#5: Despawning Enemies (Ninja Gaiden)
One of the most desperately required glitches in gaming. This isn’t just useful, it’s basically mandatory for every Ninja Gaiden player on the planet to use effectively. This is the enemy despawn glitch, and it’s the only way to make enemies stop respawning on the edge of your screen.
Let me back up. In Ninja Gaiden on NES, enemies will respawn instantly the moment you defeat them if you’re standing right on the edge of the screen where they first appear — it’s hard to explain, but anyone that’s played the game will understand exactly what I’m talking about.
This trick is pretty simple to pull off. Just walk forward so an enemy spawns on the very edge of the screen, then back away. Repeat until the enemy on the edge despawns. There’s one level (6-2) where this is almost required to progress.
#6: Yoshi’s Infinite Flutter (Super Mario Galaxy 2)
Another easy glitch, but this one is only for fun. Nobody really needs to cheat to beat Super Mario Galaxy 2, one of the most celebrated games in the plumber’s long library of classic platformers. Back in the day, players discovered a simple bug allowing Yoshi, the big green dinosaur Mario can ride, to fly infinitely anywhere!
To pull it off, players would flutter, then duck with Yoshi mid-air, then flutter again. If you timed it just right, you’d stay in the air forever, making levels completely trivial. The whole point of these games is to have fun playing, but breaking the game is its own sort of fun. If this game is really releasing soon on the Nintendo Switch, here’s hoping this trick still works.
