So a neat visual glitch in the 1985 arcade game City Connection has to do with your oil cans and turning around:
They slow down or even go backwards when you turn your car around!

and I was wondering why this happened and if it was just a mistake where they meant to speed them up and instead slow them down, or something similar.
So I looked closer, and it turns out the answer is both simpler and weirder than I expected:

They don't.

You see that GIF up there of the barrel turning around?
you see this one of one slowing down?

NOT HAPPENING!

So I stacked a GIF of three different situations, where I don't turn around, where I turn around quickly, and where I turn around late... the barrels move exactly the same in all situations.

The game doesn't have a "camera". It's not following the player's sprite as it moves through the world, the player isn't even moving horizontally. Instead the game is just moving the background left and right, the level left and right, and the other sprites left and right.

this should look exactly the same! it's a sort of relativity: you're either moving the camera or you're moving everything in frame, and the end result would be identical.

EXCEPT they don't apply the movement to the fired oil barrels.

the oil barrels on the ground? fine. the ground itself? also fine. the cat-with-a-flag? fine!

but the moving sprites (the barrel and the police cars)? they just move in screen coordinates, so turning around doesn't affect their motion.

(Actually the police cars are somewhat affected by it)
But yeah, you get the feeling of the camera changing direction, because the background and most of the sprites all change direction.

And since the oil barrels don't reverse direction, it feels like they slowed down or reversed path, even though their actual path on screen isn't affected AT ALL.

another weird thing about City Connection is that it was made by Jaleco. Jaleco was acquired in 2000 by Pacific Century CyberWorks Limited (PCCW) and renamed PCCW Japan, then renamed back to Jaleco in 2002.

They became independent again in 2006, becoming Jaleco Holding, and then they created a spin-off company to make video games again.
That spin-off was called just Jaleco.

Then Jaleco (the spin-off, not the parent company) was sold off to Game Yarou in 2009, with the parent company Jaleco Holding renaming themselves Encom Holdings.

Encom Holdings focused on real estate after 2009, not video games.
They dissolved in 2013.

Then in 2014, Game Yarou filed for bankruptcy, and the rights to Jaleco's game were sold to... City Connection!

so City Connection, besides being the game we're talking about, is a japanese music label and indie video game development studio.
They were founded in 2005 as a marketing subsidiary of the Culture Convenience Club, who run the the Tsutaya video rental shops/bookstores in Japan.

They partnered with Jaleco in 2011 (This Jaleco was then a subsidiary of Game Yarou) to sell soundtrack albums of video games, under the name Clarice Disc.

Clarice being the name of the protagonist of City Connection (in the original arcade version, at least)

I'm not sure exactly when they renamed themselves City Connection but I think it happened prior to buying the Jaleco assets in 2014.

since then, they established a new company called "Naughty Corporation" in partnership with Konan Electric Company, and City Connection (the company) is now owned by Naughty Corporation.

Which means that since Naughty Corporation owns both the company City Connection and all the rights to Jaleco games... they own both City Connection (the game) and City Connection (the company)

They also have acquired Zerodiv, which is a descendant of the arcade game developer/publisher Psikyo, so Naughty Corporation can distribute those games as well.

Anyway, go read @katewillaert's thread on City Connection, which inspired this thread through a few layers of indirection: https://twitter.com/katewillaert/status/1283414986057035776

That goes into a fun thing created because of all this company-buying nonsense:
City Connection (the company) licensed other developers to produce modern ports of many games, including City Connection (the game).
Hamster Corporation was the one who did the home console ports

and they included a detail in the official game description on all the virtual-console storefronts THAT IS BASED ON UNSOURCED WIKIPEDIA VANDALISM https://twitter.com/katewillaert/status/1283425958066884608

and it's now in the generator: https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1283579884644663296