It's nearly impossible for game testers to catch every glitch a game has to offer before it releases. That's a good thing, because without them we wouldn't be able to make this list of the 10 Best Video Game Glitches. These glitches range from game breaking oversights that give you massive power, to hilarious quirks that only serve to make you laugh. Some have even become internet sensations while others have allowed gamers to reprogram game code from within the game itself. Take a look at the 10 Best Video Game Glitches.

  • 10

    The Cat Siphon

    Minecraft

    Cats in Minecraft follow only a few simple rules. #1, they will always attempt to follow you. #2, if you are too far away they will eventually teleport to a free square near you. #3, this teleporting is triggered both by in-game action and by moving within a close enough distance to a teleportable square. Knowing these rules, you can build a pen filled with cats and a single spire up to the game’s height limit. The cats will constantly try to teleport to the nearest block to you, i.e. the one single square at the top of the spire. They will then be forced off by other teleporting cats, fall to the bottom, and try to teleport again! Voila! Instant cat siphon and instant entry into our list of the 10 Best Video Game Glitches.

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  • 9

    Executing Arbitrary Code

    Pokemon Yellow, Super Mario World, and Others

    Execute Arbitrary Code glitches actually came about far after the days of the SNES, NES, and Gameboy, which host the games that they are performed on. Essentially, these glitches allow you to use in-game items to alter the code of the game itself. Usually this is done by making the game write values to incorrect memory locations or read values from locations that the player has altered through unconventional means. For example, in Super Mario World this is done by interactions involving riding Yoshi and holding items at the same time. In Pokemon Yellow, players are able to program entire songs and new ending sequences by fiddling around with their inventory.

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  • 8

    Extra Bottles

    The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

    Some glitches aren’t funny, but are just useful. That’s exactly the case with the extra bottles glitch from Ocarina of Time. It was simple to do. Try to catch something with an item, pause the game mid-catch, replace the bottle with an item you don’t want, and presto, you’ve gotten rid of your item and replaced it with a bottle and the new caught item. It was a great way to get rid of useless items in your inventory and replace them with something that will actually help you in your adventure.

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  • 7

    Get Down/Geddan

    Goldeneye 64

    Back to the funny, Get Down or Geddan was a simple glitch to execute in Goldeneye 64. Simply tilt your cartridge so that it didn’t quite have full connection to the N64, and when the console would try to read behavior patterns for NPCs, they would spaz out in hilarious ways. Then add J-Pop music, a copious amount of video editing, and thousands of Youtubers waiting for their five minutes of fame, and you have a recipe for an instant internet meme!

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  • 6

    Vanish X-Zone and Other Insta-Death Glitches

    Final Fantasy 6 and Other RPGs

    It’s kind of funny how RPG developers can repeatedly miss simple glitches like this that totally break their games. Vanish was a buff in Final Fantasy 6 that made you impossible to hit with physical attacks but incredibly susceptible to magic. X-Zone was an instant death spell that removed enemies from the battlefield with a very low success rate. Simply cast Vanish on an opponent and then cast X-Zone and boom, 100% instant death success. The programmers looked at Vanish as a buff, not a debuff, so they saw no issue with allowing you to cast it on the opponent and make them more powerful, never thinking that this simple combo would end up breaking the game wide open. Similar glitches, such as the Zombie Phoenix Down Glitch, have continued to crop up in RPGs of all sorts ever since. When will developers learn...

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  • 5

    Genetic Abominations

    Red Dead Redemption

    To be completely honest, we aren’t quite sure how this glitch comes about, but the results are hilarious. Simply put, the game attempts to execute the code for both an animal NPC and a person at the same time. As a result, the game creates freakish animal people that behave in weird ways. This glitch has created flying goats, hovering talking gunslinger dogs, donkey ladies that you can ride, and more. It’s bizarre and it happens incredibly often, but it doesn’t actually break the game. It just makes it hilarious, which is why its included in our list of the 10 Best Video Game Glitches.

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  • 4

    Clock Scams

    Animal Crossing, Candy Crush, Final Fantasy Dissidia, and Others

    A few generations ago, developers started tying game functions to the internal clock of your gaming device. Maybe a game will give you a certain amount of moves before you have to wait for them to refresh or purchase more with micro-transactions. Maybe games will give you bonuses at certain dates or certain times. Maybe you’ll only be able to talk to certain NPCs at very specific times? Luckily, you can get around all of the waiting by simply going into your settings and changing your clock to the desired time. Now you can get infinite turns and participate in special Christmas events as much as you want, and all you have to do is save and reset your clock back to its original time when you are done.

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  • 3

    Wave Dashing

    Super Smash Bros Melee, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and Others

    Wave Dashing comes in two varieties but can be found in almost any fighting game that allows you to dash. In traditional 2D fighting games, Wave Dashing is when you cancel your dash or run into a crouch, thus immediately returning you to neutral and stopping your momentum. However, this also allows you to immediately take another action, such as another dash. Doing this repeatedly allows you to move quickly and safely across the screen. Smash Brothers had its own variety of Wave Dashing, popularized in Smash Bros. Melee. By jumping and then immediately dodging into the ground, you will immediately transfer all your momentum into a landing skid. This allowed certain low traction characters, like Luigi, to zip around the stage at lightning speed. 

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  • 2

    Item Duping

    Final Fantasy 7 and Others

    Several games have item duping glitches in them, usually triggered by menu systems with faults in how they assign and re-assign memory. If your inventory allows you to change the order of your items you can almost be certain that there is an item duping glitch hidden somewhere in there. Perhaps the most famous item duping glitch came from Final Fantasy VII, which allowed you to literally generate infinite amounts of any item you could use in battle. Simply equip the X-Item materia, enter a battle, go into the items menu, select the item you want to dupe, then with your X-Item action, select the same item, but don’t use it. Cancel out of the menu and you will see that the item count went up by one. Lather, rinse, repeat, until you have infinite megalixers, making cure materia a thing of the past.

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  • 1

    Pause Glitches AKA The Thunder Beam Glitch

    Mega Man 1 and Others

    Finally, the best sort of glitch in gaming history is also the most common. Pause glitches take advantage of the fact that the game has to freeze all of its operations for a second when a pause is initiated. It then has to resume those operations with all the memory locations left in-tact, and this is easier said than done. The most notable instance of a pause glitch comes from Mega Man 1, where you were able to pause and unpause the game to cause the Thunder Beam to hit an enemy multiple times. This would allow you to kill bosses like the Yellow Devil in one shot! However, you can still find pause glitches in games today, such as in Tales of Graces, where pausing the game gives you infinite time to play a speed based card mini-game. Congrats! You've paused your way into the #1 spot of the 10 Best Video Game Glitches.

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