...there's a gamebreaking glitch that can be observed on any given playthrough of the game, and it wasn't ever fixed because of lack of testing.
GameFAQs' daily top 10 lists are usually a complete joke, but sometimes you learn something interesting from them. For instance, did you know that in a two-player Battletoads game, it's impossible for the second player to even move in stage 11 (Clinger-Winger), and thus he has to lose all his lives for the game to progress? (He can rejoin in the next stage if he has a continue left, for the record.) This proves that Battletoads is SO HARD, especially with two players, that they never bothered completing the game once in co-op just to see if it was playable. And they probably said, meh, if we can't do it, no one ever will. Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving them an excuse, they should've tested that, but still, it's Battletoads. If any game can get even the most dedicated playtester to ragequit, that would be it.
That's not even an excuse in the first place. Games are simply programs, and there are always easy ways to get around in the game if you can alter the program. They wouldn't have to play through the entire game to get to that stage, as I'm sure they had a way to jump to each stage individually. So no, this is simply a case of lazy playtesting.
ReplyDeleteActually, they probably wouldn't have been given a level select code. Generally speaking, testers tend to be treated horribly, which makes me wonder all the more why people would want to suffer through reality TV for it.
DeleteMaybe I'm just unfamiliar with the game development industry, but I thought that testers for professional, long-standing companies like Rare worked closely with the development team. I had assumed that they would be given everything possible to make the testing go smoothly, and a level select option would be at the top of that list. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize, I was basing my post on an assumption. It seems odd, though... Even amateur programmers know that testing is a vital part of the development process.
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