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Bugs:Action 52 (NES)

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This page details bugs of Action 52 (NES).

The NES Action 52 is arguably closer to being a giant glitch with scattered bits of game hidden inside. Some of these bugs are not technical, such as misspellings or a lack of title, but their presence speaks even more to the sheer lack of quality control on this thing.

Rev. B fixed some of the bugs (though not nearly enough to make any of the games playable) while simultaneously adding bugs of its own. The bugs fixed or added in Rev. B will be noted accordingly.

Make your selection, now.

Fire Breathers

No bugs or glitches aside from a stunning lack of single-player, which only applies to this game.

Star Evil

  • The first two levels spawn you right in front of a block which will kill you unless you hold Left or Right when the level starts. This is especially bad on Level 2, since even if you do this you'll still take damage.
  • If you get close to an obstacle or the walls, you will die without actually touching them.
  • On occasion, when the game stops scrolling at the end of the level so you can fight the boss, the boss doesn't actually appear. The screen stays locked permanently while enemies keep flying down at you until you either die or reset.
  • Level 4 is completely unplayable, softlocking the game on a blank pink screen. The music is slowed down and you can "shoot", but you can only hear the sound effect for shooting. This seems to happen often if you shoot continuously as you reach the spot where the boss would be.

Illuminator

  • Some enemies don't move and just stand in place while doing their walking animation. Sometimes even that doesn't work right and they just flicker between facing left and right. In both cases, their collision (can be killed and kill you) remains intact.

G-Force (Fighter?)

  • In the first two levels, you can move all the way to the bottom of the screen above the growths at the very bottom and not get hit, as no enemies will ever spawn that low. On Level 3, this can be done by moving just below the start point.
  • Various minor graphical glitches.

Ooze

  • Sometimes if you shoot an enemy (excluding the invincible blue blobs), the bullet will fly through it.
  • If you fall down a hole, you will fall from the top of the screen and then die.
  • If you fall down a hole and steer yourself towards a nearby floor, you will end up inside the corner of the ground. It's not a huge problem; you can just jump out.
  • Dying at any point in Level 2 will cause the game to crash, leaving you with a black screen until you reset the game. Fixed in Rev. B.
  • Finishing Level 2 will cause the game to crash, leaving you with a black screen until you reset the game. Fixed in Rev. B.

You can access all six used levels in Rev. B, though the Congratulations screen doesn't appear after finishing Level 5, suggesting that Active Enterprises didn't actually have $104,000 to give away. (They probably didn't even spend that much to develop this thing.)

Silver Sword

  • Sometimes, halves of bushes (or trees?) or boulders will appear at random.
  • Shooting while standing still will cause your character to walk in place.
  • The swords are always thrown facing towards the top or right of the screen, even if they're thrown downward or to the left.
  • Pausing and unpausing will cause the noise channel of the background music to disappear until you shoot and hit something.
  • Enemies can sometimes get themselves stuck in trees/bushes and boulders, particularly in Level 3.

Critical/Crytical Bypass

  • The word "critical" in the title is misspelled. Seriously?
  • Various graphical glitches.

Besides that, the background scenery looks like some kind of optical illusion. Or just tin foil. (Maybe if you squint hard enough you can see a better game.)

Jupiter Scope

No apparent glitches or bugs!

Alfredo/Alfred N The Fettuc

This game does not function at all in Rev. A without emulation.

  • If you fall down a hole, you will fall from the top of the screen.
  • If you jump (or fall down a hole) and press the attack button, Alfredo will stop in mid-air. This can be easily abused to prevent yourself from dying.
  • You can't attack to the left. If you face left and attack, Alfredo just faces right and attacks.
  • You can walk into a few seemingly random blocks throughout the game, even though these should be impassable.
  • Sometimes, an enemy will be onscreen running back and forth when it isn't on the center of the screen, and then disappear.
  • If you jump into a block or the floor, you can get stuck in it until you jump out. Fixed in Rev. B.
  • Sometimes, dying in the middle of a level will cause the game to crash on a flashing gray screen. Fixed in Rev. B.
  • A gray screen can and probably will also appear and crash the game at random points in the third level. Fixed in Rev. B.

See here for more on why this game fails to load on Rev. A carts.

Operation Full Moon

  • If you pause and unpause, the lead square channel will disappear until you die or start the next level.
  • The game will sometimes freeze at the end of Level 8 (the last level).

Dam Busters

  • Shooting a projectile while standing still will cause your character to walk in place.
  • Two items in Level 2 appear with the player character's face on them. They are actually completely useless. On top of that, they will sometimes fail to appear at all.
  • One dead end in Level 2 will leave the player trapped in it if they move too far to the right, forcing them to either lose a life or restart the game to continue.

