The Rise and Fall of the Cheat Code 178
An anonymous reader writes A new feature published this week takes a deep-dive look at
the history of the cheat code and its various manifestations over the years, from manual 'pokes' on cassettes to pass phrases with their own dedicated menus — as well as their rise from simple debug tool in the early days of bedroom development to a marketing tactic when game magazines dominated in the 1990s, followed by dedicated strategy guides. Today's era of online play has all but done away with them, but the need for a level playing field isn't the only reason for their decline: as one veteran coder points out, why give away cheats for free when you can charge for them as in-app purchases? "Bigger publishers have now realized you can actually sell these things to players as DLC. Want that special gun? Think you can unlock it with a cheat code? Nope! You've got to give us some money first!"
First (Score:5, Funny)
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Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start. So Select. I never needed it. (*sob*)
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At least with Contra, you pressed Select before Start if you wanted local multiplayer (I say "local" as if there was a viable alternative back then...).
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I have actually implemented a slight variation of the Konami Code (no A B or Start, so I used other buttons) as a secret unlock code in an actual product. It's just hard enough to do with a rubber keypad that it often takes more than one try. I can't be the only one, anyone else out there done this?
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Kingdom of Loathing has a text-based puzzle where you have to select this sequence to pass through a gate.
Hey! (Score:2)
Dangit... You just made me jump to my bootloader...
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... are you suggesting he's a cambion?
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If you enter those in Hexen, the game insults you for cheating and inverts the code's effect: idkfa takes all your guns away and iddqd is instant death.
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I prefer idfa as getting the keys with the ammo/weapons made the game pointless.
IDKFA (Score:1)
...for old time's sake
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I never did figure out how that's so easy to remember... you wouldn't think it would be, but there it is 10+ years later.
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I remember it by its full form: Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris [doomwiki.org]
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Me too! aaaaaaaaaa until the box was full :P
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DLC? (Score:2)
Dangling like crickets,
Dark legs chained.
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pisses me off when they do that. It's why I don't buy games-on-disc anymore, you don't get what you already paid for. If it's not a standalone like KSP or a free persistent MMO like Battlestar Galactica, fucking keep it.
Re:DLC? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
This was fine back in the days where once you release, you can't patch (which was really helped because consoles of yore were a lot simpler to test for - nowadays you have to check out your 3D models and for glitching that could let players walk through walls because a/b/c/d/e was just right). Then there's the gameplay breaking bugs where if you save at the wrong moment, you can't restore.
Problem is, you can't patch the game if the developers aren't there anymore, and there's about a 2 month leadtime between submission of a game and when it appears on the shelf - pressing discs can easily be a month (your disc is just another one in the big press queue), and distribution another month (from disc factory to factory to distributiors and then to retail warehouses, etc).
So you have a team of devs sitting idle for two months. Well, you could put them on fixing some of the more egregious bugs found (leading to day 1 patches) because they have an extra 2 months to fix it, and the other devs (and artists, etc) can work on making extras (day 1 DLC). Because the moment the game is released, gamers might find a bug and you need to get people fixing it.
Developers can't sit around idle, and if a game's done, either you reallocate them to a new project, or lay them off. Either option doesn't work if you need to fix bugs. That's why you have day 1 patches (extra 2 months to fix bugs), day 1 DLC (2 months to generate content), and day 1 gamebreaking bugs.
And once someone is reassigned to another project, it's damn near impossible to get them to go back and fix issues with the existing code (just getting them back up to speed and building the code can be challenge all in itself).
Very few games get patched after the first month as that gets treated as the official close of the project. Unless there's a business case to keep DLC going in which case you'll have a small team for that. But that's it, and most games on the shelves are dead after the first month.
Re:DLC? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
And all this has just about zero to do with the comment you replied to. Which I agree with, by the way.
THIS is the reason I don't buy many competitive games anymore. When you can buy your way through them, then who gives a shit at getting good at the game?
I don't give the slightest damn about the gaming industry's internal problems. I didn't create them. I'm a customer, and I don't like their product.
