3 Ways Players Cheated In Old School Video Games
Cheating doesn't really exist in gaming today, at least not in the way it used to. A lot of games today are online and although there are cases of people finding ways to gain an advantage, the servers run by the game company do their best to make sure the play is fair. It is serious competitive business. There are also micro-transactions in games and companies do not want you getting progress for free. But back in the day cheating in games was not a big deal. Some games even had cheat codes put in them. Here are three ways people cheated in games that do not exist anymore.
Cheat Codes:
Let's see if I can remember it from the top of my head. Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start. I'm not going to look it up, if that is wrong, let me know in the comments. That is the Konami code, it got you 30 lives in Contra. It is the most famous code in a game, I have even seen it tattooed on someone. Cheat code were a part of a lot of games. And, before you had the internet, you would read about them in your Nintendo Power. Then tell your friends. You already bought the game and it was a way to make it easier for players who were not pros. And not every code gave you an advantage. Who remembers big heads in NBA JAM?
Game Genie/Game Shark:
This is going to sound like magic to those who are not tech savvy. You put your Nintendo cartridge into this device and then you put the game and the device into the Nintendo system. It made the game stick out and you could not close the lid. Then when you turned the game on a menu would pop up with a keyboard at the bottom of the screen. The Game Genie came with a book of all the codes you could enter to make changes to the games. There was the normal things like more lives and continues but you could start of different levels, change how much time you had to beat a level, give yourself unlimited items or even be invincible. It was like you were hacking it. It did take a lot of the fun out of a game though, when you remove the challenge, what is the point.
The Old Second Player At The Time Of Death:
This only worked on certain games, mostly beat'em ups like Ninja Turtles. When you were about to die, if you press start on the second player controller you could bring in a new player and start fresh with that one. It was only is games where you could add a second player any time. It was cheap and was not the same as beating the game the proper way but when you're a kid you don't think about such things, just what is after that leader you can't beat.
Any other ways you want to add? Or codes of the top of your head? Add them in the comments
*my upvotes/rep disclaimer: https://steemit.com/steemit/@whatageek/my-steemit-account-where-i-stand-on-bots-self-votes-and-multiple-account
I would add a fourth - pausing the game the asses the situation.
Though to a degree you can do that in games now as well, but in old school games you often got to see most of the screen as well, nowadays you get taken to a menu.
I remember the old lists of POKEs that you found in computer magazines that you could use to basically edit the game in memory once it has loaded in order to get things like infinite lives and so on. (A Poke was a command that would write into the memory directly)
That literally is hacking the game. It made you smarter too, you start to see how things work on a deeper level.
I remember poke codes too, good they were a nightmare. One digit wrong and nothing, they were often giant too
I'm a huge fan of cheat codes.. especially the way they used to allow us to simply use button inputs rather than a text input... Think of games like GTA Vice City and GTA San Andreas, back in the old days you could enter "Left, Right, L1, L2, R1, R2, Up, Down, Left, Right" via the controller.. now you have to type out a specific phrase which doesn't feel as natural in gameplay.
I don't know about cheating the game itself... but "accidentally" disconnecting your opponents controller was always good in the pre wireless days!
Or, as a young child I was insidiously cheated by my older sister in Atari Bowling. Taking advantage of my ignorance of the scoring system, she showed me how my score added up faster if I didn't get strikes, so I'd always try to miss the last pin. No wonder I could never beat her...