Thrusters

  • Shooting bullets continuously will, instead of slowing the game down like in most NES titles, cause enemies to stop appearing altogether due to sprite overload.
  • Sometimes, your bullets will go through enemies.
  • Touching the right edge of the screen is instant death, while flying to the left edge will leave you unharmed.
  • In Levels 2, 3, and 4, running into an enemy or an obstacle will softlock the game, turning your ship into a messy mass of strips of flickering glitches. You can still move and shoot, but you can't complete the game. Also, the sound completely vanishes. Fixed in Rev. B.
  • When you reach the end of Levels 2, 3, and 4, the game will softlock (again) but this time, every split-second the whole game will blink without any sound as you move slowly to the end of the level, in addition to the screwed-up player graphics. Fixed in Rev. B.

Sometimes the latter two will happen in conjunction.

Haunted Hill/Halls

  • Sometimes, when you pause and unpause the game the music will have a few slightly-glitched notes but otherwise play like normal.
  • On rare occasions, when you respawn after dying the sound will hang entirely and the game goes completely silent when you die again or complete the level. This problem persists until you quit back to the game selection menu.
  • One of the square channels always plays the music for Level 1, even if another track is playing on the other square channel. This is particularly noticeable on Level 2.

Chill Out

  • Sometimes, your projectiles will fly through an enemy.
  • Your character will walk in place if you shoot while standing still.
  • If you fall and move left or right, your character will get stuck in the platform. You can just jump out with ease.

Sharks

  • If you make yourself move backwards by pressing Left then Right (or vice versa in an awkward way) and fire, you shoot from your back (or rear?).
  • Level 3's jellyfish are incredibly fast and appear and leave way too quickly to shoot and kill with good timing. It's possible, but very, very hard.
  • If you let the game run for over six minutes and fifty seconds (6:50) without dying, the lead channel stops working. All music but the "dooo----dooo----DOOO----dooo" is gone. The horrible music likely got tired of playing itself.

Megalonia

  • Graphical glitches occur at times.
  • For some reason, the number of enemies you kill in a level without dying determines the health capacity of the boss. In fact, if you manage to kill enough enemies, you can actually skip the boss and go straight to the next level! Interesting, but likely a mistake in the programming.
  • Sometimes, when the game stops scrolling at the end of the level so you can fight the boss, the boss doesn't arrive. The screen stays locked permanently until you either die or reset.

French Baker

  • Sometimes, your projectiles will fly through an enemy.
  • Your character will walk or climb in place if you shoot while standing on a platform or hanging on a ladder respectively.
  • If you fall and move left or right, your character will get stuck in the platform. You can just climb out with ease.

Atmos Quake

  • If you fly too close to an obstacle, you will die. You don't even have to touch it.
  • In Level 5, you die randomly on the screen every time the level loads. This is because the blue you are flying over at the beginning is actually a huge wall that usually would kill you.
    • To get around this issue, in FCEUX find offset 0x01B34 in RAM and input FF to get the maximum 255 health. You'll have to watch for that offset as it goes down (meaning you're getting hurt) and constantly pause and change it back to FF before it gets to 00 and kills you, because the passageways throughout the rest of the level are too narrow. Combined with the weak hit detection, completing this level (which is actually the last) is impossible without hacking.

Rev. B

  • Nothing different, except if you fly upwards immediately when Level 5 loads, the level is over, and you go back to Level 1 (which almost every other game does). Wha...?

Meong

No glitches, surprisingly!

Space Dreams

  • Sometimes, your shot will fly right through an enemy.

Streemerz

  • The title screen has no title.
  • The intermission screen displays info for the nonexistent second player in 1-Player mode, but 2-Player mode only shows info for Player 1.
  • Certain enemies are placed in areas which are impossible to avoid, forcing you to take damage.
  • If you shoot your cable into one of the sides of the screen, it will connect to the platform on the opposite side and make you go up if one is present.
  • Bunnies in hats that are placed all the way to one side will not hurt you, while ones that are away from the edge will.

Spread Fire

  • Some enemies flicker between two designs.
  • Shooting at an enemy will cause the bullet to go through it. One enemy type in particular always has this mechanic, but this is likely intended.
  • While there are 20 levels (yes, really), the name of Level 20 is displayed as "Level 1 " with a blank tile in the ones digit's place. This doesn't happen when you hit Level 10 (or in any other game), however.

Bubble Gum Rossie

  • The spike pits don't work properly. Nothing will happen if you fall into them unless you move left or right a couple of steps before jumping out. This bug also means that a couple of spots that should kill you will softlock the game instead.
  • If you get a game over in Level 2 and start the game up again, the game will send you driving to glitch heaven.

