Nintendo Patches The Conduit’s Spawn Glitch?

Yesterday Nintendo released Wii System Update version 4.2, and aside from annoying the modding community by automatically removing the Homebrew Channel, 4.2 seems to have patched a certain problem with the Wii’s flagship first-person shooter, The Conduit.  Several Conduit players have quickly reported that the game’s now infamous spawn glitch has ceased to occur since 4.2’s introduction.

This news arrives months after a report by NintendoEverything that the game’s developer, High Voltage Studios, was working closely with Nintendo for a potential solution to a glitch in the game’s multiplayer mode.

The spawn glitch was a bug that would occur randomly when joining a match, and it would manifest itself by way of a 1/2 or 1/4 reticule in the middle of the screen.  The player would then be stuck in their spawn location, unable to move or fire until the match had ended.  Sometimes the spawn glitch could repeat itself two or three times, leading to much frustration since a system restart would generally be needed to bypass the flaw.

Below is an example of the spawn glitch at work:

We discovered the spawn glitch for ourselves shortly after publishing our review of the game.  Aside from the rampant infestation of hackers, the spawn glitch was the number one problem affecting The Conduit’s otherwise enjoyable multiplayer.

We contacted High Voltage for comment, but at the time of publishing this article we haven’t received a response.

So to see for ourselves whether or not the problem had been fixed, we fired up our copy of the game (after downloading 4.2) and tried a few different matches of multiplayer.  Despite playing the game for about an hour, we encountered no spawn glitches, even when the usual warning signs had appeared.  For us the guaranteed warning sign was usually an improperly timed “3, 2, 1…” countdown from the game’s announcer while we were loading into a new match.  Every time we heard the countdown preceding our entry into a new game, we knew we were in for a system restart.

This time, however, we were greeted not with a spawn glitch, but with a seamless transition into spectator mode until the current match had ended.  Patching of Wii titles after their release is not entirely unheard of as there have been claims that Wii System Update 4.1 had fixed a bug with Wii Sports Resort.

While we can’t officially confirm Nintendo’s patching of the spawn glitch, we can at least note that it has now failed to occur, even with its usual tell-tale signs, after 4.2’s release.  If true, then this system update may be one of the Big N’s best so far, and a much-needed reassurance for both the Wii community and third-part developers as well.  It should at least ease the pain of some annoyed Conduit owners.