Cheat codes are a lost art in the modern era of gaming. Along with unlockable costumes and other cosmetics that used to be free, developers have monetized “cheating” with loot boxes, crates, and other microtransactions where instead of putting in a code to gain an upper hand, you pay money. Think about it, when was the last time you played a game with a bunch of cheat codes in it?
They’re a lost art, and a recent video of “Big Head” mode from GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 that came across my YouTube feed got me nostalgic about the practice. Growing up, cheat codes were everything. My brother and I had a Game Genie for our NES and a Game Shark for our PlayStation. We’d beat the games, then go back and play them while messing with the graphics, gravity, and whatever else those devices allowed us to. Super Mario Bros. is fun, but Super Mario Bros. with endless star power? Now that’s an all-time classic. That was a particular favorite cheat of mine, but my absolute favorite cheat code can be found in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.
I tend to wax poetic about this era of gaming because it truly is something that’s completely vanished in the modern age. Arcade style sports game absolutely ruled the 90s, with games like NFL Blitz, NBA Jam, and Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey taking up entire weekends of my youth. All of those games had fantastic cheat codes themselves — I still remember taking on my bother as Bill and Hillary Clinton — but the one I most remember, the one I always entered before starting a game, was Double Moon Physics.
Tony Hawk games are all about racking up those high scores and on my Dreamcast, I wasn’t exactly the best at chaining together tricks. I got better at it as time went by, but for the early months of playing the game, if I wanted the digits to climb on my score, I paused the game, held down the L button and input the code a friend at school wrote down on a piece of paper for me. Years later I would discover Cheat Code Central and holy shit I did not know I could make my skater fat.
Double Moon Physics kept me coming back to that game for the year or so I actually owned my Dreamcast. A year later after I bought my GameCube, finding out the Moon Physics code for Pro Skater 3 was one of the first damn things I did.
Source: Destructoid What’s your favorite cheat code?