Micro Mike

  • Graphical glitches occur.
  • Homing bullets will spawn at random points on the screen periodically. This becomes a problem at the boss where they frequently spawn in places that are impossible to shoot down, forcing you to take damage.
  • Your shots will often pass through the homing bullets.

Underground

  • Sometimes, your bullets go through enemies.
  • Shooting will cause your character to walk without moving.
  • It's possible to walk from a ladder into the ground off to the side in certain spots.

Rocket Jockey

  • Some bullets will pass through enemies when shot.

Non Human

  • The collision detection is particularly bad, as you can fully go off the right edge of a platform without falling while the left edge requires the whole sprite to be on it.
  • Shooting while standing still will cause your character to walk in place.
  • The eel-like enemies will shoot projectiles up as high as your head, making it really hard to jump over. However, if your foot hits it, you'll survive.

Also, this game has only a single level. Fun, eh?

Cry Baby

  • Enemies can sometimes spawn somewhere and not move at all.
  • The hit detection with the stationary flames(?) is very poor, and you often have to be right next to them when attacking from the left.

Slashers

  • If you pause and unpause the game, the noise channel of the music will disappear, but attacking an enemy brings it back.
  • The music is glitched on the even-numbered levels, as the triangle channel plays out of sync.

Crazy Shuffle

  • In Levels 5 and 6, you spawn in a bush.

Fuzz Power

  • Sometimes, if you kill one of the first enemies in Levels 1 or 2, your attack animation doesn't play anymore. Rather, your attack becomes "automatic" (simply walk into an enemy to kill it) until you die or finish the level. While in this glitch state, your character's walking animation is also sped up.
  • The life meter in the upper-left corner doesn't function, and stays static.
  • Not a technical problem, but more of a level design one: After a little bit in Level 3, you'll come across a hill with a platform that's impossible to jump onto; you have to fall into the nearby hole or quit the game. Just as well, since there is very little beyond the impassible jump.

Shooting Gallery

  • When you start the game, a flashing screen appears for a brief second.
  • If you kill enough enemies to complete the level, the game crashes.
  • If you try to go back to the menu, the game crashes.
  • If you die (which can only happen starting Level 3), the game crashes.

Unlike most of the games listed, all of these issues mentioned are fixed in Rev. B.

Lollipops

  • If you jump and attack, you will stop in mid-air. You can use this to your advantage and avoid all enemies.
  • Not far into Level 1, a pink gumball-like enemy will always get stuck in the hill.
  • If you fall down a pit in Level 2, you will reappear from the top of the screen.
  • As soon as Level 3 starts, you won't be able to move left or right until you jump.
  • The sound in Level 3 is completely busted. Even after you complete it and go back to Level 1, it will still be broken. In addition, it will sometimes hang entirely and the game will go silent until you go back to the game selection screen.
  • If you walk past all of the exits in Level 3, the level will eventually end on a screen with no exits. As the screen doesn't scroll left, this effectively softlocks the game.

Evil Empire

  • Sometimes, your projectiles will fly through an enemy.
  • Your character will walk or climb in place if you shoot while standing on a platform or hanging on a ladder, respectively.
  • If you fall and move left or right, your character will get stuck in the platform. You can just jump out with ease.

Sombreros

No glitches here!

Storm over the Desert

  • Sometimes, your projectiles will fly through an enemy.
  • Your tank will rove in place if you shoot without moving.

Mash Man

No glitches here (yay), but the game is very boring.

They Came...

  • When you start the game, a flashing screen appears for a brief second.
  • If you kill enough enemies to complete the level, the game crashes.
  • If you try to go back to the menu, the game crashes.
  • If you die, the game crashes.

These bugs and fixes are identical to the ones in Shooting Gallery, as they occupy the same bank in the ROM.

Lazer League

  • The music (which is one long bass noise playing throughout the whole game) will disappear if you pause and unpause.
  • Sometimes, your bullets will pass through an enemy.
  • You can avoid all of the enemies by moving to the bottom of the screen.

Billy Bob

  • Like Streemerz, the title is missing.
  • Also like Streemerz, the intermission screen displays info for the nonexistent second player in 1-Player mode, but 2-Player mode only shows info for Player 1.
  • If you touch the top of the screen, all spears and/or blocks will disappear. Whether this was intentional is unclear.
  • If you manage to jump (which is really hard to do) and not move afterwards, Billy Bob's animation gets stuck until you start moving again.
  • If you complete Level 2, you are sent to a level called "Level 1" which has white walkways. This is meant to be Level 3. The error is the wrong level number.
  • The level afterward is also called "Level 1", but is green and meant to be Level 4.
  • Every time you complete Level 4 or 5, you're sent back to the other. This is a result of a bank-switching issue.
  • You can no longer exit the game once you reach Level 3. Getting a game over or attempting to exit from this point will send you to the start of Level 3 or 4.

