This was most likely intentional. In the first Metroid game, farming these enemy spawnpoints was the only reliable way to get health & missiles. In Super Metroid you also had the health stations, that recovered all of your health, so I never really felt the need to use this method in Super Metroid.

That's intentional you know. The enemies re-spawn after a certain point or if you collect all of the health or item drops they leave behind. Hardly an exploit.

Nobody is forcing me, but I have an hard time ignoring this kind of things once I discover them. If I have to restrain myself from using a system to its full potential because it would break the game, that is a bad system. I'd rather play something bettter balanced instead.

Well, if standing around and simply pressing the fire button all the time is all it takes to get fully healed it feels either like a stupid feature or an exploit to me. The important part about this is that this routine is basically absolutely safe but also boring - IIRC if you have a gamepad with "autofire" you can even leave the room without any worries and you will be fully healed if you come back a couple of minutes later (depending on how many tanks you have).

Chocobo Racing

The game has a drifting system, where you can push down a button while turning to drift (or whatever) and turn sharper, but if you held it down for too long, you'd lose control and start spinning. There was even a character stat and a special skill for being able to drift longer. Too bad for the system that letting go of the drift button immediately zeroed the counter, so you could drift as much as you wanted if you let go of the button for even the tiniest moment every now and then, or just tapped the button repeatedly. The tapping was so effective that you could drive into the wildest corners with the game's fastest vehicle (an airship that goes crazy fast but supposedly turns badly) and maintain your maximum speed if you tapped the drift fast enough while turning. It's how I always did it, but I think it's an exploit since it makes some of the stats and skills completely useless.

Couldn't agree more. You won't believe how often I have to say this kind of stuff to fellow gamers. If there's an exploit, it's the developers' fault. If using it breaks the game it's obviously the developers' fault too, God dammit! Sometimes people tell me to simply ignore these exploits but to me it's like saying "forget the spoiler and enjoy the damn thing!". Once I'm aware of something of this gravity I can't just ignore or forget it. :P

Pokemon Blue, Red, Gold, & Silver

In the First Generation (not Yellow) through the old man glitch. There was an interesting way of getting unlimited Rare Candies (or in fact any item including Master Balls) by abusing the programming of the game. Just talk to the old man at the beginning of the game and watch him catch a Pokemon. After that fly to Cinnabar Island and surf on the East Coast of the Island. Depending on the name of your character it'll spawn high level Pokemon including Missingno. After finding Missingno your inventory will be glitched and you'll have a much larger quantity of items.

In the Second Generation (not exactly sure about Crystal) through cloning. Basically it's abusing the games Pokemon Storage System and being able to get all starting pokemon as well as get an unlimited supply of Rare Candies and/or any item that can be held by a pokemon. Put a pokemon in one storage contanier, then change the default storage container. You'll be asked to save and when it's saving restart. If done correctly you'll still have the pokemon on you and in your storage container.

Final Fantasy V

It's possible to stop random enemy battles in game. While walking around open up the menu and close it. Repeat and you'll hardly ever see a random monster battles.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

Unlimited bottles!11!!1! Well it's basically a glitch where you replace an item in your inventory and make it a bottle. Before catching something with the bottle you're currently using go back into the inventory screen during the animation and replace the bottle with the item of your choice. Unpause and there you go, another bottle to use. However it doesn't act like other bottles, it won't be accepted by the guy who takes things from your bottle or review you if you have a fairy in that bottle.

Fire Emblem (GBA) or in Japan Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken

Using a mine trap that you get at some point in the game you can actually take control of the enemy force for 1 turn. Just place it where an enemy unit will likely walk on to get to the nearest character. As soon as the enemy unit walks on top of it and takes damage reset. Then continue on that same game, it'll show the enemy unit getting damaged again and you'll be able to do whatever you like with all other units in the enemy force for that 1 turn.

Oblivion

Item duplication through using scrolls. Just have two or more copies of the same scroll and use them to duplicate certain items (Nirnroots, stolen itmes, quest, etc. won't work). Click to equip the scrolls (make sure you have more scrolls than the said item you're going to duplicate) then click (but not equip) the item you wish to duplicate and drop them. Rinse and repeat.

Paintbrushes...they somehow levitate and can be used as a platform. I guess somewhat useless unless there's a high to reach place you want to get to.

Warcraft 3, free for all melee maps

Turtle in and don't attack. Wait for the gold locations to be depleted. The AI start playing stupidly. ??? Profit.

Xyem made me remember an exploit I found in the first playthrough of Gothic 1.

Potion effects are applied immediately, but if you get hit while drinking and the animation gets interrupted, the potion will not be consumed (or to be more precise, it will somehow return to your inventory). It was hilarious to pump my mage strenght to Chuck Norris levels with a couple of strenght potions.

Although, to be fair, by the end the game your character will be already so poweful that using this trick won't make much of a difference. In fact, I never used it again.


Another one for Morrowind .

In my quest to make a pacifist run I found a way to convince most humanoid enemies to stop suiciding against me. Requirements: high persuasion skill, and being able to cast the Command Humanoid spell.
The first step is to charm the enemy to make them stop fighting you. Then you have to talk to them and choose Intimidate. Close the dialogue window, then talk to them again and use Admire to raise your status with them. Note that just trying to flatter them is not enough, you HAVE to Intimidate them first for some reason.

Morrowind

You can enchant a weapon early on (level one easily) to heal you when you hit an enemy. If you "acquire" a powerful soul gem (early mages guild quest gives you the opportunity), you can set the heal effect to something like heal 5 per hit on enemy, drain 1, charge 500. You can badger your enemies to death with almost any weapon, and if you hit consistently enough, they can't even get close to killing you. You must recharge your weapon regularly enough, though.

To be fair, the whole game is one big easy exploit, but the freedom you have on this front doesn't break the flow one bit. It even makes it more fun.

I don't really have this problem, especially in rpgs, as i tend to roleplay a lot, at the expense of maximisations (for instance, I use armours that look like decent realistic outfits, even when being buried under tons of spiked metal plaques glowing with magical effects would be more efficient). I see videogames more like toys than games, I don't feel the need to push the win to non fun. I have issues, for instance, with bunny hoppers, in shooter where it looks too much out of character (like n.o.l.f.).

So, avoiding annoying exploits is not much of an effort. In most games -rpgs in particular- I avoid some features anyway, because I focus on the most fun ones. Ignoring an exploit is not much different from, say, ignoring halberds when you play an archer...

However, limiting in TES games leads to less options. And less options is bad, especially for a game like Morrowind. Yes, there are some exploits that could have been prevented quite easily. Still, If you can't ignore them, it's you and your will who's to blame, not the devs for wanting to bring as free gameplay as possible.

Well, I wasn't really talking about the TES games in particular but the attitude of many people (both players and developers) in general. The TES games (at least since Morrowind) are close enough to being a big "fantasy sandbox" that I can actually accept some of their exploits and flaws. After all, some of these exploits still result in something that's enjoyable, and that's usually a good thing in a video game. :P

But the attitude of some people is still crap. The most epic failure of this kind was probably APB. People weren't enjoying the game so what did the developer say? "You people are playing it wrong!" Yeah sure, people could have enjoyed it more by following some unwritten rules but if the system encourages people to play the game in a different way than it was intended by the developers (at least one that is not providing an enjoyable experience) then the developers simply did a crappy job designing the system. And there's really no arguing with that.