together (Ajna, Dhar, Tungar, Ren, Qadira) you just fucking mash and ignore almost every single mechanic in the game and roll over every boss fight.

Theres no technical, optimal combo that beats just slapping all the buttons

 

[MisterB_66]

I figured out in a casino game (Caesars Palace?) that if I bet on the horse races with 00000 dollars I would win lots of money and lose nothing.

 

[motherless]

Blades of Steel- pass the puck into the net. CPU always follows the arrow.

Old EA hockey games you could just ram the goalie out of the way.

Blaster Master - pause the game during a damaging attack to keep the damage going.

 

[sn00zer]

On one of the Playstation Blitz games, if you are on defense, and held forward right in between two defenders you could get to the QB almost every time.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

I found an infinite gold glitch in the Xbox version of Morrowind that I don't think anyone else ever found.

 

[Fonst]

Don't Sleep, if you complete wave 1 and are in one of the buy/upgrade menus, pause it, and then unpause it or some combination of that, it skips the entire wave and gives you all the points you would've earned.

I bugged the devs about fixing it and they even responded to me but didn't bother patching it at least on the Switch.

 

[hwarang]

On Generation of Chaos (PSP), right before the enemy attack animation lands on you, you can activate your special which I suppose due to a glitch evades the damage.

 

[Phediuk]

In Ken Griffey Jr Major League Baseball on the SNES, there's one pitcher for the Blue Jays who has the highest possible CON (control) rating. Put him as your starting pitcher, stand at either end of the mound, and throw a curveball to the opposite side. You'll strike out every single batter, 100% of the time.

 

[mopinks]

when I played World Heroes at an arcade I discovered that the CPU had no idea how to block Brocken's crouching kick

you're welcome

 

[Genryu]

I accidentally found out the W-Item glitch in FF7 on my own.

 

[Cess007]

In Demons Souls, if you quit the game in the dying animation, when you launch it again, you respawn exactly where you make your last interaction with the world (open a chest, etc). That's super useful when you die with a boss, because you respawn before the fog door. I wouldn't have finished the game without knowing that :D

 

[ReBirFh]

In Sonic 3D Blast, the first and last game my parents bought for me, when I got home excited to play it, the cable from the joystick was behind the cartridge and as I accidentally pulled the cable it bumped the cartridge which unlocked a level select for the game and I was able to replicate almost always just bumping the cartridge....the fastest game I've beaten.

Years later I discovered it wasn't a fault in my cartridge but some kind of feature the devs put when some unnexpected thing happened.

 

[Kasey]

Chain teleport uppercuts with Sektor in MK3.

 

[Deleted member 227]

Discovered how busted High Monk is in Sekiro. Tried posting a couple of times to people having issues on certain bosses to spam it, but it never really caught on. Then they patched it in the first patch. It was a good few days.

 

[Hilbert]

There was some NES soccer game we had, where you could stand in front of the goal, ask for a pass and then do a bicycle kick right into the goal. Goalie could do nothing.

 

[RPGam3r]

The last rat in the first dungeon in Oblivion doesn't attack even if it detects you. You can max out your sneak before you even see the outside world (Skyrim has a very similar exploit in the first dungeon, but it relies on the NPC with you).

 

[Iori Loco]

In Tales of Symphonia 2 you can stun lock bosses by timing Emil and Marta's regular attacks so one starts comboing before the other ends their chain. I don't remember perfectly but I think the enemies can't get into over limit when they are stun locked or they can't escape even with it, but I know that during my playthrough with my brother we never saw what some bosses could even do.

Another one is in Dragon's Dogma in Bitter Black Island

Spoiler

There's a hall where death will constantly appear before you kill the last boss of the isle. You can save your game and death will remain as damaged as you left it so you can save your game when it's about to die, reload (don't remember if this was needed), kill death and exit to the next room, immediately come back and you'll find death respawned but with the damage it had when you last saved so you can kill it again and repeat to easily farm bitter black gear. You can do it a couple times before death stops reviving, if it doesn't reappears you need to wait for it to respawn naturally but I never knew what triggered it, I also don't know if they ever fixed it since I did it in the 360 version.

 

[Deleted member 7883]

Dodge cancelling with a powered-up bow and arrow makes Hyrule Warriors for Switch a cakewalk for the hard Adventure Mode missions. Fairy mode is an easier way to cheese but after 200+ hours in this game I still have no clue how it works lmao.

 

[Ferrio]

Being able to draw Life from a enemy in a Laguna flashback in Final Fantasy 8 that you normally wouldn't encounter with your main team until much later. The magic would actually transfer back to your main party. Pretty much broke the game from the start for me, though it's FF8 that's pretty easy to do.

 

[Michilin]

Fifa 07 for GBA, on kickoff go a straight line to goal a kick hard right before entering the area, the goalkeeper won't catch name you will have the rebound, just a light kick will score a goal. Worked on all but the last difficulty, I scored 20+ on some matches

 

[Deleted member 4552]

I found infinite lives/Max Score trick on my first playthrough of Sonic Mania in Press Garden Zone Act 1.



Basically in Sonic killing enemies in a row increases the points you get in a set Manor.
This tops out at 10,000 points.

You get a 1-Up every 50,000 points.

I found it because I'm familiar with the old games and Launch Base Zone Act 1 in Some 3 has almost the exact same thing.
(Trip the alarm to activate a Bird homing attack, spindash on the spot of the alarm but don't let go, it will attack you and die and the alarm stays tripping sending more your way)

I was really surprised they shipped Sonic Mania with it, as there's 0% chance Taxman etc didn't know.

I guess it's a reference to Sonic 3

 

[RiOrius]

Vanish + x-zone from Final Fantasy VI (SNES)

You can beat literally any enemy that is capable of vanish status (which is everything except the final boss tower)

Click to shrink...