Period. It's that simple. Make a product I want to buy, or I won't buy it.
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Well, then you don't know the gaming industry. Basically people work on a game and then get laid off.
This was fine back in the days where once you release, you can't patch (which was really helped because consoles of yore were a lot simpler to test for - nowadays you have to check out your 3D models and for glitching that could let players walk through walls because a/b/c/d/e was just right). Then there's the gameplay breaking bugs where if you save at the wrong moment, you can't restore.
Problem is, you can't patch the game if the developers aren't there anymore, and there's about a 2 month leadtime between submission of a game and when it appears on the shelf - pressing discs can easily be a month (your disc is just another one in the big press queue), and distribution another month (from disc factory to factory to distributiors and then to retail warehouses, etc).
So you have a team of devs sitting idle for two months. Well, you could put them on fixing some of the more egregious bugs found (leading to day 1 patches) because they have an extra 2 months to fix it, and the other devs (and artists, etc) can work on making extras (day 1 DLC). Because the moment the game is released, gamers might find a bug and you need to get people fixing it.
Developers can't sit around idle, and if a game's done, either you reallocate them to a new project, or lay them off. Either option doesn't work if you need to fix bugs. That's why you have day 1 patches (extra 2 months to fix bugs), day 1 DLC (2 months to generate content), and day 1 gamebreaking bugs.
And once someone is reassigned to another project, it's damn near impossible to get them to go back and fix issues with the existing code (just getting them back up to speed and building the code can be challenge all in itself).
Very few games get patched after the first month as that gets treated as the official close of the project. Unless there's a business case to keep DLC going in which case you'll have a small team for that. But that's it, and most games on the shelves are dead after the first month.
Day 1 DLC is still idiotic. It raises the cost of entry for the gamer and doesn't do anything to foster goodwill. Have the devs make DLC during the lull time if you must, but delay that DLC until 3-5 months after release.
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So you have a team of devs sitting idle for two months. Well, you could put them on fixing some of the more egregious bugs found (leading to day 1 patches) because they have an extra 2 months to fix it, and the other devs (and artists, etc) can work on making extras (day 1 DLC). Because the moment the game is released, gamers might find a bug and you need to get people fixing it.
Developers can't sit around idle, and if a game's done, either you reallocate them to a new project, or lay them off. Either option doesn't work if you need to fix bugs. That's why you have day 1 patches (extra 2 months to fix bugs), day 1 DLC (2 months to generate content), and day 1 gamebreaking bugs.
Sounds like the answer is staring the gaming industry in the face: when preparing the game's business case, incorporate the outputs of those two months into a free patch/expansion patch, and set the price accordingly (or define the initial feature set accordingly, if price needs to be X). Of course, it's easier to be greedy and generate an additional revenue stream (paid DLC).
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Yes.
At it's root, the problem is that the product manager is not familiar with real engineering practices, and does not have the ability to plan a project lifecycle beyond; 1. code features, and 2. get paid. Too bad it's the industry standard.
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most of the DLC for KSP is community-driven. From parts to physics mods, I know of several people who play the game but not a single one who plays it with no mods. It's not unplayable with no mods, in fact everything you can do with mod parts you can do with stock parts (it's just more difficult), which is how it should be even for a game like KSP. For me mods add dimension to the game which in its essence is an electronic Lego.
Anywho, back to my classic Doctor Who with a still-in-shortpants Martin Clunes (
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For me in the type of games described in the last sentence, it was DownLoadable Crack.
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Re:DLC? (Score:5, Funny)
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Ye.
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It was 4-6-3 to begin with so I'm not sure how 3-5-2 would make it any closer to a haiku...
(counting dangling as 3 syllables since dangle is 2)
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plugh (Score:2)
It may be a bit dark, but I don't think I'm likely to be eaten by a grue
XYZZY (Score:2)
It may be a bit dark, but I don't think I'm likely to be eaten by a grue
"Nothing happens here."
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Still love that game.
Mark of times (Score:5, Funny)
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Only they've worked a little harder on inventing games that are totally unfun without cheats.
