Though sequence breaking as a concept has existed almost since the inception of computer games complex enough to have
sequential storylines, the first documented action in a video game to be
called a sequence break occurred in the
Nintendo GameCube game
Metroid Prime, in a thread called "Gravity Suit and Ice Beam before Thardus". In the game, the rock monster Thardus was designed to be a required
boss before the Gravity Suit and the Ice Beam could be obtained, hence the novelty of bypassing the boss while still obtaining the items and thus saving time if the goal is to complete the game as quickly as possible. When Steven Banks achieved this feat on January 18, 2003, he posted his discovery on the
Metroid Prime message board on
GameFAQs. The thread attracted a number of interested gamers, and the term sequence breaking was incidentally coined. The term has since grown in popularity and is now sometimes applied to unintended shortcuts in any game. The term has become so pervasive that it has begun appearing in video games itself, and, inspired by games such as
Super Metroid, game designers may create their games with sequence breaking in mind. ==See also==