You suddenly lose control over your videogame character through no fault of your own, costing you the time and effort it took to reach that final big boss or toss away that vital touchdown opportunity. Sounds familiar?
Yes, that’s right, we’re here to talk about video game glitches and not just any old glitches, but the one genre of game that seems to spawn more glitches than any other, American Football video games.
Despite all the computing power that exists in the world today, it still seems like a real effort for developers to get 22 players and a football to all co-exist on a screen. Here are some of the most hilarious and downright annoying gameplay glitches in NFL-based video games.
Table of Contents
The Scorpion
This is a perennial classic in the NFL Madden games. For some unknown reason, a player’s limbs get contorted into a whole manner of uncomfortable-looking positions that even a yoga instructor would be proud of, and no, this is not to be confused with an athletic TD celebration.
The most popular and bizarre of these is known as The Scorpion, with a player’s spine curving at an unnatural angle and bringing his feet behind his head, resembling a scorpion’s tail.
It’s just as well this doesn’t happen in real life. otherwise, fans would go crazy as NFL odds and parlays rely on dependable performance on the gridiron. On the other hand, as bets start to pour in for eSports events, glitches such as this could soon become big issues.
The Little Guy
In Madden 15 a glitch meant that a member of the opposition was shrunk to the size of an action figure. Known as The Tiny Titan, he was a tricky man to stay away from, as he flew below the radar to halt ball carriers in their tracks. Many a Super Bowl coach would have loved their very own Tiny Titan on the roster.
Wide Receiver Carnage
Similar to The Scorpion, another glitch that haunts the Madden franchise is the one that has all pixilated wide receivers shivering in fear. Upon receiving a pass, a wide receiver suddenly begins hovering mid-air, completely defenseless to the coverage flying at them from all angles. Again, expect some pretty cringe-worthy contortions and injuries that in a normal game would rule out a star receiver for months if not years.
Caption: In the world of video games, what at first seems like a dream touchdown can soon be turned into a nightmare by an annoying glitch
The Helmet Catch
It is the dying seconds of a crunch game, there’s just enough time for one more play, and so your quarterback decides to go for a trusty Hail Mary. The likelihood of such a play paying dividends is slim to none, but in Madden 20 a new angle has been thrown into the mix, that of the helmet catch.
Often in the game when a Hail Mary is fumbled it lands on a player’s helmet, bobbles up and down while he’s in motion and then plops into his hands as the opposition gamer hurls his brand new gaming headset at the wall, forced to watch your player stroll into the end zone uncontested. One of the game’s developers must have witnessed this in real life and just decided to make it a regular fixture in Madden.
Kit Switches
Sometimes it is hard to know if a glitch is a mistake or something a mischievous developer sneaked into the game as a dare or for a bit of fun.
Such is the case in Madden 20, with certain players wearing the wrong team jersey or even helmet. Such oversights by a real-life player would go down badly with die-hard fans of their franchise, but in the world of Madden, it seems that anything goes.
