The Sims 2 (Nintendo DS)

This page details bugs of The Sims 2 (Nintendo DS).

Honest Jackson's Disappearance#

The Honest Jackson NPC has some scripted logic tied to some of the game's story flags. In particular, his character behavior mode, combined with the flag that controls which of the game's antagonists is occupying the Hotel Penthouse causes his spawn point to fail to load when the antagonist flag is set to anything above 0. The result is that the moment Frankie Fusilli is arrested and Ava Cadavra arrives, Honest Jackson disappears completely for the rest of the game.

This bug was actually confirmed by the game's producer, Daniel Elenbaas.

Checking Honest Jackson into your hotel will erroneously trigger the ‘How to Play’ dialogues for the alien autopsy minigame.

Mesmerized Bugs#

During Ava Cadavra's stay in the penthouse Ara Fusilli, Auda Sherif and Sancho Paco Panza are mesmerized and are usually in the bovine shrine and are uninteractable. But this does have a few bugs. Using the super soaker on any of them will make then angry which will override their mesmerized state which will allow the player to talk to them, this also allows the player to access a 'What's up!' dialogue which usually goes unused for each of them.

Ara Fusilli Dialogue: "The bell... the bell... the ringing of the cow bell." (Note: this dialogue is present even if the cowbell has yet to be given to Ava)

Auda Sherif Dialogue: "O Prime Heifer... teach us the secret of your bovinity"

Sancho Paco Panza Dialogue: "Must meditate... listen to sweet mooosic... sweet, sweet, moooosic"

If any of them are staying in the hotel they may be found outside of the bovine shrine in a mesmerized state which will lead to the player being unable to talk to them unless the super soaker is used.

Item Replacement errors#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: This occurred in-game due to a Deluxe Golden Fridge being replaced with a small plant, given that the intent is to replace items with similar ones it suggest something off about one of those two objects

Sometimes a guest may decide to replace their items with ones of different colours, this process can lead to guests placing one of their items out of bounds.

Lost Desert Item Softlock#

Occasionally a character may lose an item and one location where it may turn up is in the desert however attempting to use the item instead of simply picking it up may lead the player's sim indefinitely walking around in circles due to the uneven terrain of the desert.

Horus Menhoset Trance Softlock#

After Ava Cadavra leaves the penthouse, the bovine is replaced with an Egyptian statue in the Bovine Shrine. Feeding the statue gourds will keep Horus Menhoset IX out of a trance. If you use the Super Soaker on him during his trance or anybody else in the area, they will immediately become angry. Attempting to interact will cause the touchscreen to softlock until you leave the room or the game will freeze entirely.

Pockets Underflow#

In the basement's government lab there is a mini-game called Alien Autopsy, which requires you have 1 or more Mummified Aliens in the player's inventory to play. The object decides if you can play or not by counting how many of the 6 item slots in your inventory contain the Item ID for the Mummified Alien object, which you dig up in the Strangetown Desert. When you play, it removes one of the Aliens from your inventory. Simple enough, right?

...Except that because of how the game handles the pockets, if you happen to play Alien Autopsy while an alien is currently in the 6th slot of your pockets, when you finish playing the game the game simply decrements your item count from 6 to 5. Because the Alien Autopsy object only looks at the slots when counting and does not account for the number of slots that are active, it will still count the alien in the now-inactive slot as one. The result is that you can continue to play Alien Autopsy as much as you want from this point. Every time you complete the game or exit it, the number of items in your pockets decreases. When you play Alien Autopsy with 0 items in your pockets, the value decreases to -1.

When this happens, if the player then saves game, only the last byte of the pocket size is saved (255), and after the player opens the pockets menu from a savegame with more than 6 items, the game will completely lock up. The only solution to prevent this outside of hacking is to collect some objects until pocket counter reaches 0 again, or play Alien Autopsy like this over 250 more times to reduce the last byte value back down to some number between 0 and 6 again before saving.

This bug can be exploited in many ways, for earning collectibles, hacking the water tank, or even spawn some of the unused items!

Watch on YouTubeWatch on YouTube

Texture Loading Randomly Breaks#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: The issue begins when a part of memory that is normally static during the main portion of the game is overwritten with... something. Probably texture data. Further disassembly to see what is going on is probably necessary.

