Bubble Bobble Revolution recalled

As skeptical as we've become about the prevalence of patches and updates delivered through online console services like Xbox Live, the alternative -- the old way -- is still far worse. Take Exhibit A: Bubble Bobble Revolution. Codemasters' DS puzzler was released with a crippling bug that would not permit players to pass level 30 in the game's New Age mode.

The result? More than four months later, Codemasters is finally issuing a recall, asking owners of the defective Bubble Bobble Revolution to ship their broken games back to the publisher (via pre-paid envelopes), and then wait for replacement cartridges, which begin shipping out February 23.

Xbox Live and its ilk may provide a cushion for lax QA testing, but bugs occur regardless. We'd much prefer a downloadable patch delivered to us a few weeks after a game's release than rely on a cumbersome work-around or snail mail replacement.

via joystiq

Lord of all things, I cannot fathom why companies don't bother to test their blasted projects to ensure quality. Oh wait, I know why - they try to save money.

Snidness aside, it is a sad state that companies would not test out a product before shipping it. What is worse, the bad incidents tend to cast a shadow on those companies that do try to ensure that their products are of good quality (good quality referring to few game-ending crashes or bugs, not enjoyability).

Once upon a time, games went through rigorous testing (or what passes for such testing anyway), yet glitches still persisted. Two games I like to cite for this oddity are actually two Nintendo games: Metroid II and Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. These two games are full of glitches, some of the more notable ones allowing the gamer to skip around and do what you are not supposed to do at that point in the game.

But while there are a few games that benefit of glitches, many others are nigh unplayable due to them. The classic Atari 2600 game Mission Impossible is one of the most notorious examples of a game with a fun-killing bug - the game is not finishable due to a programing error.

Ah, but that was at a seperate time, back when anyone and their brother was selling a game. How about a modern game that is full of bugs due to rushing and lack of testing: 2K Sport's Major League Baseball 2K6.

Never before have I seen such a horrid cobbling of code. At one time, fellow employees at work were throwing numbers of the odds that one had of netting a dud copy: 1 in 5 on the PS2, 1 in 3 for the Xbox 360 (which eventually had a patch via Xbox Live... for those that had it), and 1 in 2 for the old Xbox (to my knowlege, a patch for the ol' Box never saw release). Sad part was, enough copies came back that we began to warn consumers to NOT buy the 360 version until we were sure that a patch was available, and only once we were sure that that a patched disk was issued.

What is really scary, to this rambler, is that, for the first time, Nintendo has an online-capable system that supports system firmware updates. With the Wii having the same potential for quick-patching that Microsoft has been offering (and Sony with the PS3), the multi-million (sometimes billion) dollar projects suddenly get issued at the same time that the patches are being looked into.

I knew that the DS is not immune from these late fix solutions or exempt from these testings. After all, Age of Empires DS had a few wierd bugs at times. In Metroid Prime Hunters, while playing a Wi-Fi game I was hit with a missile and found myself flying outside the level, falling to my death. The fact that companies are becoming lazy not because they don't care, but because it cost money, is just insulting to us gamers.

Sorry for the rant. Maybe someone will find it useful.

Mikaa