As a kid, whoever had the cheat codes was playground royalty, especially in the pre-internet and dial-up days.
As the saying goes, give a man a fish and feed them for a day; teach them how to get an instant 5-Star rating in Grand Theft Auto, speed through Age Of Empires or access all areas in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and win friends for life.
Boosting your sims’s stats like…
But over time, cheat codes have more or less vanished from video games. Why? And can we have them back?
Like all of life’s mysteries, there are a few answers here. Over at Vice, David L. Craddock dives deep into the history of cheat codes, which, if you have time, is worth the read. For those who don’t, here’s the quick version.
Let’s start with the most famous cheat code which even the most casual of gamer recognises – ‘Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start’. It’s even mentioned in a pivotal song on the Juno soundtrack.
Oh yeah, that’s the stuff.
The Konami code unlocks all sorts of things in games from Mortal Kombat to Contra to Dance Dance Revolution. But it wasn’t created for fun: in 1986, game developer Kazuhisa Hashimoto created it to give himself power ups as Gradius, the game he was working on, was too difficult for him to run through. That’s true for most codes.
Used for testing purposes, the codes needed to be kept in until the last minute. But then, devs were stuck, since to remove them would risk massive fuck ups in the game as all the code, given the small space, was so interwoven. So devs played with it a bit more, and soon gamers craved codes.
But now, thanks to tech advancements, developers can remove these testing codes a lot easier or just make them inaccessible on user-end.
That means there’s probably some code unlocking every Super Smash Bros. character at the game’s start, but unless you’re keen for some serious hacking, you’ll just have to go the normal route.
The flip side of that is that it’s now pretty hard to add in a cheat code. Considering a video game as a set of triggers, a cheat code will bypass a lot of those triggers. And while speed runs exploit these triggers to beat a game like Prey in seven minutes, in a lot of instances messing with them will brick the game.
Just as speed runners spends days of their life finessing their routes, it takes a lot to make sure a cheat code doesn’t have any unexpected ramifications. More often than not, devs just don’t have the resources.
Oh, and the internet ruined everything.
Generally, we just play video games differently now, particularly on consoles. The weird modes, power ups and mods that codes unlocked are now available via paid DLC, for one.
The other big influence was how Microsoft’s achievements and Sony’s trophies system affected the average gamer’s psyche. The appetite for codes has a new, sexier substitute: bragging points. Add to that how Microsoft’s achievements system can dock points if you’re caught using codes, and it’s clear that cheating isn’t as cool as it used to be. Fidelity is 2017’s hottest trend.
Of course, cheat codes aren’t gone completely. We’re 99% sure you’ll still be playing GTA XX with a list of handwritten codes. Plus, you can always revisit the good ol’ days and boot up an old game of NBA Jam or GoldenEye 007 – chances are, your muscle memory will kick in and you’ll remember the unlimited turbo or bubble-head code right away.
(Image: undiscoveredgaming.com)
Image credit: Capcom/Street Fighter II