This is well-known, but I have no idea how anyone discovered it.

 

[jonjonaug]

I guessed the "HONEYKING" cheat in Banjo-Tooie before it was published anywhere but I don't think that really fits the spirit of the thread.

Not me, but a guy I watched on twitch who played SMT: Nocturne hard mode blind went through pretty much the entire game using MP drain skills on every single boss until they ran out of MP. I've never seen anyone else play that way, but it trivialized almost everything in the game.

 

[AlexBasch]

Kick zombies into the water in Dead Island.

They removed this feature on the remake for PS4/XB1 and can't stand the game anymore. It was fun as hell drawing them to the pools or any water zone and watch them lose health for some reason.

 

[InfiniDragon]

Secret of Mana (SNES), there was a glitch where you could charge up weaponskills past the intended level by charging specific weapons with specific characters, then trading weapons while holding the charge. You'd get a random animation from one of the 8 skills and it would hit max damage.

My brother and I found it by complete accident playing multiplayer on that Demon Wall boss.

 

[Dyno]

There was an old football game on the mega drive, fifa maybe, where you could cross the ball from near the corner post and follow it up for a goal. Worked 99% of the time.

I also found when I used to have a wii, the position where idnlay on the sofa was the perfect angle to just swing my arm for a strike every time.

 

[Alek]

I felt like the Stamina system in breath of the wild was pretty poorly designed. It took all of 5 minutes to discover this and it meant that most of the climbing was trivial, only interrupted by rain.

https://youtu.be/anCN5fnJViw

 

[ItIsOkBro]

007 Nightfire has no weapon sway so you could zoom in on an enemy's head with the sniper rifle, swap to a pistol, shoot and get a instakill headshot.

 

[Omnicore]

A lot of the first 3D EA NHL games you had like a 90% chance of scoring with a quick backhand, forehand wrist shot to the top left corner.

 

[Deleted member 10908]

In the old gameboy / nes 1990 world cup game you could walk into another player from the top and the game rest of the remaining time would just run down, no one can get the ball from you. Found out about this when i was a kid and thats how i beat the game in the late more difficult games (score once then freeze all the players until time runs out)

 

[Why would you do that?]

In Kirby's Adventure, you can get the Mike powerup, which destroys all enemies on the screen. It's very powerful, but you can only use it 3 times before it disappears forever.

Unless... If you use the very last Mike power at the same time you hit a switch (to reveal secrets) or get a piece of the Star Rod, then you can use Mike 256 more times. It's great for beating bosses, too.

 

[Roxas]

I got MGSV almost two weeks earlier due to street date breakage, and I discovered that you can tranq Quiet without firing a single bullet by just trying it out.

 

[Doskoi Panda]

In Fallout 76 there was a melee weapon with a 'vampiric' effect. According to its description, when you hit an enemy with it, you'd gain a bit of health back. I was running a melee build when I was still playing the game, and the health gain was significant enough that, while it wasn't my strongest weapon, it quickly became my weapon of choice.

Well, after using it for a while, I realized something really stupid about the weapon.

You didn't need to actually hit anything in order to heal using the weapon. The weapon didn't heal you when you struck an enemy. The weapon simply healed you whenever you swung it.

So I spent the rest of my time with Fallout 76 walking around swinging this fuckin' weapon everywhere I went. If I wasn't at 100% health, I was swinging. I looked goofy as hell. If I wanted to fight some mobs, I'd just jump into the fray and start mindlessly swinging. My healing outpaced damage from 90% of the mobs in the game. It was great.

 

[Zippedpinhead]

This is well-known, but I have no idea how anyone discovered it.

Click to shrink...

It's well known, but when I played it in the mid 90s I discovered that stuff myself.

I got the idea from casting x-zone on various enemies and tried it on wrexsoul

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Nier Automata: Going back to the pit area where the fist boss encounter takes place and just killing things actually breaks the game because you end up greatly overleveled.

I accidentally did this just trying to farm something and I didn't realize that the game's enemies didn't scale.

 

[Mastermind]

I don't know if this counts exactly, but I had Sonic 3D Blast on the Genesis as a kid. I never really got far in the game, but one day something must've hit the cartridge or something because I got a screen that brought up a level selector so I could go to any level I wanted. I could replicate it too. All I had to was jiggle the cartridge and the game would freeze and take me to this level selector. It was awesome.

EDIT: I actually found an article discussing this exact thing I experienced. https://www.polygon.com/2017/10/3/16409052/sonic-3d-cheat-genesis

 

[Deleted member 4552]

I don't know if this counts exactly, but I had Sonic 3D Blast on the Genesis as a kid. I never really got far in the game, but one day something must've hit the cartridge or something because I got a screen that brought up a level selector so I could go to any level I wanted. I could replicate it too. All I had to was jiggle the cartridge and the game would freeze and take me to this level selector. It was awesome.

Click to shrink...

That's a programing trick, where basically if the game ever fucked up it would go to a level select menu to disguise itself.

It was left in the game and people discovered by banging the console they could activate it.

 

[Mastermind]

That's a programing trick, where basically if the game ever fucked up it would go to a level select menu to disguise itself.

It was left in the game and people discovered by banging the console they could activate it.

Click to shrink...

That's so awesome. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Mindfreak191]

In Alone in the Dark 2008 every locker that contains ammunition will automatically refresh itself after a couple of seconds, made the game a breeze since you could stomp every monster with fire ammo from that point on.

 

[Sad marshmallow]

In king of fighters 2002 if you choose Mai and don't make any move versus omega rugal you win by draw

 

[dodo]

I wonder how many people figured out the item duping exploit in Oblivion (the bow one) before it was widespread. In retrospect it seems really easy to stumble across on accident.