What is a glitch?  Originally, the word was meant as a spike or change in voltage in an electrical current.  In a 1962 writing by John Glenn, he describes “glitch” as “another term we adopted to describe some of our problems.”   Since then, “glitch” has passed beyond just technical use and now covers a wide variety of malfunctions and mistakes.

In video games, glitch is the term used by players when an error has been found resulting in behavior the programmers did not intend.  Some of these glitches include graphics not being properly displayed,  crashes, data corruption  and freezing.  Sometimes certain glitches can be replicated deliberately by doing certain tasks in certain orders.  Some glitches are a result of accessing empty space.  In one particular game, the player must collect 151 tokens but there are 255 spaces leaving 104 spaces that can be filled with a glitch. In some online games, people who know where the glitches are can use them to their advantage.  Sometimes this is cheating but other times, it’s just part of the game.

Most of the time, glitches are found by mistake, or luck, but there are times when you find them purposefully.  During the course of a game, if time permits, you can look or “skate” around the entire screen.  If you do a search on the internet for “how to find glitches," hundreds of websites come up showing known glitches and how to find and use them.