Actually, it seems like the townspeople knew the pendant was cursed: “It’s better that you have it”. Riiiiight.

Include a Patch Toggle. That's the best of both worlds.

"The pendant has been a treasure of the town but it is best for the town if you keep it." Sounds like he's just eager to pawn a cursed item off on you without arising too much suspicion.

In Faxanadu's case, a lot of the playtesting and balancing would presumably have been done with the bug in place, and fixing it could effectively make the earlier parts of the game harder than intended. That might be fine, or it might be undesirable, but either way it makes the question a bit more complicated to answer.

Giving people a choice between playing "classic" and "updated" mode seems like the sensible thing to do.

For my 2 cents. i remember reading an interview about the ocarina of time remake [Originally, the team was excited to have a chance to fix all of the bugs that had been discovered since the game's release. but then someone said 'no wait, bugs can be fun' and used the speedrun community, and how the bugs have expanded the gameplay as an example. so to compromise, the team only went out of their way to fix bugs that the standard player was likely to see on the playthrough, but left everything else as it was] This honestly seems to me like the best compromise possible. For something like the pendant. it is genuinely a bug that affects a majority of not most of the players, so i think it should be fixed, assuming that it genuinely is not working as intended / accidently backwards. but, just like the example with the super mario wall clip, if it's a bug that does not negatively affect gameplay (crashing, making the game unplayable, etc) then i think it's cool to leave it in and see what crafty players can do with it

This game was nightmare fuel for me when I was a kid. Mostly that enemy that hops around and has a bulging eyeball, but the whole atmosphere of the game really hit me as well.

As a game developer, there isn’t a single game I’ve worked on that I wouldn’t want to bug fix on a re-release. “Intent” and “what we shipped” never quite align.

Personally, if I were in charge of fixing the bug, I'd have you do 125% damage without the pendant and 140% damage with the pendant, in order to avoid unbalancing both the early game and the late game too much.

I would say to update the pendant itself. "The town cast away a cursed pendant. Take it for a challenge." "Hinders your ability to attack by sword."

Interesting that the bug fix would go against what people would anticipate the result being. The fix involves being weaker at the beginning, with the item getting you back to the base strength. Raises the question if it should buff further since that's what you'd expect from a black-box testing perspective (that is one that can't observe the code or inner workings)

I'm instantly mindblown hearing it as "fazanadu" since it was always a hard X to me

Mod and fix and remix games all you want. The original roms are still there. It's a false dichotomy to think only one or the other can exist or be enjoyed.

I loved Faxanadu. I definitely think it was one of the most underrated NES games!

Reminds me of the Focus Energy bug in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow. It’s best to just not use the move at all since it lowers the chance of getting a critical hit rather than increasing it like the game states.

I almost feel like a "proper" fix at this point is to make the boosted damage the default and make the pendant increase it further. Like most of the game was likely tuned with the boosted damage being the default so just fixing the check would throw off the tunings from the developer. So keep damage the way it was and have the pendant increase that damage would be my vote.

They should make the fix an option. For example: nobody plays doom with infinitely tall monsters but almost every source port has the option to turn it back on for the classic vanilla experience.

I was actually surprised when I found out there was a revision of Faxanadu in the US. I've seen and played many copies of it but I've never ran into a cartridge with the revised text.

I definitely agree with quality of life updates, as long as it doesn't ruin the game.

The obvious solution would be to have an option called "pendant fix" and a brief description explaining what it does, have it on by default, and then let people turn it off if they want to play the game as it originally was. In the case of a re-release with multiple bug fixes and quality of life changes I think it'd be really neat to have an entire options page dedicated to them so people can turn on and off what they want, that way people can choose to experience the original as it was or a more refined and polished version (or something in between)

I am obsessed with this game. I appreciate you giving it some love.

One of my favorite games of all time and never knew there were different revisions with text. Thanks!

One of my favorite NES games as a kid. We had the original version and I can't tell you how many written down passwords ended up not working because of that stupid font. I didn't know there was a revised version until many years later.

Yoooooo Faxanadu! My first Dark Souls. Love this game, good to see it getting some love!!

The way the game has been implemented I would say leave player attack at 125% with out pendant and boost to 150% with pendant. That way the earlier part of the game doesn't change. And for a re-release of the game let the player toggle legacy mode to run it as it was originally released.

