Ever run into something in a game's programming that prevented you from finishing?

In Dark Wizard (Sega CD) you can, for some odd reason, take the Seal of the Demons to the blacksmith and he will temper it for you.  You get back a really low level weapon (it can be different ones - some of which are not available in any of the shops).  You can't use the former Seal of the Demons to get the fog chime. (And you can't retemper the weapon to get the Seal of the Demons back either.)  Without the fog chime you can't summon Tagon and cross over to the island of Viosdia to defeat Velonese (and Arliman if have met the conditions).  Game over.

There are eight million stories in the Naked City - while not all of them involve video games (well none of them did actually), do any of yours?

I was playing Vice Project Doom last year and one of the bosses somehow scrolled into the wall where you can't reach him. The timer eventually kills you. I guess you would respawn and try again but if you're trying a 1-life run then that's game over

Heh - talk about running into a brick wall..............
 

Half Life 2.....

I played HL2 about 5 years ago on my XBox 360 (The Orange Box) and towards the end of the game, it froze. So I took the disk out to clean it, and, nothing....tried cleaning the disk again and it would freeze at the same spot. I was baffled but kept trying to play through that spot for about an hour before I gave up. I ended up playing through HL2 episodes 1 and 2.

Fast forward to a few months ago, I finally found a clean copy of The Orange Box and replayed through HL2. I FINALLY got to see the ending a few days ago.

It wasn't due to the game's programming. It was my scratched up disk   Oh well. Mission accomplished 5 years later  

Battletoads Rat Race glitch.
Battletoads Rat Race glitch.
Battletoads Rat Race glitch.
Battletoads Rat Race glitch.

Did I mention the Battletoads Rat Race glitch?

Back in the day I was hit in the infamous GTA Vice City save point game breaking glitch toward the end of the game involving the ice cream truck. That one was depressing lol

Yeah but it was from a Pokémon rom hack so that doesn't really count.

Not your typical "game ending" glitch, but it certainly stopped my progress...

I was playing PUBG, needing to get away from the deadly barrier and into the safety of the circle, when I happened upon a motorcycle. Happily, I hopped on and took off. 

Unhappily, it upended and got stuck upside-down, with me unable to exit the bike or otherwise carry on in any way. So there I sat, slowly taking damage over time from the barrier, until I died a horrible death.

Here's the theme song for you when you were in that awkward situation:





There are two other glitches in Dark Wizard that can be game enders.  You can only guard three castles a turn - if you get in a situation where you have four castles to guard and leave the wrong one open those otherwise weak warlords will start grabbing everything and you can't get in front of them - they  march straight to Quentin and the game is over.  Normally this doesn't happen - but you can actually defeat the four demons in reverse order by playing around with how you conquer territories - you just have to be careful with how you leave territories open along the way.

There is also a glitch where your two (three if playing as Krystal) flying characters get grounded (for lack of a better term) and can't retrieve Slayer - so you can't defeat Arliman at the very end of the game.   It involves the use of the merships - even if you take them away from a character when promoting those characters to the flying ones it strips them of the ability to fly.  Fortunately if you catch it soon enough there is a fix.   

Turok Rage Wars for N64 had a bug that prevented you from beating the game in co-op mode. Enter the gray variant, with the patched bug.

If you saved at the wrong point in Twilight Princess, then loaded your save file, there would be no way to progress. I believe this was bout 3/4 of the way through the game too. They revised the game and there was a free exchange program.

Iicr (it's been a while so I could be remembering this wrong) but there's a bug(?) in Ballz 3D for the Sega Genesis where there's a cutscene at the end with the main boss, and if you hold down A,B, and C, while the cutscene plays out, the boss will kill you and the victory theme would play, but there's no skipping past that.

There's a similar bug when holding down the 3 buttons while the demo (or the ending) plays out in Sonic the Hedgehog, where Sonic couldn't jump. It's not game-breaking, but pretty funny.

In the cellar in Kakariko where the cannon is located, right?

I remember reading about this glitch back in early 2007, and it was just before I had come up to that point in the game. I was so used to religiously saving my progress constantly in games, and especially in Zelda titles. When I got to that part, I sat up, breathed calmly and concentrated all my energy to not accidentally doing a reflex save. Then when over, a big sigh of relief, and right back to saving constantly.

Yes. That was the part.

 

Battletoads and the notorious 2 player bug on stage 11, and the rat race bug too. That's some great playtesting they did on that game.

I played Jurassic Park on the SNES for about 2 days before getting to the final boat and I killed a velociraptor that was behind an open door. I killed it, then it dropped an item so I walked sort of between the open door and the wall to pick it up. Right there my character got stuff and the only thing I could do was reset the game and start from the beginning.

Another 2 days into this game (that my dad rented for me) and I got back to the same part but my curiosity had to know if it was a game programming glitch or if it was just the funny way I stepped on that spot. I tried it again and got stuck again. Had to reset, start all the way from the beginning, 2 more days and after having rented the game for a week straight, I finally finished it. Without stepping behind that door.

A few weeks ago, I was playing Sonic 3 and got to the Act 2 boss of Hydrocity Zone. Normally, once you walk far enough right, the screen will lock and Robotnik appears. For me though, the screen didn't lock and I was able to get to the animal capsule and 'complete' the act. However, after the Act Clear went away, the transition to the next level didn't happen and I was stuck.

Tomb Raider Legend.

In the King Arthur level at the serpent boss battle. If you try to activate the cages hanging from the ceiling before you enter the tomb at the end, they will not be able to drop from the ceiling during the boss battle. The cages are the only things that can harm the boss. It's impossible to complete the boss if this glitch happens, and if you saved your game after initiating the glitch (which most would do in preparation for the boss), you are SOL.

I know this glitch exists on the PS2 version. I'm not sure about any other version.

Was this on a real Genesis / Mega Drive?
 

Yes it was. A few days after this, I learned that in the Sonic 3 manual, theres a little blurb that claims these types of glitches are actually traps of Dr. Robotnik and in order to get out of them, you'll need to hit the Reset Button.
 

Ha! That's great  
 

Hahaha. I looked at the instruction manual online and you weren't kidding. I also like how it warns not to go too fast when flashing after being hit. Yeah try not to go too fast in a Sonic game.

This is an interesting topic in its own right: games that have bullshit excuses in the manual for obvious glitches.

 

I remember seeing an Ocarina of Time tip in Nintendo Power just before the game released. The same tip was repeated in a promotional paper that was given out by Toys R Us. It might have been in the manual and/or the "Official Nintendo Power Player's Guide" too. It said to use Z-targeting on the pads where you plant seeds to make it easier. In the version of the game that was released, you couldn't target those. Still, it wasn't as difficult to plant a seed as was implied by the existence of this bogus tip. There was also a tip telling you to obtain a piece of heart in Kakariko Village that wasn't actually there.
 

A few days ago while playing Doom on Switch, there's a level where you need to kill all the demons before the security doors open so you can proceed through the rest of the level. I played this level for about 2 hours but couldn't find any more demons before I finally reset and started the level over. On my second play through I got to a locked door that opened and a demon walked out from the room and once I killed it, that was the final demon which opened all the remaining doors. For some reason on my first play through, it didn't come out of that room, it stayed behind the locked door.

IIRC in FFX-2 you have a 50-50 choice between 2 options at the beginning of the game... if you choose one you have only 99.5% complete the game after doing everything