When IBM i was first released as OS/400, it was split into two layers, the hardware-dependent System Licensed Internal Code (SLIC)[15][1] and the hardware-independent Extended Control Program Facility (XPF).[16][8][33][34] These are divided by a hardware abstraction layer called the Technology Independent Machine Interface (TIMI). Later versions of the operating system gained additional layers, including an AIX compatibility layer named Portable Application Solutions Environment (originally known as the Private Address Space Environment),[5][35] and the Advanced 36 Machine environment which ran System/36 SSP applications in emulation.[1]
PASE (Portable Applications Solutions Environment) provides binary compatibility for user mode AIX executables which do not interact directly with the AIX kernel, and supports the 32-bit and 64-bit AIX Application Binary Interfaces.[44] PASE was first included in a limited and undocumented form in the V4R3 release of OS/400 to support a port of Smalltalk.[5] It was first announced to customers at the time of the V4R5 release, by which time it had gained significant additional functionality.
IBM i features an integrated relational database currently known as IBM Db2 for IBM i.[37] The database evolved from the non-relational System/38 database, gaining support for the relational model and SQL.[1] The database originally had no name, instead it was described simply as "data base support".[54] It was given the name DB2/400 in 1994 to indicate comparable functionality to IBM's other commercial databases.[1] Despite the Db2 branding, Db2 for IBM i is an entirely separate codebase to Db2 on other platforms, and is tightly integrated into the SLIC layer of IBM i as opposed to being an optional product.[55][56]
Fighting Games
- Street Fighter:
- Don't try to be very good while playing Arcade mode in Super Street Fighter II Turbo Revival for the Game Boy Advance. If doing so (getting perfects and Super K.O.s, not losing...) you'll get to fight Akuma instead of Bison in the final stage. Unfortunately, the game has a glitch that freezes the game when the "VS Akuma" screen appears, having to reset it. This game has a lot of bugs, but this one is the most annoying.
- The "Invisible Handcuffs" glitch. Perform a certain set of moves at the right time as Guile, and the opponent will be frozen and locked against you, in a perfect position to be attacked. Unfortunately, they also don't respond to attacks, being functionally invulnerable. Also, even if the timer runs out, the round won't end. The only option is to reset the game. (This one's known well enough that later games and the anime adaptations like to reference Guile's handcuffs.)
- Super Smash Bros.:
- In Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, if you do an endless-time match with pause turned "off" (i.e. activate the setting that disallows pausing during a match), you can't escape the match unless you turn the game off.
- With the return of Home Run Contest in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, you can send the Sandbag to the left side without triggering the auto-game-end by sending Sandbag forward out of the starting area and then hitting it back towards the left, as the game doesn't check if you go left after leaving that area. This will cause Sandbag to fall infinitely, with no escape except leaving the game entirely. Given the hoops you have to go through to do this, it's almost certainly not happening by accident.
Minigame Games
- Many of the games in the old Action 52 compilation (for the NES and Genesis/Mega Drive) are unwinnable because of shoddy programming.
- Two of them, Alfredo and Jigsaw, are also unplayable (except on a select few emulators).
- To give you an idea of just how bad the situation with Action 52 is, the game's developers decided to include a small contest in the game. They put a secret, personalized code at the end of one of the games, Ooze, which (along with taking a photo of the game screen to show that the player did beat the game) would have made players eligible for a grand prize of $104,000. Unfortunately, there were two versions of the Action 52 cartridge. In the better-known version, "Ooze" inevitably hangs two or three levels in, making the game impossible to complete.
- In Star Evil, the boss sometimes fails to show up; and if you beat the third boss if it happens to show up, then the last level is a Gray Screen of Death.
- Some games, such as They Came, crash when you die or complete a level (again, in the better-known version of the cartridge).
- Fuzz Power has an insurmountable rock wall in Level 3.
- Active Enterprises was trying to make the Cheetahmen into a Cash-Cow Franchise. They started on a sequel to the Action 52 Cheetahmen game, Cheetahmen II. They folded before they could release it, but 1,500 prototype copies were discovered in a warehouse and distributed as bootlegs. It's obvious that the game wasn't finished; in addition to the many annoying bugs and glitches and crippled controls, there is a game-stopping bug where the next level fails to load after you defeat the ApeMan in level 4. You can skip to levels 5 and 6 with a Game Genie, a hacked ROM, or a certain good bad bug; but after you beat the final boss there, the game just stays on the boss screen, no ending cinematic, no credits, nada.
- Ninja Assault is another game with No Ending. After you play through the glitched-up fourth stage and defeat the glitched-up boss, the game just stops. There's a cave entrance on the boss screen, signifying that there should be more levels, but they didn't bother to program them.
- In the fifth level of Atmos Quake, your ship randomly explodes for no reason, probably due to the glitchy collision detection, making the level unbeatable.
- WarioWare:
- WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$: There is a microgame known as "Right in the Eye" which involves threading a needle. On Level 3 (the hardest difficulty) of this microgame, the needle can be placed too high or low to thread.
- WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$!: The microgame "Guy Scraper" can sometimes be unable to complete entirely if the game speed is too fast, due to the animation for the man diving off and bouncing on the trampoline taking too long.
Turn-Based Strategy
- In Banished, you can make it impossible to expand your town by wasting all your stone and iron (for instance by making tools and paved roads) and/or abandoning them on the other side of a river and dismantling the bridge that leads there, leaving you without enough stone to rebuild it. Since your only source of those two resources besides gathering are the Mine and Quarry (and they require stone and iron respectively) is the Marketplace (which also requires Iron to build) you're essentially left stranded.