This was one of my favorite games as a kid. I was a huge RPG fan and this was one of the first Nintendo games to do that genre well, IMO. I did notice the Pendant's Ill effect and thought it was a cursed item. I never read instruction books, though. Still don't. It's probably why my Ikea bed keeps folding around me like a cozy iron maiden.

This was super cool. I had no idea the pendant was busted, nor did I know there were tools online to generate passwords. Good stuff!

Thank you for spending several hours to make this video. It may only be 10 minutes long, but this week has been hard for me and this video is a good refreshment

My whole life, my greatest video game wishlist has been more of faxanadu. The gameplay itself is pretty good, but the music and visual anesthetic are still staggeringly unique and alien. I just want to explore an even taller world tree, fight new and different meteor infected dwarves, use more items, etc of his bizarre, eerie, fascinating world. Some guy made a "faxanadu remastered" a few years ago, as a tribute, but the new HD music he introduced felt off, and the smooth scrolling instead of single screen levels too radically changed the feel, but mainly, it really just expanded the areas and music that were already there, instead of new areas that I wanted.

"If you don't like technical stuff, feel free to skip ahead" who's gonna tell 'em

Great video. I've played Faxanadu a million times and never knew that the Pendant decreased you attack! Blowing my mind 30 years later.

Thank you, I'm blown away. I didnt know they managed to decode the password. It's such a great game.

There’s also the case of changing things in a rerelease to fit cultural changes, such as how Jynx is re-colored to purple in some virtual console ports.

Since you always have the boost before getting the pendant and lose it afterwards, the entire game plays differently if you fix the bug - not just after you get the pendant. That's a pretty big change. Frankly, I would just consider the item cursed and move on.

Great video as always! One of my favorite channels and I watch KZfaq a lot of the day while working, so you should feel proud.

Man! I just watched a play through of this and they mentioned this bug, so glad you made this video! Gotta love this awesome community!

This is definingly one of those topics where tolerance of differences is called for. Because at the end of the day, those who want fixes WILL make or get their fixes. And those who want old-school WILL get just that. So we can argue over it all we want, but it's wasted effort and energy. Best consensus is to accept it will happen and respect the fact both should be options.

In the case of intense flashing colors and legit game breaking bugs, it should absolutely be done.

Faxanadu was one of my favorites (I use that term loosely) as a child. This video was informative and incredibly entertaining. Thanks for going down this rabbit hole for us!

Quake's recent update went with the split option - they folded all of Quake and its expansions into a new, shiny, modernized version that breaks backwards compatibility (I think), but provide all the classic versions as-is alongside it. This is a slightly different situation, but it should be *easier* for an emulated game to provide the split, in theory.

This game seriously needs a remake!

Thank you, Displaced Gamers. I'll remember this patch mantra.

Neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

I only noticed the "subtitle" after watching half of this video and asking, "Is this only just going to be on Faxanadu?!"

Definitely agree, fix a bug when able. This was a delightful watch!

If updating old games results in more Behind the Code episodes, then absolutely.

I'm so glad I found this channel. I can't recall whether I found it via another channel's video linked in a news story, from my phone's feed, of the 13-yr old that "beat" Tetris or a recommended video from KZfaq while watching one of the AVGN's episodes on Jekyll & Hyde. So far I've found both videos (the fixing of Jekyll & Hyde, and Faxanadu) both crazy interesting. As someone that writes in multiple programming languages including ASM for the x86 / x64 platform, as well as the NES, I VERY much appreciate the attention to technical detail and just find it really fascinating. I've co-presented a talk at a hacker convention on NES game hacking, a few years back. There were definitely some things I wish I understood better. For example, Who Framed Roger Rabbit's randomization. For me, an interest in that specific game came to me after watching Mike Matei, on the Cinnemascre (Angry Video Game Nerd's) channel, try to get items to spawn in specific locations by doing the same actions but modifying one thing each reset of the NES). Obviously, I NEVER believe I know everything about anything I do; I may be confident in my abilities, but I always try to learn more and more because I know there's more to learn, and so having you be able to break down a lot of the code and how it works REALLY is appreciated and helps me learn because, and not that it's some sort of competition, but you're obviously better than I at NES assembly :) And that's ok, I'm glad there's people way better than I, it's how one learns; it's the sharing of information. I'm grateful you're willing to share the knowledge! Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing the knowledge! :)

this is all fascinating. There's so much video game content on youtube, but so little with genuine new insight. I wish there were more channels like this one.

