The cartridge will self-destruct in... – Donkey Kong Country 2. 7 Worst Bugs in History of Video Games
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INFORMATION
- Game: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest
- Release date: November 1995
- Bug: self-destructing cartridge
- Was it fixed? No
Donkey Kong Country 2 is one of the best games in Rare's oeuvre – and we're talking about a legendary studio that also have us GoldenEye 007, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day. This classic platformer featured a hidden bug that, when activated, could spoil much more than just the current gameplay.
In one of the game's levels, titled Castle Crush, Diddy Kong, after performing some fairly simple actions (in short: throwing a particular barrel at a particular point and holding a particular key combination), would come into possession of an invisible object. Throwing it wreaked havoc. Glitched enemies appeared on the screen, and the protagonist could turn into another character. Generally – fun and games. Until the invisible barrel caused damage to the game cartridge.
You read well – the error did not cause the game to freeze, nor deleted game saves. No. If we were unlucky, it would overwrite key parts of the Donkey Kong Country 2 cartridge's memory, effectively breaking the game. Although removing the cartridge and temporarily removing the spare battery from it reset the memory and reversed the devastating effects of acquiring the devil's barrel, few people were aware of that in the 90s , and if, by chance, they managed to trigger this fatal bug, they were quick to assume that the whole cartridge was wiped.
The original SNES release of the game never got fixed, and if you get it, you'll probably be able to recreate that bug based on instructions found online. It's interesting is that the bug has been fixed on the Wii version, but you can still experience it on the Wii U.
