How This 20-Year-Old Silent Hill 2 Bug Was Finally Fixed By Fans

It's been a rough go for the "Silent Hill" franchise over the last decade or so. After the last true entry, "Silent Hill: Downpour," the series went dormant until Hideo Kojima tried to revitalize it with his own spin — offering players a glimpse in the form of "P.T." Unfortunately, Konami and Kojima split, resulting in the project's cancelation.

After the rise and fall of "Silent Hill," the return of the IP has been the subject of countless rumors. However, those who want something a tad more tangible can look to a team of programmers, modders, and artists dedicated to getting a beloved classic in the franchise running perfectly on PC. "Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition" is a fan-made suite of mods that makes the PC version of the 2001 title compatible with current technologies and rounds out some rough edges. In fact, the team behind "Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition" was recently able to squash a bug that's been present in the title for 20 years.

The community of contributors behind "Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition," known as Town of Silent Hill, has been working on the project for years. The eighth and most recent update made the whole installation process much easier and fixed a few other odds and ends — including an age-old bug that had haunted the title for two decades. In a YouTube video detailing the update, Town of Silent Hill broke down what players can expect and offered a glimpse at the progress that's been made thus far.

The elusive bug in the PC version of "Silent Hill 2" occurs when running it on a computer with a multicore processor — just about every computer nowadays. The bug causes audio to skip and eventually stop playing, sometimes even crashing a player's game. The Town of Silent Hill team remedied the situation by building a custom streaming audio engine from scratch. The update also fixes a ton of other issues like incorrect background music playing in menus and certain sound effects looping. Additionally, it improves FMV quality and upscales certain static images.

Before fans rush to download "Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition," there's a catch. It'll only work if you have an actual copy of "Silent Hill 2" for PC, and judging by eBay prices, that may not be realistic for everyone.