Rev. B

  • This version manages to break the bank-switching even more than in Rev. A, as completing Level 2 sends you to Level 4 of Cheetahmen.

City of Doom

No glitches here!

Bits and Pieces

No glitches here, either!

Beeps and Blips

  • Level 8 is completely glitched and cannot be completed, as the player and the two enemies(?) that appear on this level are invincible. Usually, if you were to enter a level beyond the last level that has real data (with hacking), you would end up in a glitched area which probably has no data associated with it. It's possible that Level 7 was intended to be the last level, but the game was coded to end after eight levels by accident.

Manchester

  • Falling into holes won't kill you, and you can walk under the floor to get through the remainder of the level without worrying about enemies.
  • Falling through a hole and weaving into the floor will get you stuck in there, but you can still walk through the floor. You can just jump out.
  • You can't attack to the left. If you face left and attack, your character just faces right and attacks.
  • You can walk through a few seemingly random music blocks on Level 1, even though these should be impassable.
  • Levels 2 and 3 both feature areas which will softlock the game if you fall into them.

Boss

  • If you shoot, you will start walking in place.
  • The animation of the hands dropping bombs from the buildings will fail to stay in sync with the rhythm of the bombs as they fall.
  • The scoring system does not work.

Dedant

  • Sometimes, your bullet will pass through enemies.
  • If your position your ant on the far left or far right side of the screen to have it appear on both sides, enemies that aim for you will disappear upon getting close to you.

Hambo's Adventures

  • You would have to listen really, really closely, but when you pick up a 1-Up the bass sounds will be slightly glitched.

Time Warp Tickers

  • If you jump and attack, you will stop in mid-air. You can use this to your advantage and avoid enemies near the ground.

Jigsaw

Does not function at all in Rev. A without emulation. See here for the reason.

  • If you get close to enemies as they run back and forth, and they get to the right side of the screen, they'll disappear.

Ninja Assault

Hmmm...
To do:
Is it possible to make the sprites appear correctly in Level 4?
  • Attacking an enemy from one side of the screen will send him to the other side.
  • If you kill an enemy, the music pauses briefly.
  • Pausing and unpausing doesn't play the sound effect.
  • Sometimes, when you jump on a platform in Level 3 you will phase right through it.
  • Attempting to move upwards in Levels 3 and 4 will cause you to walk in place, rapidly bobbing up and down.
  • You can occasionally land on a flashing log in Level 3 and survive, even though touching them is supposed to be instant death.
  • Logs you are standing in front of can kill you, not necessarily standing on top of them.
  • All sprites in Level 4 are completely broken. Even the final boss, whose correct appearance can be seen on the main page.
  • When you defeat the boss on Level 4, the game softlocks. It is never instructed to take you back to Level 1 (since it's the last level) after defeating the boss.

A strange note: This is the only game that says "the end" when you lose your last life. Every other one uses "game over".

Robbie N the Robots

  • If you jump into a block or the floor, you can get stuck in it, though you can just jump out.
  • If you shoot, you will start walking in place.

Cheetahmen

  • If you kill an enemy, the music pauses briefly.
  • Hitting or getting hit by enemies might change the volume of the Noise channel.
  • In Levels 2 and 3, you can jump in mid-air as many times as you want by mashing A and B at the same time. This will usually get you killed if you jump through the top of the screen.
  • The game has a strange, psychedelic, seizure-inducing flashing at the beginning of Level 4. This bug doesn't occur when entering from Level 2 of Billy Bob (Rev. B only), however.
  • The first screen on Level 4 uses an incorrect background tile, causing any sections that should be black to glow yellow instead.
  • There are warps in the odd-numbered levels (specifically in the holes) that take you to a room containing an extra life. The glitch is that in Level 5, after the room with an extra life, you're sent to an empty and glitched room where you fall and die after taking a few steps. You can't leave until you lose all your lives.
  • The warp room almost immediately switches to an incorrect color palette when accessed through Level 1.

The Problem with Alfredo and Jigsaw

The reason Alfredo and Jigsaw don't work on Rev. A cartridges is that both games share the same selection for "Player 1" and "Player 2", as well as the same bank in the ROM. As a result, they don't redirect to the correct game, causing both to crash once they load.

Strangely enough, the two games will work on some emulators (such as NESten or FCEUX), but they can crash if you die. Supposedly, the reason why this happens is because Action 52 uses Mapper 228, which not many emulators or the NES itself can support. It's possible that the coding used in this case does not work properly on hardware and emulators that don't fully support this unique Mapper, which causes this crash to happen upon loading either game.

Rev. B cartridges have this issue fixed - neither game crashes upon starting them up.