Intentionally including busywork in games so you can pay to avoid it.
Slowing your rate of activity down to fewer decisions/hour than playing chess against your granddad. So you can pay to speed it up.
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Re:Mark of times (Score:4, Funny)
Pay to stop playing, of course.
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Season Pass
Complete Edition
Legendary Edition
GOTY* Edition
HD Remastered Edition
Ultimate Pack
If you enter the Steam store [steampowered.com] right now you have an example of several of those in the very front page.
*:game of the year
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Europa Universalis III did that particularly egregiously (a pity, I found it otherwise
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I guess you never bothered with the Chocobo nonsense to get Knights of the Round.
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I guess you never bothered with the Chocobo nonsense to get Knights of the Round.
I thought that was one of the more fun mini-games in a game a game which had many poorly-designed minigames.
But you didn't need Knights of the Round to beat the game either. KotR, maxed Master Materia, etc, made the last boss a one-shottable joke.
Final Fantasy is the series that lets you train, should you wish to, your power levels far far beyond that needed to break the game. At least they super-hard optional bosses that can't be defeated unless you do that sort of thing.
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True, but you needed KoTR and be level 99 to have a chance in beating Ruby or Emerald.
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Eh? The Masamune in that game (won in the Golden Saucer) is a useless trophy with zero use.
Examples (Score:3)
Goggling "pay DLC cheat codes" brings up a few examples that I then looked into with gamefaqs. Dead rising 2 has some cheats you can pay for, but there were no cheats in dead rising one. Saints row 3 appears to have other cheats for free that are roughly the same thing. Sleeping dogs cheat DLCs appear to simply be shortcuts, like buying in-game money.
It seems to me like more games are simply cutting out cheats altogether
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They code part has given way to monetary transactions.
Instead of typing idkfa to get all the weapons, you can buy those guns for a dollar each as DLC.
Instead of typing the Konami code to get extra lives, you have to buy them with micro-transactions.
The "code" is now your credit card number. Type that in, and get extra power.
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The almighty $ has always been life's primary cheat code.
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So cheat codes are alive and well - they just now start with $ sign.
And this is why I steadfastly remain a PC gamer.
Bypassing the $ sign for DLC is a quick and painless process.
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Platform standards (Score:1)
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You're forgiven for the conflation of cheat code and hack, because it's in the summary as well. Cheat codes are not "undeclared code". Cheat code is functionality without an obvious user interface, but they are part of the original program nevertheless. Pokes on the other hand are hacks. They're not part of the original program. Pokes changed memory content (counters, branch instructions) without any help from the program.
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Deep dive (Score:2)
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Oh good lord, I've been wondering about this crap myself.
My assumption has been, since most software folks are primarily sedentary, "deep dive" makes them feel like they're out in the Bahamas, snorkeling.
Or, on the PC (Score:3)
We get to have cheat codes whenever we want and you can go shove your DLC up your ass. Just fire up a memory editor/debugger, CheatEngine being a free purpose designed one, and you are good to go.
The whole "selling cheat codes" thing is just so scummy. Particularly since I think it can lead to the "pay2win" mentality of "Maybe we should make this harder, so people need to give us money for cheats!"
DLC's sold as cheat? (Score:2)
Honestly, this is not really commonplace, at least not on the PC platform (no idea about console). There is only a handful of games I seen that sold cheatey DLC's (and with cheatey, I'm thinking of godmode esque cheats). Where does the idea that it's common came from, rose tinted nostalgia glasses?
Cheat codes are a bit less common sure, at least game specfic ones. Some games still got a dev console you can use, but it's usually engine rather than game-specfic cheats.
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It is a pretty fun game if you're into that genre though.
How I define cheating. (Score:1)
And this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why my XBox isn't connected to the interwebs.
I'm not interested in your damned in-game economy, and I have no interest in getting my ass kicked by a 12 year old playing on-line.
I'll stick with my off-line gaming, thank you very much.
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separately and not connected of course.
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And this is why my XBox isn't connected to the interwebs.
