Cheat codes have been around for almost as long as there have been video games.
Whether you want infinite ammo or just want to give everyone in the game a big stupid
head, chances are there's a cheat code for it.
But how did these magic codes first come about?
How did word of their existence spread?
There's a lot of history behind cheat codes, and it's about time we took a look.
The POKE
Cheat codes got their start in the early days of the home console market when tech-savvy
gamers would modify a game's code by hand to alter the gameplay experience.
It was a long, horrible process that involved scrubbing through thousands of lines of code
— or POKES, as they were called — and changing values at random.
Then, you'd cross your fingers and hope that whatever you changed resulted in something
useful happening in the game.
"You ready?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go!"
It was pretty much hours of trial and error just so you could quickly and easily mash
some buttons to get a few extra lives.
Developer shortcuts
While most cheat codes are just ways to give yourself an unfair advantage, that wasn't
always their intention.
Developers often added cheats into their games to make the games easier to test.
As developer Chris Sorrell explained:
"You can't keep fighting the boss just to check if he correctly drops the special key
as he dies, so you add a weapon super-power feature to kill him in one hit.
Spending just a little time hooking up powerful cheats means that you save yourself — and
everyone else working on a project — hundreds of hours of productivity time."
That makes sense.
But sometimes, these cheats were left in the game by accident, only to be discovered by
gamers sometime later.
One of the most famous debug cheats that made it into the final release was in a game called
Manic Miner, released on the ZX Spectrum in 1983.
Designer Matthew Smith used his driver's license number as the cheat code to unlock a secret
level-select mode, allowing players to jump to any level.
Mainstream cheats
Soon, cheat codes made their way into video game magazines.
Almost every gaming mag on the market had a section dedicated to listing every known
cheat code of the most popular games of the month.
Eventually, there was even a magazine solely dedicated to cheat codes, titled Tips and
Tricks.
As the codes became more popular, developers began intentionally sticking cheats into games
as Easter eggs to give dedicated players an extra layer of fun.
Of course, it was only a matter of time before things went too far...
The Konami Code
If you call yourself a gamer, you probably know this cheat code by heart:
"OK, OK, try this.
Hit up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start and then we'll have unlimited
lives."
The Konami Code is the granddaddy of all cheat codes, but it wasn't originally created with
the general gaming public in mind: designer Kazuhisa Hashimoto first put it in Konami's
1985 classic side-scrolling shooter Gradius, because without it, there was no way he could
beat his own game.
Just a few years later, the same code was used in the development of another Konami
hit, Contra.
Entering it gave players 30 lives rather than 3, which made the game...slightly easier to
beat.
The code became so well-known that Konami went on to add it into dozens of its titles
— and it's shown up in tons of video games ever since.
Law-breakers
The 1990s were a golden era for cheat codes, and some developers used that to their advantage.
When Mortal Kombat came under fire for its graphic depictions of violence, its developers
were forced to remove the game's nastier bits for its Sega Genesis release — sort of.
Mortal Kombat for the Genesis was free of blood and guts…until this screen came up.
If a player entered the cheat code A, B, A, C, A, B, B, it reverted game from its cleaned-up,
family-friendly version to its bloody arcade roots.
Cheat codes get weird
As cheats grew more popular, they became more about players being able to alter games in
strange, bizarre ways.
Case in point: big head mode.
No one is quite sure which game was the first to include this ridiculous cheat, but credit
for popularizing it goes to the NBA Jam series.
Big head mode literally made characters' heads much larger than normal...and that's it.
It gave players no greater strategic advantage, but it would later appear in in hundreds of
games, even making appearances in games like Microsoft's Gears of War series and Batman:
Arkham Knight.
But that's not where the cheat code weirdness ended.
While the most useful codes gave players unfair advantages, others, like some featured in
Grand Theft Auto III, actually did the opposite.
Developers Rockstar added a code that made all the citizens of Liberty City go into a
blind rage from the moment they saw the main character, compelling them to attack the player
on sight.
Achievements
Cheat codes don't quite fit into the modern gaming world the way they used to.
According to video game journalist Dan Amrich, the core satisfaction gamers got when they
used cheat codes was eventually duplicated by the achievement systems on Xbox Live, the
PlayStation Network, and Steam.
Amrich told Vice:
"Cheat codes were no longer the currency of hardcore gamers once Achievements appeared.
They were another creative outlet for dev teams and they were required by Microsoft,
so the effort that would go into cheats went into Achievements instead."
Why brag about your knowledge or usage of the cheat code when you can brag about the
things you've been able to accomplish in a game without cheating?
It's a modder's world
Cheat codes are far from extinct.
They'll always exist in some form or another.
Maybe not as a series of button-mashing combos, but as something else entirely.
After all, if you can mod Skyrim to make your character invincible and turn all the dragons
into Thomas the Tank Engine, you're definitely still using cheats.
And as long as you're having fun doing it, more power to you.
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