Nowadays, cheating in games is associated with an unfair advantage in competitive multiplayer, but there was once a golden age when cheating was all about harmlessly skipping the single-player grind or, better yet, giving yourself all sorts of hilarious perks. It’s time we reminisce about that beautiful bygone era.
Angry pedestrians always result in anarchy in GTA
The GTA series is home to some of the best, most original, and most hilarious video game cheats of all time. You could come up with a huge list of the best cheat codes, and somebody totally did. Still, if we’re about to find the funniest one of the bunch, I gotta go with angry pedestrians, a cheat code that starts an unprecedented civil war where every single person represents their own faction, and they all hate everyone else. One single cheat makes any GTA title double as an apocalypse scenario survival game, and there’s no better way of blowing off some steam after failing to follow some damn train.
The angry pedestrians’ cheat is hilarious for all the unpredictable and hilarious chaos it spawns, and it also shows the inevitable endpoint of society in any of the cities in the Grand Theft Auto series, meaning it also carries big sociological and demographic lessons, if you happen to be in Liberty City for that.
One of the reasons people are so hyped about GTA 6 is that fans associate it with a time when games were just more fun overall than they are now, and these types of cheat codes had a big role in making it so. Here’s hoping the good people of Rockstar haven’t forgotten about that lesson.
Naughty players accidentally make Lara Croft explode
As soon as Lara Croft showed up in the original Tomb Raider back in 1996, fans began to wonder if it was possible to get her in-game model to undress. You’re just gonna have to imagine how vocal they were about it for their words to get into the developers’ heads back before widespread internet or social media, but that totally happened. So, for Tomb Raider 2, they included a mysterious code, one that would supposedly get Lara to finally undress, but would actually have her in-game model explode into many tiny pieces, instead. Interestingly, the input for this cheat code is very similar to that of an actual useful cheat code in the game, meaning so many players got the fright of their lives, whether they deserved it or not, and that makes it even funnier for me.
The more recent Lara outfit controversy had nothing to do with “Nude Raider”, but I like to see it as divine punishment from all of the fans’ past misdeeds on the subject.
Age of Empires reveals history’s secret weapons
When you read the name Age of Empires, I bet you’ll picture a realistic game about strategizing your way to victory in ancient times, and that’s, well, more or less true, or at least until you input the game’s legendary cheat codes.
Back in the good old days, typing the right words would grant players the ability to spawn Shelby Cobra cars with miniguns, babies with guns, or even super-powered monkeys who would destroy most enemies with one hit. The best part? For the HD remaster, the developers introduced the Sharkatzor, a laser-firing flying shark piloted by a cat.
And, like, history is complicated. Many records have been lost, so who’s to say stylish motorized vehicles and genetically enhanced apes, babies, cats, and sharks weren’t the reality of prehistoric warfare?
Turok’s Disco mode
I used to see Turok as a very serious shooter for the longest time, until I found out it had a “Disco mode” that players could unlock via cheat codes. The effect of this cheat is as simple as it is hilarious. It spawns disco lights near the enemies, who’ll quit everything they’re doing just so they can dance it out. The lights don’t affect the player in any way, meaning you’re free to enjoy the show.
Sonic 3D Blast doesn’t really feature any out-of-this-world type of unlockable, but it does have the funniest “code input” I’ve ever seen in a game. To unlock the game’s special menu that grants access to various secret levels, players just need to hit the Genesis cartridge while the game is running. No, I’m not trying to get players to destroy the cartridges of what’s arguably one of the most disappointing games of all time; this really is how you do it.
I remember coming across this secret menu when I bumped into the cartridge when I was just a kid, and spent a long time believing that must’ve been the most random thing ever, but it turns out it was actually by design. It turns out that to get the game approved for release at a time long before patches, the game had to pass a bunch of pretty demanding tests. Instead of fixing any of the game’s issues, the developers just programmed any event that could cause the game to crash, like a kid falling headfirst into their console, to automatically trigger the “special” debug mode, a feature, not a glitch, and thus Sonic 3D Blast became ready to ship.
Blood cheat in Mortal Kombat
Mortal Kombat is known for its gruesomely detailed violence, but that, somehow, wasn’t always the case. When making its way to the more family-friendly Genesis and SNES home consoles, the devs thought it best to release a completely blood-free version of the game. Syke. For the Genesis port of the game, all it took was one secret input for the game to become just as gory as its arcade counterpart. The SNES version had no such toggle, which may or may not have been the reason why it got outsold three to one.
And sure, violence in games is fun when these games are meant to be violent in the first place, but, as it turns out, it might prove even better in more innocent games.
Dismemberment in Star Wars Jedi Knight 2
Ever wondered what Star Wars would look like if the movies and games weren’t made for kids? Well, you needn’t look any further, as, because of an actual feature in the game, not a deranged fan mod.
The dismemberment feature was originally going to be a part of the game, which is what you get when you hire Raven Software fresh off the Soldier of Fortune series to make your game, but the dismemberment feature didn’t make it to release. Luckily, it too wasn’t cut out at all, and anyone can enjoy the game as it should be, so long as they know the secret password (it’s: g_saberrealisticcombat).
