What happened to cheats?

Elessar

Remember the times back in the Playstation days when every game would have cheats and you'd find them in the back of the magazines?

I'd often use cheats to surpass a tough area that was doing my nut in, or just use cheats to fly through a game that I wasn't all that mad about in the first place. Press X three times then O, L1, L2 and hey presto, unlimited ammo. Cheats were great.

Nowadays however, it seems cheats have almost disappeared? I don't think I've come across an Xbox 360 game where there were cheats available at all. On the PC you have trainers and so on but consoles seem to have left cheats by the wayside. What happened? And did anyone else use them?

MGMTea

yep, i used to love getting the magazines to get the little booklet of cheats for every console :') or getting cheats off my mates for grand theft auto :P

RobertFoster

They found a way to monetise them, much like new maps and unlockable skins.

scheister

ah yes even going back to the sega for the cheats. press abbaabba and select. ah was loads more fun then actually trying to play the game

johnny_ultimate

I was delighted when I found out Scott Pilgrim the game had some old school cheats: sound test ftw

Monotype

They'd probably conflict too much with achievements. PC games usually still have debug codes but it's not quite the same as they were.

o1s1n

The first time I found out about the debug option in Sonic The Hedgegog I thought it was some kind of black magic. My aunt just handed me this scrap of paper with the cheat written on it.

'Wtf is this?'

'Try it when Sonic pops up at the start'

Sabre0001

Monotype wrote: »

They'd probably conflict too much with achievements.

Probably something along the lines of this. In addition, achievements are now used to prolong the lives of games where cheats may have been in the past -> A great stress relief to load up infinate ammo and godmode and just go nuts!

Thuck_Fat

Red Faction: Guerrilla has cheats and achievements.

There are no cheat codes, alas, but as you progress through the game, more cheats become available and can be activated via the in-game menu. It's all there - unlimited ammo, god mode, run faster, jump higher, etc, etc. Activating the cheats also disables the achievements, which makes a lot of sense imo. You can have fun with cheats, but just don't save the game if you want the achievements.
Hopefully more games in the future are like this, cheats really were the bomb. Especially when you found them in the back of those magazines. It just made them seem more.... special

ShaneU

EA charges you for them now

johnmcdnl

Probably a wee bit got to do with trophies and achievements - a wee bit more got to do with multiplayer being the main focus of most games this gen compared to earlier games when the single players were way harder to make the game last longer

and mainly because they can make money by selling them now and people like buying them :mad: silly people - like in fairness - worst is that the young generation of gamers will soon only know cheat codes and stuff we grew up with for free and therefore the companies will continue to charge through the roof for a code than gives you an ammo refill - I wish some of the pros from the older games could have survived this jump to the new gen.. :mad:

D-Generate

I remember having a Game Genie for the NES back in the day. Man it was insane what you could do in some games but in others it just made them buggy.

But yeah there is certainly a nostalgia factor in the old cheats, typing in the codes and hoping you did it in the right amount of time so that it worked.

Adyx

o1s1n wrote: »

The first time I found out about the debug option in Sonic The Hedgegog I thought it was some kind of black magic. My aunt just handed me this scrap of paper with the cheat written on it.

'Wtf is this?'

'Try it when Sonic pops up at the start'

Was that the thing where you could place scenery/game objects? I remember playing on a friends Megadrive and we thought the game was busted when this happened (we'd done it accidentally).

Sarky

Games got easy enough to finish without them.

BigBenRoeth

Cheats are now unnecesary because games today are easy,short,and to large extent,shíte

Overheal

I found that they ruined games. Who played through the proper campaign for Age of Empires without typing in e=mc2 trooper, pepperoni pizza or quarry?

Cheats were a cop-out to making games that were already fun to play on 'vanilla' settings. You take Zone of the Enders 2 though, and near the end of the game you get an ability called Zero-Shift. Which is basically God Mode. But it would have ruined the first half of the game, makes the second half of the game very enjoyable, and if you complete the game (with the last boss being insane) you get to use it optionally in the beginning of the game.

That system works out better for me. I think codes were more relevant back when there were no Saves, and every time you powered off your console you lost all of your progress.

Zapp Brannigan

16 posts and no-one mentioned the Konami Code. For shame.