Thing is - the game was probably balanced with regards to this bug. So you'll get the proper experience (the challenge developers intended) if you don't patch the game and pick up the item.

probably the reason why the game was not patched after the release was that if you do it, you basically increase the difficulty of the game at its beginning. In fact, it is possible that the developers actually made that change in purpose to make the game easier if some very-late-during-crunch report of high difficulty arrived.

Holy crap. The fact that developers back in the 80s were able to institute passwords into games, seems like an absolute miracle. We take this kind of stuff for granted nowadays, but they were having to do everything the hard way - The hard way being 'make everything yourself'. No premade engine; all from scratch. Insane, but beautiful.

This is a fantastic video. Please do more content like this!

This was disgustingly interesting.

Personally, I'll usually take an old game warts and all. I want that "historical reenactment" type experience, the same one I would have had it I'd played the game at release. This is why I also play on real hardware, don't use save states, don't use online guides (original manuals are allowed), map some very complex games like Phantasy Star on paper by hand, etc. If I'm playing a 1987 game, I'm darn well going to play it like it's 1987! That's just me, though. The main exception I make is for fan translations.

Just came across your channel, well done on making a potentially dry and boring topic very understandable and interesting!

Konami's TMNT collection actually gives one of the best answers to this: have toggles for these features. In the TMNT collection, the NES games have flicker and slowdown removal toggles, as well as some other things. This could be the same way.

With the password system you can actually start with the pendant AND THEN remove it from the password once you get to the place where you get it, so obtaining the entire desired effect without patching the game

Is there an ecosystem which offers quality of life improvements (save states, rewind, video recording, cheats) and home brew games or versions of games with options to toggle on select bugs?

Amazing video as always!!

Not sure if Trials of Mana / Seiken Densetsu 3's bugs were fixed when SquareEnix released the collection. Would be cool to see you do a video on that game!

I play the oldest versions of games so I can do funny speedrun strats in my casual playthrough. I wish old bugs (save for crashes) would be persevered in rereleases rather than squashed.

This game was tested and approved with the balance involving the damage boost being normal. The proper fix should be to leave that boost and give an ADDITIONAL boost when you get the pendant.

This channel is amazing. Im glad I found it.

Thanks for another great video! I'm surprised that the password only has 8 bits for the event flags. I've never played Faxanadu, but it looks like it's heavy on the RPG elements. Thanks for breaking down the password, that might be my favorite part of the video.

"It's best for the town if YOU keep it," she glares at you in a way which suggests she secretly means 'because the damned thing is cursed and we don't wanna be cursed anymore!'

I'm a simple man. I see Faxanadu, I hit that like button! Game was, and still is, most excellent!

I'm so happy that there are people who like Faxanadu so much that they figured all this out

Thank you for finally giving me this game's title! I have been wondering what this game was for years, some phantom memory from my very young childhood XD

That game brings memories... Like back when "X" was not pronounces as "Z"... Ah the good old day.

It's worth considering that simply "fixing" this bug might break the game in other ways. For all you know the designers spent months tweaking weapon damage and enemy health given that 25% damage boost. A proper fix would require a design pass that rebalances the game for the weaker attack.

Love hearing your thoughts.

Great video! It made me think of a topic that might be worthy of another video. Consider: For a long time, it was assumed that the MAME version of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (UMK3) had a bug preventing Scorpion from finishing his iconic "Get over here" voice line, it gets cut off as "Get ov-". Similarly, his "Come here" voice line is cut at "Come-". Since then, other people have claimed this bug not related to the MAME emulation but as bug that was present with the original arcade cabinets. How they proved that I'm not sure. Doing some google searches, it appears that some modders have since patched the bug, but unfortunately the patch also includes a host of other changes that divert from the original game. As far as I know, there isn't a version of the ROM with just the voice line fixed and the rest left alone. Anyway, it was an interesting rabbit hole to travel down, and maybe one that's worth researching more.

Workaround: After defeating the mini-boss, jump a message saying that the enemies became stronger and that you need the pendant to compensate for the damage of the strong enemies a little :D

"If you don't like technical stuff, feel free to skip ahead." Bitch, that's what I'm here for.