In some cases, after rooms/areas have been loaded many, many times without restarting the game, the textures and texture loading just breaks randomly until you restart the game, or load into totally different menu to reinit the code responsible for loading textures. The exact cause is not totally clear, but there are some indications that it may be due a part of the game's memory responsible for displaying textures being overwritten somehow. The issue seems to be most prevalent when entering and exiting the 6 editable hotel rooms while they have many objects with different textures, although it actually can occur anywhere.

A way to reload textures is via entering CAS using a dresser or mirror, or save, exit and reload.

Bugged Concierge Calls#

Part of the game is that when you've not played the game and come back to it after a day or more, the Concierge calls you on your phone to chitchat about stuff you missed. However, on some occasions where the game was left paused or in sleep mode for a day or more, when you return, the Concierge will call you, and from that point forward, until the game is reset or saved and reset, any time you pause or put the console in Sleep mode, the Concierge will call you and chitchat when you begin the game again, no matter what.

The game can also crash randomly when picking up your phone while this issue is in effect, so if you encounter it, it's best to save and reset your game.

Dropping your Cell Phone#

While the above bug is taking place, having the main character sitting or lying down and flicking the console into and out of standby mode will result in the mentioned forced call by Concierge; as this happens, they will stand up to grab the phone and warp back in place with the phone lying on the floor.

The player can choose, at this point, either to stand back up normally or to pick up the phone, leaving them still down but in an abnormal position pointing to the selected interaction target; either choice will cause the phone item to disappear and return to normality.

Further, if other seats are within interaction range (e.g. using the green armchairs in the hotel lobby), the player can choose to pick up the phone and then sit elsewhere without getting up first: this will leave the first seat in a buggy occupied state until the room is vacated.

Collision Errors#

Watch on YouTubeWatch on YouTubeWhile this game actually has rather solid collision for the most part, no game is perfect. The way the game handles situations where your Sim has no floor below them is by slowly having your sim levitate down, and it's rather odd looking and jarring.

In cases where you fall out of bounds, your Sim falls into nothing indefinitely. To get out, you must either reset the game, or, if you've saved the game, you must leave the game running until one of your Sim's needs completely depletes your Sanity Bar so that you will respawn either in the Strangetown Jail or in the Manager's Suite.

Here are some known examples of minor collision errors.

• If you walk against and then behind a particular piece of geometry in the Saloon Back Rooms just to the right of Jeb's bed, you can clip into it and fall through the floor out of bounds. - This can lead to a soft-lock if done before the Manager's Suite is unlocked as needs don't decay before that point.
• In the Deluxe Guest Room, in the bathroom area there is a lip that doesn't have any collision to prevent you from walking off into mid-air, resulting in the odd levitation-like falling behavior.
• It is possible to go through certain doors without the opening animation playing, e.g. exiting the Town Hall by reaching its front door at a 45° angle from the bathroom.

Miscellaneous Bloopers and Continuity Errors#

• In Italian, the franchise keeps its English name instead of being translated as "I Sim". However, when playing in Italian, the Spanish logo "Los Sims 2" is used as the background of the empty Interact bottom screen.
• Furniture in the Penthouse is normally locked until the main story is completed. By attempting to rearrange it immediately after Frankie Fusilli's arrest, the game will incorrectly state that the room belongs to Ava Cadavra, despite her not having been introduced or seen at all yet.
  • This unexplained mechanic conflicts with normal gameplay rules and humorously results in the most premium room being forced to have the most basic furniture by late game.
• The animation for guests picking up brochures in the lobby shows the brochure disappearing before the character's hand moves toward it.
• The elevator is seemingly aligned with the hotel's center line, except on the rooftop.
• By rapidly mashing the items and back button in the Manager's Panel, it is possible to exit it while its graphics are still fading back in. This will result in an equal amount of semitransparency being carried over to the regular bottom screen UI until reset by opening the cell phone or a popup window (e.g. the pause screen or save confirmation prompts).
• When interacting with a fridge, the controls are locked for most but not all of the eating/drinking animations. By selecting Eat or Drink again at the first possible opportunity, the game will reject the action as the fridge is already in use.
  • By doing the same just a few frames later throughout the latter part of the animation, the action will be performed but the fridge's door will open and rapidly slam shut again (passing through the main character) and causing fridge noise to persist until the room is vacated.
• Unconfirmed: dust and/or ick piles may spawn, as evidenced by the Maid's price on the cell phone rising, in rooms inaccessible due to still being under construction.
• Guests may call or text for what are ostensibly requests without actually causing a timed sidequest to open in the Goals tab.
• Sidequests asking for the purchase and delivery of an item may cause it to appear twice at the Store if said item was already in the weekly rotation.