I don't mean glitches necessarily. I meant stuff people can normally do that results in the game no longer being difficult, etc. Kind of like finding an excellent grinding area in an RPG and leveling up way past the levels of the upcoming bosses.

Or stuff like Vanish/X-Zone in Final Fantasy 6. Stuff like the mere use of a certain swordsman in Final Fantasy Tactics could count too.

One point however, is this may result in some spoilers being put out there so make sure you're okay with that beforehand.

Starting off, here's a good one for Super Mario World -#t=20

I played Gauntlet: Legends on the N64 many years ago, and I remember this one level where there was a monster spawner down a set of steps and slightly off screen that would continuously pump out monsters in an unending stream up the stairs, and never would despawn itself. I used rubber bands and a wad of paper to tape down my shoot button and went to work. When I came home, I was max level and the mobs just kept coming. I ended up quitting shortly after that, because it was just too easy.

These don't "break" the respective games, but they certainly make some situations easier to handle.

- Strafe-running in Doom 1/2 (also in Wolf 3D? Can't remember)
- Bunny-hopping in Quake and HL (actually isn't this in all of the Quake Engine based games?).
- Having your railroad repeatedly cross the AI's roads in Transport Tycoon.
- Cutting just right in Stunts (that's right all you young scallywags - frickin' Stunts) so you could get your formula into "overdrive" mode, which didn't slow down regardless of the terrain you were on. Impossible to turn, though.

I think that camping breaks a lot of games. IN particular, the COD series has suffered from this. Its partly an issue of level design, and partly due to players being unwilling to make a short term sacrifice in their scores to flank a camper and win in the long run. I guess its very hard for level designers to predict how hard players will find it to counter certain strategies.

Starting off, here's a good one for Super Mario World - http://www.youtube.c...dmaWxU4yGM#t=20

This one#t=1s was far easier to do almost anywhere in the game there was a red shell pretty much.

Old Mortal Kombats:
10: Jump + back + kick
20: GOTO 10

I'd say you can only "break" a game in such a way if it was broken by design before.

An example would be "A Mystical Land" where you practically have to cheat, because the game design does not allow to be played in a normal, legit way. At least, if you want to get anywhere, do anything, and have any fun at all.
Normal mobs at a level that you can reasonably tackle give no experience, mobs that will almost kill you give some xp, but not much. Most experience you can earn comes from quests and bounty bosses. Unluckily, the number of quests is limited, and many of them are either labelled with deceptive low levels and require you to go to areas (or kill bosses) that you cannot possibly survive unless you cheat (or unless you already have the levels after finishing the quests). The majority of bounty bosses are so ridiculously overpowered that not even a group of 6 people (max group size) of the same level stands a chance against some of them.
Of course it becomes entirely different when you are 5-6 levels higher than the respective boss. Except the two bosses that not even a dozen players of maximum level can kill without cheating.
Which effectively means for the most part that everyone ends up
a) running with people who are much higher level to kill bounties that they could not possibly scratch otherwise
b) standing at the gate and waiting while the high levels in team kill the bounties alone
c) using as many exploits (mostly wall-hacks and exploiting the abysmal AI) as possible, all the time
d) leaving game annoyed and bored
The crafting system is similarly "intelligent" (almost exclusively a money burner), don't get me started on that one.

Other than that you will certainly always have powerlevellers in every RPG, but all they spoil is their own fun (because going the way is the game, not arriving at the end -- most people don't realize that).
Usually they will max out everything in a few weeks, then stand in town in their best armour so everyone can see their uber-coolness, eventually get bored, and leave. Ah well, that's life. It doesn't matter. Everyone else can still have fun, and the game is not "broken". In fact, it may be motivating for others.

In Homeworld there was a maximum amount of ships of every kind you could build. But you could still take over ships even when you had already hit that limit. So since your fleet is persistent over levels you can accumulate absurd amounts of ships over the campaign.

Infinite City Sprawl in Civilization 1/2 (build cities everywhere, never build improvements except for Wonders). Takes advantage of the fact that it maximises land use, takes advantage of the per-city bonus for resources at the "city square", and even though individual cities are rubbish, Caravans allow you to transfer resources meaning you can still build expensive things like Wonders.

Fixed in Civ 3 (and presumably later), mainly by getting rid of Caravans, and possibly also by an improved corruption model (too many cities makes them less efficient).

Certainly the kind of things work thinking about when designing a game. Civ 2 became unplayable for me once I'd tried this tactic (it doesn't help that not only is it a killer tactic, it's also one that's really boring to play).

Old Mortal Kombats:
10: Jump + back + kick
20: GOTO 10

This is pretty accurate.

Also in MK3/UMK3, Any time you jumped backwards, the AI would automatically fire a projectile. If you were using a character like Robot Smoke/Sektor with the Teleport Uppercut, it's just so easy.