Gameplay Journal #5

“I experience the glitch as a wonderful interruption that shifts an object away from its ordinary form and discourse, towards the ruins of destroyed meaning.”(Menkman, 340) My definition of a glitch is something that tends to subvert the initial way a game was meant to be played. Sometimes they can destroy a game, while in other circumstances they can breathe new life into them. Most people’s thoughts when glitches are mentioned are that they break the game in a negative way. Sometimes they may just change the appearance of things, while other times they may completely alter movement or storyline progression.

The specific glitch I will be talking about is the “Backwards Long Jump” glitch in Super Mario 64. This glitch involves Mario doing backwards long jumps up a set of stairs to build momentum. Doing this allows the player to reach speeds that are not normally possible and also allows creative skips in doing so. One of the most famous uses of this is to skip past the games final staircase to the last level. Normally, if you try to climb this without beating all the other levels, you will simply walk up infinitely as it loops. Using the glitch allows you to completely skip the loop and fly straight to the final room where the last level portal lies. This glitch is quite interesting, as it doesn’t really change how the game is played mechanically, but allows for massive skips in gameplay in general. Without this, certain speedruns would take drastically more time or not even be possible. It’s very interesting to see how a glitch like this formed different subsections of an already small community with the creativity it has offered!

Glitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7-vBPt04B8

Works Cited

(PDF) Menkman Rosa 2011 Glitch Studies Manifesto | Rosa … www.academia.edu/3847007/Menkman_Rosa_2011_Glitch_Studies_Manifesto.