We profile the greatest unintended gameplay quirks
Surfing
This owes much to coders balancing out the game, and a freak streak of luck. In Tribes, the PC multiplayer shooter,a beta player discovereda technique that came to be known as 'skiing' - where (in basic terms) a bit of code dictating friction on slopes, when combined with repeated jumping, created enough momentum to power across the game's huge maps in a matter of seconds.Whole mapswere dedicated to the trick, making for some ludicrous designs.
Surfing turned up in Counter Strike, another friction/slope combination that created an entirely new game mode among faithful players, completewith purpose-built mapsthat more closely resemble bonkers rollercoasters. Thankfully, the entertaining skiing trick stayed untouched for the entire Tribes series, and surfing also returned unmolested in Valve's revamped Counter Strike: Source. Are you reading, Blizzard? Sometimes these gameplay oddities are quirky bonuses, not bugs. Though fans of Enemy Territory: Quake Warsdon't seem to agree.
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Ben Richardson is a former Staff Writer for Official PlayStation 2 magazine and a former Content Editor of GamesRadar+. In the years since Ben left GR, he has worked as a columnist, communications officer, charity coach, and podcast host – but we still look back to his news stories from time to time, they are a window into a different era of video games.
