10 Iconic Video Game Features That Were Invented By Accident
2. Combos
Combos can be the blessing or the bane of any competitive fighting gamer. They are pivotal to the gameplay, and can easily make or break a match. Yet when they were first introduced, nobody could have anticipated how important they would become. In actuality, they were only created via the result of a glitch.
Noritaka Funamizu discovered a glitch during production for Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. He found that during one punching move, two hits could actually be executed at the same time, creating what we now know to be combo hits. At the time, Funamizu was amused by the glitch; it was extremely hard to pull off due to finicky timing requirements, and thus he left the feature in the game as a sort of challenge.
What he most likely didn’t expect, however, was the fact that players would discover this glitch and latch onto it. They used it to their advantage to deal extra damage to their opponents, and as such the combo system was born. It just goes to prove that glitches can be not only harmless, but also beneficial to gameplay. Imagine a world without fighting game combos… Yeesh.