They could also just change the game they sold. I had an early print of Need for Speed Carbon for PS2. I couldn't unlock most of the cop cars due to a bug, iirc. Later burns fixed it

Interesting! Back then I had a playstation and a pc. Never have i ever had a patch for any of the games i owned. The magazine mostly had demo versions of games, freeware or sometimes even a full version of a game. However never seen a path! Perhaps i was an ignorant kid not aware of such features.