Hello everybody this is
Justin from KQS and recently I have been playing some older PS2 and original
Xbox (I hate not saying Xbox 1) and it got me thinking… what happened to cheat
codes? Okay I know cheat codes kind of ruin the game and multiplayer but really
I think they give more life to a game than achievements.
The Konami Code... Never Forget it.
The Konami Code... Never Forget it.
I grew up in the NES era, games were extremely tough and of course the first cheat I remember is of course the “Konami Code” UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START. 30 lives in Contra actually let me beat it. And to be honest because of the Konami Code and cheats I still enjoy it. That game is tough on its own and being able to see the end has always made me appreciate it more. I guess the fact of being able to see the end of a game was always comforting. My mom would let us rent games and this was before Blockbuster’s (I feel so old saying that) 5-day rentals. The place I rented games from let you only have one night, so… You had to play constantly to finish it and good luck with RPG’s, you would have to hope no one erased your save file, that happened too much. So cheats were a big factor for me. Not because my skill level was low but for the sake of beating a game quicker. 1 day, and usually it would be another week until we would go to the grocery store again.
So after having to share
a NES and SNES with my siblings, one day my mom bought me a system of my own
system a Nintendo 64 and what was best about this system that it was mine ALL
MINE!!! Power trips aside it was the first real console in which I had a big
library of games one of my favorite games was Turok and to be honest that’s
where it first started, if you’ve never played Turok not only is a difficult
game but it has looooooooong levels, not many places to save. I usually had to
start levels over because ewe had to go places and my mom hated when I left it
on. So on those trips to the grocery store I always would go ahead to the magazines
and I found one of the coolest magazines ever Tips and Tricks magazine, it
wasn’t too helpful with articles and new releases but… it had a very valuable
thing. CHEAT CODES!!! This was before I had access to the Internet, it was like
80 pages worth of codes and it was awesome, usually I would look through the N64
games I even got all nerdy to write down codes because every month it was the
same with a few new codes. Those codes really helped me beat a lot games and I
don’t regret it. Turok 1 & 2, Winback with it’s infinite ammo but still
very hard among many others. Yeah not everything had cheat codes but some of my
favorite games did.
So during my Pokemon
craze I found a super secret glitch that made Pokemon much more fun and that
was the MissingNo glitch and I used it to make battle teams in Pokemon Stadium,
and finding MissingNo I actually stumbled upon it randomly, I apparently did
the old man glitch and I think my Aerodactyl was ready and I was leveling up
after and usually when I play, I hug the edge of the tall grass or in this
case… the water and going up and down I encountered the infamous Tetris block,
and scared out of my mind I turned off my Gameboy faster than anything. But
after I learned the reward for messing up your Pokemon Hall of fame I was
hooked. Even Pokemon G/S had a mini cheat code cloning Pokemon. It made it easier helping friends working
together to catch em all.
After a while I upgraded
to a PS2 something horrible happened, I bought a high capacity 3rd
party memory card (32MB) and it corrupted on me, its one of the rare moments
where it kinda broke me, FFX MGS2 & 3 plus Yakuza among many others were
lost so to get back where I was, I had help from a new tool, a gameshark, code
breaker, action replay whatever you use I grabbed one and it was great, I was
able to get back where I was on certain games FFX with cheats is very fun and
became a gateway to other systems, like the codebreaker on my GBA Advance Wars
2 is fucking hard and relentless. Using cheats didn’t make me pull my hair out.
So last gen was really
the turning point for cheat codes were starting to go away because achievements
came around. In the early days you could earn achievements with cheat codes
which I did, Ghost Recon invincibility cheat WOOOOO but cheats started to fade
away, because the achievement whore craze came around, and yeah some games
still let you like GTA and Saints Row plus more but they were fun without but
it wasn’t the same feeling of spawning a tank and going on a rampage or doing a
mission. But there was new hope but it
felt more scumbagish, people learned about PS3 saves and were completely
hacking them, it was like a gameshark but worse because now people loved
achievements and trophies so much they would get 100% by any means even if not
playing the game. To some your Gamerscore is your reputation how many games and
which games you play, but to trick people into saying oh I used a save that
gives you all trophies in 5 mins (I’m not sure how they work so don’t quote me
on that) it annoys me. But people love their trophies.achievments. after a while I stopped caring about that
stuff. I kinda went back to my roots, I got a Big Boss Emblem on MGS4 and you
know what? It made me feel a hell of a lot better than some trophy popping up to say "Yay for you!"
So before I say goodbye
I’d like to say some final words. Using cheat codes in video games do not make
you a worse player, in fact during the old days those were the only ways. Old
games were arcade ports and quarter munchers at that they were relentless and
required a lot of time devoted to it. If you are just focused on game or genre
you’ll never appreciate all the other games and I think being a good gamer
isn’t about being a pro at one game. But being overall good at whatever you play.
It’s about playing games not just one game or genre. Playing for fun not for a fake gold sticker.
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