#7: Thunder Beam Select Kill (Mega Man)
Another important glitch from another Nintendo-Hard game. The original Mega Man is a pretty healthy challenge, and players searched for any easy advantage to beat some of the most annoying enemies — like the super-annoying Yellow Devil, a giant blob monster with a very brief window to damage it. Relief came in the form this Thunder Beam trick.
Mega Man could press [Select] to pause the game. Rapidly pausing would cause the damage effects of a weapon, like the Thunder Beam, to reapply over and over again. Just rapidly pressing [Select] while the lightning ball was on an enemy allowed the Blue Bomber to beat a boss in one shot. Any weapons worked, it’s just that the Thunder Beam was totally the easiest.
#8: Rocket-Jumping (Quake)
This mainstay strategy of old-school FPS was once a bug. Any game with retro aspirations will 100% have a rocket jump. Any first-person game that isn’t called Call of Duty will typically feature rocket jumping, and the world is a better place for it. You can rocket-jump in Team Fortress 2, Titanfall 2, and even in Overwatch. And its all thanks to the wonky design of Quake.
The first Quake was a weird spiritual successor to Doom, with fully 3D environments, lower enemy counts, and way more explosive weapons. Explosive weapons caused a whole lot of knockback, but didn’t do that much damage to your hero. Combine those two factors, and you’ve acquired the world’s first rocket-jump. Players especially embraced this strategy for online play — hence why you’ll find rocket-jumping even more prevalent in multiplayer games. Games like Painkiller blocked rocket-jumping in singleplayer, but have a special button that’s only for rocket-jumping in multiplayer!