Namco Museum Vol. 3 - The Tower of Druaga "crash"
9Yeah, I know I've uploaded a lot of Druaga videos already, but this might just be one of the most obscure glitches in all of arcade gaming, let alone gaming as a whole, so I couldn't just not showcase it.
Various enemies in The Tower of Druaga have the ability to teleport through walls. These include the three types of Ghosts (Mage, Druid, Wizard) as well as Druaga himself. Normally, they cannot phase through the walls at the edge of the screen; Ghosts will either turn back around or turn the corner if they reach the edges, and Druaga is... well, Druaga. However, under certain conditions, these enemies can phase through the outer walls, causing them to end up out of bounds.
This is easiest to do with Druaga, since standing next to the edges of the screen and having him come to you from the side (it seems to only work on the left side, though) is enough to get him to teleport out of bounds, but I'd assume this works with the Ghosts as well. Have them teleport out of bounds in the wrong way, and the game will immediately crash and reset. I'd guess this has something to do with their coordinates becoming invalid or possibly their out of bounds coordinates overwrite an important area of memory, but I have not the faintest idea. If anybody wants to deep dive into the code and crack it for me, that'd be well appreciated.
Now, this glitch exists on the original arcade version. Namco Museum Vol. 3 for the Playstation is essentially an emulation of the arcade version, even if it's not perfect and some things had to be modified (like the copyright strings and the pause functionality), but instead of patching the glitch like you'd expect, the developers inexplicably decided to keep it in. It's actually brought up in the instruction manual (albeit worded poorly) as something that "rarely" happens, which is what gave me the idea to try getting this on video so that the world can see it. I know for a fact that this can also happen on the Namco Museum Mini Player, and the PSP Namco Museums can have Druaga go out of bounds, but don't crash. I don't know what happens on any other compilations/rereleases, and at the moment I'm not willing to test it. I also don't know if this also happens on the Another Tower and Darkness Tower versions included in this compilation.
Chances are, this glitch would probably never be encountered unless you were deliberately trying to make it happen (that being said, I did trigger it by complete accident on the Mini Player). You never really fight Ghosts or Druaga at the very edges of the screen, even as an experienced player. On the offchance that it does happen, though, it's a pretty upsetting way to lose a game right at the very end (and all your progress is wiped, so you can't use the continue mode). Basically, just keep away from the outer walls when trying to kill Druaga and the Ghosts, and you won't have to worry about this ever happening to you.
Played and recorded from my Playstation 2 using my Namco Museum Vol. 3 disc. Yes, I did have to play through the whole game just to intentionally throw away all my progress for a snippet of footage of a glitch that barely anyone knows about and is deterimental.
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