Game Journal 5: Super Mario Bros 3 and Glitches
A glitch is an interference in the form of corrupted visual data or an audible noise that is the result of faulty code in a program’s software, or a failure in hardware such as a monitor or system memory. Glitches can often pop up in games in the form of corrupted sprites, where the character, enemies, and environment appear blocky, distorted, discolored, or invisible. Other times glitches can affect the game code resulting in a change of the game's mechanics, in the Super Mario Bros 3 video, there is a glitch where Mario can swim through the air (at 8:33) as if he were in a water level. Sometimes glitches can create fun and novel experiences to gameplay such as granting Mario’s fireball ability to destroy terrain (at 10:46) allowing him to create tunnels reminiscent of Minecraft or Terraria gameplay. Lastly, there are also audible glitches that may sound like noise, buzzing, higher or lower in pitch, and may loop.
Many artists have learned how to glitch software and hardware or simulate glitches visually to create interesting and novel works of art evocative of hacker and dystopian themes. Some of these visual glitches come in the form of scanlines, pixelation, artifacts, light leaks, double exposure, noise and grain, color degradation, and glitch lettering. Terrence Morash, creative director of Shutterstock explains: “There’s a controlled imperfection to [glitch art], and it’s a reminder of the technical elements of design. It visualizes technology as having a combination of textures and patterns but without perfection.” Using glitches give artists the opportunity to experiment and explore new ways of making artwork, while also challenging how we both look and think of art and the messages it invokes.
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