Strange tiny bits in games that may/may not be intentional

[Clownbaby]

Not necessarily glitches or bugs but confusing design choices (music, visuals, animation, sound effects, voice acting etc) that accidentally change, or maybe even enrich, the tone of the game somehow by being too specific

Did anyone play Rugrats Search For Reptar on PS1? In the crazy golf level, when you walk near the edge of the green and near one of the walls there's an unexplained rough scratchy noise, like sandpaper, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with the scenery or what you're doing and never happens again. It always bothered me a bit when I got the game out for nostalgia. To be fair though there's a strange feeling hanging over the whole game. Something about the abrasive low quality sound effects, ropey, jagged bright graphics with that skeletal Rugrats sountrack bluntly cut together so it loops, manifests itself in a way that makes me slightly more uncomfortable than actual scary games do, and I'm still not sure why

I used to like playing Death Jr on the PSP as well. It was clearly meant to be a wonky mutated world, and you're a cute little tiny grim reaper boy slashing up demons and going through portals yeah, fair play, but once I was playing it and I noticed there's an awful lot of what looks like small dead chihuahuas/piglets maybe, scattered about the levels randomly as part of the scenery. I don't know why there's so many of them, same model duplicated throught the game. Probably just lazy space filling. Not that obvious but once you know about them it seems like a bit of a surplus

I mentioned a pair of baby games but I know there's a lot of unintentionally strange, funny or confusing oddities in games across the board

[Bazooka]

Yeah the PS1 and N64 era of games based on cartoons in particular certainly had unintended surrealism aesthetics, mainly because the source material was already quirky, Rugrats being a perfect example, the blocky nature of the models just amplified it.

[Kryton]

Not unintentional per se - But seeing parts of games chopped to bits in which areas of NPC's or something were removed from the game (presumably to save time/space for the devs). But as a young 'un I remember getting a strange feeling discovering a few places in games (Like Zelda/Goldeneye) and noticing parts of the levels that were sealed off or finding objects with no use.

Goldeneye had the dam level with inaccessible areas across the water, plus objects that never got used in the silo level (and a gun that didn't appear in the game on the back of the physical box). Zelda had one or two areas that were planned for expansion with the 64DD but were never released. One was near that windmill village.

Soul Reaver II(?) was the same. And World of Warcraft had plenty.

They always made me feel a bit... sad? Strange eh?

[Ferris]

I think everyone played that Rugrats game for some mad reason.

I also have formative memories of it from way back when.

[Dewt]

I loved the creepy, Black Lodge debug room in FF7.

[Tikwid]

A lot of the early Tomb Raider games had this, both intentionally (dimly-lit walls of skulls and all that) and unintentionally (rocks that were 2D sprites so they'd always turn to face the player). But one that remains ambiguous is in Tomb Raider 3, Thames Wharf level, where turning a switch to flood a reservoir makes a sound like no water on this earth

[Cerys]

The 2D rocks will have been intentional.

[Phil_A]

The first Harry Potter game on the PS2 had a lot of ambient noise which I think was there to try and disguise the fact that due to memory limitations, most of the rooms are completely empty of any school-like activity, but it creates an oddly dissonant, disconcerting effect when you're running around hearing the noisy chatter of hundreds of pupils and there's only two or three characters stood around on screen doing fuck-all.

It's not exactly Silent Hill but it gets kind of low-key spooky in places, like for instance there's a classroom you can only enter at night but can't do anything in, so you're left standing on your tod in this mostly dark space with some weird distant pounding noise like something off the Eraserhead soundtrack. Apparently this room has no purpose in the game at all, which makes it even stranger.`

[Clownbaby]

The first Harry Potter game on the PS2 had a lot of ambient noise which I think was there to try and disguise the fact that due to memory limitations, most of the rooms are completely empty of any school-like activity, but it creates an oddly dissonant, disconcerting effect when you're running around hearing the noisy chatter of hundreds of pupils and there's only two or three characters stood around on screen doing fuck-all.

It's not exactly Silent Hill but it gets kind of low-key spooky in places, like for instance there's a classroom you can only enter at night but can't do anything in, so you're left standing on your tod in this mostly dark space with some weird distant pounding noise like something off the Eraserhead soundtrack. Apparently this room has no purpose in the game at all, which makes it even stranger.`

Oh aye the old Harry Potter games are full of dodgy ambient noise. The Philosopher's Stone on PS1 is so bizarrely awkward and empty.