RolandIRL

i only ever used cheats when i had already finished the game. i never used them to finsh a game cos what's the point, really?
but i remember the days of inputing cheats for Worms 2: Director's Cut on the Amiga. so much fun. for certain games, it can add to the game such as GTA San Andreas. there was some great fun to be had with cheats.
i would be flying the hydra and my brother would type in vehicle spawning cheats and i'd have to dodge them

Elessar

Does anyone remember this baby? http://www.murraymoffatt.com/playstation-xplorer.html

The Xplorer cheat cartridge. I was just thinking of it and boy it brings me back. I remember the local toyshop having one (clarkes in swords anyone!) and it was something like £30 - a lot for a 11/12 year old boy. But I got one eventually and it opened up a whole world of cheats!

I often wonder how it worked though. Newer cheats (sometimes ones you couldn't get by pressing the buttons on the controller) had you entering an insane combination of characters into the Xplorer just to get it to work. Was this literally re-programming the game in some way? Or just accessing hidden dev treasures?

I remember after frustratingly entering a code numerous times it finally worked - Lara Croft was naked!

CiDeRmAn

Zapp Brannigan wrote: »

16 posts and no-one mentioned the Konami Code. For shame.

I still try it out on every Konami game!
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, A, B, then kick some Gradius ass on the Gameboy!

And the cheats are all still there, although they are usually user access debug codes, used when the dev wants to show off a level, but lacks the will to play through his own sh1te game! (maybe a slight over generalisation!).

Cheats in mags became redundant when www.gamefaqs.com came along, if there's a cheat for it, it's there.

triple-M

up,down,left,right, A + start together,my fav cheat of all time from sonic

BigBenRoeth

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I still try it out on every Konami game!
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, A, B, A, B, then kick some Gradius ass on the Gameboy!

And the cheats are all still there, although they are usually user access debug codes, used when the dev wants to show off a level, but lacks the will to play through his own sh1te game! (maybe a slight over generalisation!).

Cheats in mags became redundant when www.gamefaqs.com came along, if there's a cheat for it, it's there.

On that note,i really miss having to rely on game walkthrough mags (powerstation).
I remember the only hope i had of getting far in Final Fantasy 4/5/6 was digging up an issue of powerstation or ringing my mate who had cleared them all

Adyx

Elessar wrote: »

Does anyone remember this baby? http://www.murraymoffatt.com/playstation-xplorer.html

The Xplorer cheat cartridge. I was just thinking of it and boy it brings me back. I remember the local toyshop having one (clarkes in swords anyone!) and it was something like £30 - a lot for a 11/12 year old boy. But I got one eventually and it opened up a whole world of cheats!

I often wonder how it worked though. Newer cheats (sometimes ones you couldn't get by pressing the buttons on the controller) had you entering an insane combination of characters into the Xplorer just to get it to work. Was this literally re-programming the game in some way? Or just accessing hidden dev treasures?

I remember after frustratingly entering a code numerous times it finally worked - Lara Croft was naked!

The combination of characters are hex values, basically the addresses in memory where data is held and the data itself. Modifying these values can cause certain effects that the developers didn't intend. For example, if you can find the memory location where the number of live you have is stored, you can change it to a higher number. This number would likely be in hex form though so you'd need to be able to convert it.

The VBA emulator has a cheat section that allows you to search through memory locations and modify their values. It's a lot of effort though especially if you don't know what you're looking for.

PogMoThoin

The developers now use cheats, they lock content already on the disk and then offer it as dlc later

A lot of developers have built punishments into games now for using cheat codes i.e. you can't 100% complete a game if you did.

Having said that - how many people used the cheat codes in GTA: SA, just to be able to make cars fly?

quarryman

without using google, does anyone remember what this one was for:

LAPMYLOVEPUMP

Captain Average

I'd imagine the main reason behind no more cheats is that the publishers would then make no money out of the gamer guides to games that they produce.

Pyr0

These days most cheats are done using trainers, i'd only ever use a trainer if i was REALLY stuck in a game, get past the level and turn it off again. Other times I've played the game properly before and just throw everything on for the laugh the second time around.

BigBenRoeth

I remember in Vice City actually,one of the missions you have to do when you buy the Malibu club is race the getaway driver lad to get him to join you,after about 20 attempts i turned on the flying car cheat and lol'd as he flew into trees and i easily won the race driving at about 30mph