I'm not interested in your damned in-game economy, and I have no interest in getting my ass kicked by a 12 year old playing on-line.
I'll stick with my off-line gaming, thank you very much.
I couldn't agree more!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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While we might be able to remember the 90s and say no, we aren't the bulk of their market share. 5,000 thirty+-somethings mumbling "get off my lawn" is negligible in comparison to 5,000,000 elementary/high-school students more than willing to shell out Christmas money for some digital "thing" they'll forget about next week. Yes it's silly, yes it's actually morally questionable (the same way converting real money for WoW gold coins is), but there's not numbers enough of people who actually notice and care to stop it.
Sadly, this is spot on. It sucks, but us old gamers aren't anywhere near enough to change things on our own. The only way we have could any leverage is if enough of us get our kids on our side. I've gotten my 16 year old son thoroughly indoctrinated in what I think is good and bad about the gaming industry today. He's my little disciple. :)
They can't sell cheats anymore (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason they don't have cheats anymore is not because they can sell them as DLC, but because they CAN'T sell them anymore. If you look at it, cheats were first invented as a method of copy-protection, rather than a testing device.
It's most evident in a lot of older NES games (usually ones that were made before battery-backed saves) where the most commonly used "cheats" were so-called continue codes - button inputs that could be used to continue after a game over. These things were all over the place, and were usually listed in the way back of the game's manual. This was mostly a tactic to stop rentals and re-sale, since there was no easy way to look up the codes and unless you had the manual or knew someone who did, you'd be out of luck. Even the Konami Code is an example of this: unless you are very highly skilled at Contra, which was one of the first games to feature the code, you are probably not going to finish Contra without the extra lives granted by the code.
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Pretty sure that was more so the developers could test their code without having to play through an hour of all the other levels. And for the testers, too.
There has been a lot of evolution of cheat codes.
At first the game companies probably just left them in because it was easier than removing them. (conditional compilation and debug/release targets? what's that?)
Then they left them in because they became cool.
Then they made games with hundreds of them so they could monetize them in various ways like "o
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Consoles work without Internet (Score:2)
I don't know why saved games are even exportable on current consoles. Really they should just be backed up to the internet
Because console makers want to attract users who buy consoles because they work without an Internet connection. This includes people living outside the range of cable and DSL as well as privacy-paranoid gamers, who are possibly overrepresented on Slashdot. Notice how much goodwill Xbox One lost when Microsoft announced that the console would have to phone home every 24 hours to renew the cached receipts for disc games. (For comparison, Steam can stay offline for a couple weeks.) Microsoft had to backpedal h
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I think the reason they don't have cheats anymore is not because they can sell them as DLC, but because they CAN'T sell them anymore. If you look at it, cheats were first invented as a method of copy-protection, rather than a testing device.
It's most evident in a lot of older NES games (usually ones that were made before battery-backed saves) where the most commonly used "cheats" were so-called continue codes - button inputs that could be used to continue after a game over. These things were all over the place, and were usually listed in the way back of the game's manual. This was mostly a tactic to stop rentals and re-sale, since there was no easy way to look up the codes and unless you had the manual or knew someone who did, you'd be out of luck. Even the Konami Code is an example of this: unless you are very highly skilled at Contra, which was one of the first games to feature the code, you are probably not going to finish Contra without the extra lives granted by the code.
From the wiki: The Konami Code was created by Kazuhisa Hashimoto, who was developing the home port of the 1985 arcade game Gradius, a scrolling shooter released on the Famicom and NES in 1986. Finding the game too difficult to play through during testing, he created a cheat code to give the player a full set of power-ups (normally attained gradually throughout the game)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The code was no copy protection, that is the lamest claim I've heard yet. Not to mention when Gradius ca
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Some things feel backwards too. Finished playing Tomb Raider Anniversary, where it has cheats, but you must first finish the game before being able to use them. Making the cheats sort of pointless (if you can finish they game you don't need cheats, and if you do need the cheats you can't get to them).
