The North Bug

[Sombra]

This is a weird glitch that has came up in the stunting community for the last 16 years but I've never seen posted here; essentially if you drive south and pop a wheelie at high speed you'll do it fine however if you go north at high speeds and try to pull one up the bike simply refuses to come up. Is there any reasoning behind this?

[gts.]

Haha, I thought it was something related to Rockstar North. Also, I didn't know about this bug and I've never faced it. It is some like the one from San Andreas, weird stuff.

Edited January 16, 2018 by gts.

[Keano]

I've never thought about this but now that you've brought it up...I can remember doing a good few wheelies in the North but mostly the bike goes up very little compared to other parts of the map.

Edited January 16, 2018 by Keano

[Sombra]

Haha, I thought it was something related to Rockstar North. Also, I didn't know about this bug and I've never faced it. It is some like the one from San Andreas, weird stuff.

 

Ah yes the slow roads bug, another one that has plagued the stunt community for years; I think there's some of those roads in LV too but I never played SA as much as I did VC.

[Silent]

"Slow roads" isn't a bug though, if docs are to believed.

[RationalPsycho]

Yes, this bug is real. It has returned in VCS, as well. Unfortunately, I currently can't answer the original question as to why this happens, but can add that this phenomenon can be subtly observed on boats, too; when going south, they tend to lift a bit more off the water, as if trying to go up north. You could say that the north pole acts as a magnet of sorts.

 

Although a bit off-topic, in VCS, there is a unique boat, which looks almost identical to the Speeder. Bradygames guide refers to this boat as the "Ambassador", but I've also seen it called Speeder2. Now, this "Speeder" (?) is considerably faster and more maneuverable than a normal one, and has the bizarre quirk of being severely affected by this north/south malfunction, which, as I said, is also present in VCS. When travelling north, the boat goes just fine, but when travelling south...

This behaviour should be true for all boats (mostly high-speed ones), and in both games, but to a far lesser extent.

 

On a side note, I've also read that San Andreas is affected by a similar phenomenon, and has to do with the ability (or lack thereof) to do backflips on bikes while in midair, depending on the direction the player is facing, but I haven't looked into this matter much.

Edited January 16, 2018 by RationalPsycho