10 Video Game Mistakes (That Were Totally Intentional)

Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town has a seemingly incredibly bizarre, even unnerving glitch where, if players attempt to watch TV at 4:44am, the game will become softlocked - that is, the player will be frozen in place as a bugged-out dialogue box repeatedly opens and closes.

Though this absolutely looks like a glitch that accidentally made its way into the game, it was actually deliberately included in an attempt to terrify Japanese players, for whom the number four has a very specific significance.

In Japan, the number four is considered unlucky due to its pronounced similarity for "shi," the Japanese word for death, with the superstition being widespread enough that many hotels and hospitals even miss out floors and rooms numbered four.

And so, Japanese players who stumbled across this "glitch" would've had the proverbial scared right out of them, possibly believing that the game itself was cursed.

Thankfully it's possible to escape the softlock by rotating the direction button in a circle for a little while until the dialogue box finally stops its sorcery and lets you get on with the rest of the game.