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It's definitely copy-protection. There are a bunch of instances of games that were actually made harder in the United States to discourage rentals - compare, for instance, the Japanese version of Battletoads to the United States version. The Japanese version is MUCH, MUCH easier. Battletoads doesn't have a continue code, but it does have the "Mega Warps" that I believe are mentioned in the manual but are very well hidden from the average player.
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Sometimes they stopped trying to hide it and just resorted to 'enter the fifth character of the ninth line on page eighteen.'
I got Transartica as a (legal) three-game bundle set, all one one CD. I had endless trouble with that - it kept asking, but never accepted my answers, because I didn't have the original manual. The combined manual I had (Transartica, Fairy Godmother and... some game I forget) used different page numbering. I didn't discover the solution until some years after purchase. The front label
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But if you "get continues for free", one will just keep hitting continue over and over, finish the game, and likely have less enjoyment than having to try over and over to eventually finish the game.. That less enjoyment would IMHO make them less likely in the long run to buy the company's other products.
Continues for free essentially means infinite lives.. Is a game fun with infinite lives? (Unless it was designed that way -- i.e. you don't die -- usually no..)
Armored Patrol (Score:2)
If you back your tank up to the edge of 'the universe' and then point your barrel back into the arena at bad guys you can just keep shooting and shooting and get an unlimited score - You'll never run out of energy and no tank or robot can kill you.
I remember leaving for school in 1982 with the space bar taped down, and then coming home to a zillion points.
https://w [youtube.com]
Old games were more difficult (Score:2)
Another reason cheat codes existed is that without them, a lot of players couldn't finish the game. I think there are several reasons for this: the arcade roots, a larger percentage of hardcore gamers, the need to prevent the player from finishing an expensive game quickly after buying or renting it and game design being a much younger discipline.
Don't get me wrong, I actually prefer today's easier games, but it does mean that you don't really need a cheat code anymore to finish most games. Instead of havin
Re: Old games were more difficult (Score:2)
I bought the latest tomb raider. It was dumbed down so much it wasn't even fun to play.
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The article gets the most famous cheat code wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't it B -> A? The article's title has it as A -> B. I find this quite distracting.
Pinball machines also had it (Score:3)
Some pinball machines easter eggs and some even gives you extra points.
http://hem.bredband.net/b25718... [bredband.net]
Why I stopped playing games (Score:2)
The advent of all games involving a "social" context, requiring access to the internet, and the use of DLC and micropayments, is what made me give quit gaming entirely. The cheat code business is a side-effect of this. This is one of the items on my short list of things that the internet has made worse.
PC multiplayer games still have cheats (Score:2)
To return to a simpler time... (Score:2)
To return to a simpler time, just say "XYZZY".
Earliest I know of... (Score:2)
Hacks and mods are the new cheat code (Score:2)
Most DLC is in the game already... its just hidden... right or wrong you can unlock it really easily either by modifying some of the files yourself or downloading a hack.
And then you have all sorts of game mods that change the game works indifferent to content. Maybe you don't like a boss at the end of the game... you freeze his AI so he just stands there if you want... or whatever.
That is the new cheat code.
Not DLC.
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Re:Easy / Difficult modes (Score:4, Interesting)
That's why I used them. I'd play the original SimCity, Civilization, and Warcraft (before "World of") and I quite honestly stunk at them. Complex resource management in a game just felt like work to me. So I'd cheat. I'd build a city in SimCity, give myself a ton of cash, toss a few disasters through my city, and then rebuild. For Civilization, I'd give myself unlimited money and buy everything up. (At the time, I called it the "Bill Gates Strategy.") I'd use diplomats to buy other civilizations' cities and troops until only their home city was left. Then, I'd either crush them or keep them around so the game wouldn't end. In Warcraft, I'd make it a "good day to die" and send one peon wood-cutting orc against an army of humans. The humans would be blasting him like crazy, but he's just slowly work his way through them until they were all dead. Did I ruin the point of the games? Sure. Still, it turned them from past times that would have frustrated me until I tossed them aside to games I kept playing over and over.
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