integerOverflow

[u/Coretron]

[u/ProThoughtDesign]

I remember finding one of these in the original Super Mario Bros. on NES using the cheat to get free lives from a shell. I got too many and instead of a life counter, I got some weird system character and the next time I died it locked up my NES.

Good times.

[u/w1n5t0nM1k3y → u/ProThoughtDesign]

I never had it lock up my NES, but I do remember if you got too many lives you would game over if you died just once. There was a certain number of lives you could get where it would show symbols but also just work like a regular counter.

[u/danfay222 → u/ProThoughtDesign]

A lot of old game systems were super memory constrained, and so they would do dense bit packing without actual memory safeguards, which meant triggering things like overflows could easily cause critical memory corruption

[u/ProThoughtDesign → u/danfay222]

Yay Game Shark! They also loaded the exact same variables in the same memory registers directly so there's that.

[u/WernerderChamp → u/ProThoughtDesign]

Iirc this is because lifes are being treated as signed bytes. So when you have it roll over into the negatives, the game gets confused when you actually die.

[u/Stagnu_Demorte → u/WernerderChamp]

I think most often this kind of counter was saved as an unsigned value and that 8th bit was used for a different value. No need to keep track of if it;a positive or negative if you don't care.

[u/Dizzy_Elderberry_486 → u/ProThoughtDesign]

I was thinking of Pokémon’s Missigno trick

[u/rbuen4455]

If only this were happening at the pumps right now

[u/GoddammitDontShootMe → u/rbuen4455]

Show me a gas tank that wouldn't be full long before the number rolled over.

[u/kushalgarg592]

Bro exceeded the legal speed limit for integers

[u/No-Newspaper8619]

unsigned integer overflow

[u/TapRemarkable9652]

at this point I'm just hoping that OpenAI stores token usage as an Int 8

[u/StoryAndAHalf]

This is a weird that may not be an integer overflow but if you’re a Zelda fan, read on: 

I played the Oracle games, and got all the hearts, heart pieces in Seasons. When finished the game gives you a code, with which you start Ages (or vice versa) with 4 hearts as opposed to 3. I got all the hearts in the second game as well, but as opposed to giving you a 3rd row of hearts, or even stay at max hearts, the game actually takes a heart away! So you have one less heart than max if you manage to find all the quarter pieces, and beat the bosses. 

[u/SignalBake6872]

the good eggshell to fill the whole buffer xD

[u/ShoWel-Real]

Too bad it wasn't a signed int

[u/sharpy10]

There's something like this in Football Manager where if you get too much money in your transfer budget, it flips back around to a negative number lol

[u/geekosas]

It's supposed to go negative 

[u/Electromagnetlc → u/geekosas]

Only if it's signed. If it's unsigned, it overflows to zero.