You’re stuck. It’s 1987, or maybe you’re playing an emulated version of a brutal 8-bit RPG in the modern day, and there’s a wall in your way. Or a guard. Or a mountain range that the developers clearly didn't want you to cross yet. Then you find it. That one specific glitch, that weird item, or that specific sequence of button presses. Suddenly, the screen flickers. The collision detection breaks. It lets you move north into a territory you weren't supposed to see for another ten hours of gameplay.
Glitch hunting isn't just for speedrunners anymore. It’s a way of reclaiming the game.
The technical guts of the "North" glitch
Most people don't realize how fragile old game code actually is. Back in the day, memory was a premium resource. We’re talking kilobytes. Developers used "wraparound" logic to save space. If your character’s Y-coordinate was at the very bottom of the map—usually represented as a value like 255 in an 8-bit system—and you moved down one more pixel, the game didn't always have a "stop" command. Instead, the math would "overflow" back to 0.
Suddenly, you’re at the top of the map.
This is the most common way it lets you move north through what should be an impassable barrier. You aren't actually walking through the wall; you're tricking the game into thinking you've reached the destination from the opposite side of the planet. It’s basically Pac-Man logic applied to a world map.
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Why the direction matters
Why north? Why not south or west?
In many early game engines, specifically those used for the NES and the original Game Boy, the coordinate system (0,0) was located at the top-left corner of the screen. Moving "up" meant subtracting from your Y-value. If you could somehow force your position to a negative number, the game engine—which often couldn't handle negative integers—would snap you to the highest possible positive number.
It’s a shortcut. A digital wormhole.
Take The Legend of Zelda. There are specific screen-scrolling glitches where, if you trigger a transition at the exact right frame while being shoved by an enemy, the game loses track of Link. For a split second, the boundaries don't exist. It lets you move north into a "subscreen" or a glitched version of the overworld. Speedrunners call this "screen wrapping." It looks messy. It looks like the game is melting. But it works.
Real-world examples of breaking the map
Let’s talk about Pokémon Red and Blue. Everyone knows MissingNo, but fewer people talk about the "ledge jump" glitches. By manipulating how the game tracks your "jump" state, you can occasionally bypass the triggers that tell the game a tile is solid.
Then there’s the "Walk Through Walls" GameShark codes. Those were the holy grail for 90s kids. Why? Because the developers always hid weird stuff in the margins. In Pokémon, moving north past the boundaries of certain towns would lead you into "Glitch City," a terrifying landscape of scrambled tiles and crashed save files.
It wasn't just about cheating. It was about seeing the "matrix" behind the curtain.
Honestly, I remember trying this in Dragon Warrior. I spent hours trying to find a way to skip the Dragonlord’s barriers. There was a rumor that if you used a specific item near the northern coastline, it would bypass the bridge requirement. It was a lie, of course. Most playground rumors were. But the fact that people believed it lets you move north into endgame areas kept those games alive for years after their release dates.
The "Out of Bounds" culture
Today, we have creators like Shesez and his "Boundary Break" series on YouTube. He uses modern camera tools to show what happens when a game lets you move north (or any direction) beyond the intended field of view.
What’s fascinating is what developers leave behind:
- Fully modeled rooms that were cut from the final game.
- "Developer rooms" filled with every item in the game for testing purposes.
- NPCs standing in a T-pose, waiting for their script to trigger.
- The "skybox"—the giant 3D shell that surrounds the world—which often looks like a surrealist painting when viewed from the outside.
Is it still possible in modern games?
Modern engines like Unreal Engine 5 or Unity are much more robust. They don't usually suffer from 8-bit integer overflows. However, "clipping" is still a massive thing.
In Skyrim, you can take a wooden plate, hold it against a wall, and run into it. The physics engine gets confused by the overlapping hitboxes. It tries to resolve the conflict by pushing your character forward. If you’re facing the right way, it lets you move north through a locked door or a mountain.
It’s less about a math error now and more about physics engines struggling with "collision resolution." When two objects exist in the same space, the game has to decide where they go. Usually, it shoves you through the thinnest part of the geometry.
The ethics of the skip
Some people think glitching ruins the experience. I disagree.
There is a specific kind of joy in outsmarting a program. A game is a set of rules. Finding the loophole in those rules is, in itself, a game. When a speedrunner finds a way to skip the first three acts of a game because it lets you move north into the final boss's chamber, they aren't ignoring the game; they are mastering it at a microscopic level.
They understand the code better than some of the people who wrote it.
How to find these spots yourself
If you're looking to break a game, you have to think like a tester. Look for corners. Look for places where two different types of terrain meet—like a rock wall hitting a grassy plain. These "seams" are the weakest points in the game's map.
- Find a corner: Specifically, "internal" corners where two walls meet at a 90-degree angle.
- Increase your velocity: Many glitches require you to be moving faster than the game’s refresh rate can check for collision. This is why horses in The Witcher 3 or Skyrim are notorious for breaking the map.
- Use an "anchor" object: In many 3D games, placing an item between yourself and the wall forces the game to recalculate your position.
The risk of the void
One thing to keep in mind: moving north into "unloaded" territory is a one-way trip.
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Most games use "loading zones." If you skip the trigger that tells the game to load the next forest, you'll just be walking on an invisible floor over a black abyss. Eventually, the floor ends. You fall. You fall forever, or until the game crashes because your Y-coordinate has reached a number so high the processor gives up.
Back up your saves. Seriously.
Actionable ways to explore out-of-bounds
If you want to try this without potentially ruining a 50-hour save file, start with older titles on an emulator. Emulators allow for "Save States," which means you can attempt a wall-clip, fail, and instantly reset to a second before the attempt.
- Try the "S-Clip" in Mario games: It’s a classic for a reason.
- Look into "Wrong Warping": This is the advanced version of moving north. It involves tricking the game into thinking you've exited a door you never actually entered.
- Check the Speedrun.com forums: Every game has a "Glitch" or "Technical" section. People spend years documenting exactly which pixel it lets you move north on.
The digital world feels solid, but it’s really just a suggestion. Once you realize the walls are just lines of "if/then" statements, the map becomes much larger than the developers ever intended. Go find a wall. Grab a wooden plate. See what's on the other side.
Insights for the modern player
Breaking the map isn't just a hobby; it’s a form of digital archeology. By pushing against the boundaries, you find the "hidden" history of a game’s development.
- Respect the "Invisible Wall": Sometimes they are there for a reason, usually to prevent you from falling into a non-existent part of the game world that will corrupt your data.
- Join the community: Sites like The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF) document every unused asset found via these glitches.
- Document your findings: If you find a new spot where it lets you move north, record it. You might have found a "skip" that saves the speedrunning community five minutes.
The most important step is simply changing your mindset. Stop seeing the game as a movie you're watching and start seeing it as a playground you're testing. The boundary is only there if you agree to stay inside it.