The in-game text suggests that the item is meant to be cursed, maybe the real issue was that whoever wrote the manual either missed or was uninformed that the item was supposed to be suspicious.

I love seeing some of my favorite games covered like this. I also love that you pronounced the title correctly (which I never did as a kid tbf.) Since it's technically part of Falcom's Xanadu series, it is Fa(micom) Xanadu.

Appreciate the probably-correct pronunciation of Faxanadu (literally Fa-as-in-Famicom-Xanadu), even though in my head it will always be Fax-anadu.

I just beat this game a couple of years ago on my NES. I didn't look up anything on it, but I didn't know about a pendant bug. Nice info, though! And thanks for covering this great game!

Great breakdown of how the password works. very cool and interesting!

Forget patching the game, this video made me want to play Faxanadu. It looks like an exceptionally advanced and fun NES game for it's time.

Fascinating piece, DG! I wasn't familiar with Faxanadu, but this sort of little bug can be found in all sorts of titles stretching back to my beloved Atari 2600. The pendant here seems to pretty clearly be an annoyance, but many of the "bugs" I encountered in my youth, I considered to be fun glitches or exploits to discover. It made me feel like I'd discovered a secret window into the software.

I love the Xanadu series! So so cool to see this covered

Great video! You're (again!) one of the very few people who even talk about this. Another case would be the smoke texture in Super Mario 64 where the data is (probably) interpreted in the wrong format. It is very likely that the way it looked in the original game is not what they intended (still, afaik they never fixed it), but I would always give users an option to decide. It should probably come with an explanation, comparison screenshots, or even a small video. As for Faxanadu: Someone should seek out the developers and ask them about it. Next video? ;)

Faxanadu?! In my youtube recommendations?! I thought the world have moved on. I'm happy to see this :)

This mans has looked up the game genie stuff to work this out. Amazing.

I use to speed run this game. Thanks for the video!

I wish that when they re-release these old games they would have an option asking if you want to play the original version unaltered or a modern fixed version. Best of both worlds.

Bug preservation is present in more than just games. For example, in Microsoft Excel there is a bug of sorts with the year 1900 which, due to being divisible by 4, was assumed to be a leap year. It was not. The error stays in though, as otherwise any date after that would have its value reduced by one, which might break someone's spreadsheet.

Great questions at the end, perfect examples of questions without definitive answers

There's a big spectrum of choices between fixing a game, and fixing a game to death. I do think every game has some sort of fan community, or if it doesn't specifically, then for sure the system or the series it belongs to does, so ask them whether they have some sort of consensus? It's so easy now on the Internet.

great video! keep em coming

Fascinating video. I beat Faxanadu never knowing the pendant gave me the extra challenge.

Hell YES, it should be fixed. It's very obviously a programing error. The manual clearly says the pendant is supposed to improve attack strength. In fact, this entire game needs a new resurrection on PC, with remastered musical score (like they did with Diablo 2, lately). I'd pay money to buy the remake.

Can you do more about Faxanadu? This is fascinating. My favorite (one of the best) games.

I always wondered about the damage downgrade of the pendant as a kid. Now years later I can watch a youtube video about it :)

Very interesting stuff to think about! I think the answer to the last question is very simple: those who want the most pure, unadultered experience should not be playing modern re-releases, but simply play the original games on original hardware. With a bit more nuance, I imagine most people can be flexible on how much change from the original they accept on a case-by-case basis.

I played this game a bunch as a kid and never knew about this bug. Never knew there were password generators, I gotta go revisit this one now.

That technical segment was great - didn't get too abstract at all I thought!

First of all, great vid! I am so glad that this game is getting a lot of love now...lately too it would seem. Next up, the fact that the Townspeople literally say "It's better you have it." makes it seem like the pendant was in fact cursed. It's just too much of a coincidence to be a throwaway line. But if that WAS the intent, it's still way too cryptic a hint. Especially if it involves an item that can be the difference between winning and losing a boss fight.

honestly the best solution i can come up with is changing the dialogue, cannonically stating the pendant is cursed, and giving you an option to return it to the village/lift the curse if you want to its effectively integrating the back in the day/quality of life options within the game, making it feel less forced than an option in the menu while still nodding to the original