- Item World maps in the Disgaea series being Randomly Generated Levels can potentially produce maps that are unwinnable if you're lacking units capable of reaching the exit or the enemies on the map. Random Geo Effect combinations can produce even sillier results, such as a situation where the moment one unit attacks another in melee, they punch each other in an eternal counter loop (Always Counter) yet inflict negative amounts of harm by doing so (Reverse Damage), producing a loop that only ends when you reach for the power button.
- Fire Emblem:
- Due to the Permadeath mechanic and the random nature of stat increases, it's possible for a given playthrough of almost any game to be unusually difficult thanks to important units being crippled (although the series usually drip-feeds you enough new units with fixed starting stats to prevent the game from being completely wedged).
- A specific method occurs in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War - if Quan and Ethlyn survive Travant's ambush in Chapter 5 and if you let them conquer Phinora Castle, which is your next step at that point... Congratulations, now Phinora is an allied castle and you can't conquer it back, meaning that you're stuck in Yied Desert with no way to advance further in the game (since your progress is very linear, conquering a castle disables the Invisible Wall guarding the next one). You have to try really, really, REALLY hard to pull the whole thing off; every enemy present has a horseslayer, so one or two hits is all it takes for them to kill Ethlyn, due to their mechanics, they can get in a good dozen attacks per turn, and the two are stuck in a desert, meaning they will be moving at a snail's pace and enduring these attacks a lot.
- You can make Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade unwinnable by managing to get everyone except Lyn killed in Chapter 3. (This isn't too easy, as Chapter 3's enemies are very weak.) Then in Chapter 4 you'll be tasked with protecting a NPC with Lyn guarding the way, but the tutorial will force you to move her away to talk with an enemy leaving the NPC completely defenseless. You can also pull this off by killing off everyone but the main characters in the final chapter (and leaving them at base level), at which point you simply don't have the firepower to defeat the final boss, even with Athos.
- Defied in the tutorial of Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance; if you throw away Ike's sword just to see what happens, Mist will scold and re-arm you.
- In Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem, you can recruit the enemy general Sheena, who will then un-recruit herself and become an enemy if you kill one of the soldiers of her nation. If you hand her the Plot Coupon item Lightsphere and then kill a Gra soldier and turn her back into an enemy, then it won't drop when she's killed, and it also won't go back to the convoy at the end of the chapter like it would if she were an ally unit. You are no longer able to defeat Hardin, since he can only be damaged by units holding the Lightsphere, and since his defeat is required to clear his chapter, it results in you being stuck there forever with an invincible boss.
- Throughout the series, one can break everyone's weapons, then spend all your money on non-weapon items. Congratulations, you can no longer damage your enemies! In theory, you can resolve this on chapters where a new character joins the party, since they usually have weapons equipped, but in practice, this is going to be rather difficult. Fire Emblem: Awakening rectifies this by giving Chrom the Falchion to start with, which is unbreakable and unsellable, and if he dies it's Game Over anyway. Still possible, however, if you give the weapon to someone who isn't Chrom (which is stupid in itself unless you give it to the original Marth due to anyone else either being unable to use it or already having one), making it impossible to retrieve it anymore unless that person happens to be there. It's not possible in Fire Emblem Fates, due to ditching the durability mechanic for all non-staff weapons. Fire Emblem: Three Houses allows player units to fight with broken weapons, albeit with penalties that make the weapons practically useless, and some units can fight with their bare hands.
- An early mission of Front Mission has Driscoll hanging around outside the main battle area in his ridiculously overpowered wanzer. Normally he just leaves when you rout all the other enemies and you win. However if you make the mistake of attacking him (which is quite easy to do accidentally thanks to the game's dodgy targeting controls, or intentionally as up until now your goal has been to destroy all enemies and he's been established as Royd's nemesis), he'll start coming after you. Once this happens you have no choice but to either fail the mission or reset; he won't stop until all your units are toast and all you can manage back is Scratch Damage.
- King's Bounty has an area which can only be reached by flight, and which contains only a single treasure spot. If said treasure spot contains non-flying creatures, and you were to recruit them and then ditch your flying creatures, and you didn't have any Town Gate or Castle Gate spells, you would be stuck there forever.
- In UFO Aftershock, it's very easy to render the game unwinnable by simply failing to complete the mission where the Starghosts first appear (either by losing the tactical mission or letting the mission time out in the strategic mode). This mission gives you a research topic which is absolutely crucial for finishing the game and if you miss it, you won't get a second chance.
- In UFO Aftermath, one research requirement is to complete a mission on the biomass, so that you can get a sample of it to research (the actual mission doesn't matter, as long as you do something on the biomass). It's possible to let your bases get gobbled up by the biomass, and you can only initiate missions in neighboring territories. If you fail to initiate a mission on the biomass, and let your bases get overtaken by it, then you can't research how to stop the biomass from spreading. It also does not spread across water: if you're pushed off the continent where it appears (usually Africa/Asia), you'll be unable to progress.
- In Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum, it's possible, in a match, to end up with pieces that can only move in certain patterns against one that manages to evade them perfectly no matter how hard you try to box it in, and since the A.I. doesn't know when to quit, they'll happily continue to avoid your pieces with it, despite being unable to do anything else. In such cases, the only way to end the match would be to surrender or let the AI destroy your Symbol.
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