The Devils Brew? Not Quite – Cheat Codes

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Lets Talk About Cheating, or More Importantly Cheat Codes

Cheating, hacking and glitches in some cases.

Whatever you want to call it, cheats in video games have been around as long as there have been video games, no point in trying to shy away or trying to hide this part of gaming history. So I’m going to try and tackle that very subject myself.

Cheating ay? You do realize you going to make Jay moan when you mention a certain game right?

Oh I know, I’m looking forward to it. So lets start with the different types of ways to cheat in games then hit my own personal experience with the ways I made games easier shall we?

Hacking With the Inclusion of Bots

Hacking and Bot usage has been something companies like Steam and Blizzard have had to deal with in their titles from the past 10 to 15 years or so. A relatively modern form of cheating and a very Ban Hammer heavy offence for the perpetrators involved.

Care to give an example you filthy cheater!

Now now, warm up to the insults. Don’t just dive off the deep end. Anyway I can give two examples from recent games.

So World Of Warcraft has had a problem in the past with bots

bear with me I don’t play WOW but I do know about this problem

now these Bots are programmed to follow a set of simple commands over and over again. More commonly to farm gold in game while someone is away from the game doing other things. I would imagine the bot would be left over night or while the person in question is out of the house.

The second example I can give is console commands in games such as Left 4 Dead or Team Fortress 2. A quick push of a certain key

not advising or explaining how to do this exactly, as you could get banned from online multiplayer modes for using it

a quick typey-type of a console command and boom Infinite Health of the ability to kill all of the other player in one go.

That’s just not cricket dear boy! Abhorrent behavior!

Very true indeed, cheating on an online multiplayer platform isn’t something I would do myself or would recommend at all. Ban Hammer remember.

Cheat codes is the next one.

Aha! Your gonna get Jay groaning now, right? Right? Please please please?

Wow never heard him ask so nicely before. Yes I will, but give me a chance to explain before I give examples.

So cheats codes, tap in codes, secret codes or hidden inputs

not counting inputs for finishing moves in games like Mortal Kombat here

are, as far as I can tell, very rare on the online gaming scene or at least I haven’t encountered it myself up to now.

Codes are used primarily in single or couch co-op games, ranging from things like more lives

Konami code, I’m looking at you

to easier difficulty level; and big head mode to infinite ammo/resources or more comical/daft codes like Paintball mode

Goldeneye 007, make yourself heard in the back

Cheat codes are present more of retro games. Right up until the releases on original Xbox/PS2/Gamecube, fading out more with release titles on the PS3/Xbox360.

Fading but not entirely gone mind you.

Make him groan now!!

Not yet I’m going to leave that until my examples section later on, because I’ve got one more type to cover.

Now I would just like to quickly point out that this last type is a matter of opinion rather then cold facts.

Glitches and Game Breaking Glitches

So glitches occur when someone finds something in a game which either that wasn’t programmed properly or just a very strange way to act in the game. Usually they allow players to pass certain points or slingshot themselves right towards to end of the game in a matter of minutes.

Are you talking about the survivors running into walls and not following you properly in Dead Rising kinda thing?

Nope, that was just how the game worked

much to the table flipping fury inducing annoyance of players everywhere

The kind of glitching I’m talking about is doing certain actions that will get you out of bounds or warp you to another part of the game entirely or just finding something that you can access that shouldn’t be able to at all.

Okay. Can you give me an example?

I sure can, how’s about 4 examples that I can think of off the top of my head?

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

There are two in Elder Scrolls Skyrim that I can recall:

Before any of the original patches went out a player could pick up a plate, place it flush against a wall and flip out of bounds. Just like that, in the very first area of the game.

I have no clue how someone found out about it, though

The second is invisible chests.

In four of the Cities in the vast landscape of Skyrim, you can access three chests

a quick Youtube search will show you where, one of them is an out of bounds trick

The Chests actually belong to the travelling Khajiit who sell wares outside of the respective cities; with the exception of the cheat in Whiterun or course.

Borderlands 2

I’m going to say that I don’t know if this one has been patched out. But there is a way to clone someone else’s weapons. This one is quite simple actually, I did this one on the PC version with a friend.

The person with the gun you wan to clone joins your game then drops the gun in question on the ground, you pick it up then they Alt+F4 out of the game. When they jump back in to the game, they will still have the weapon in their inventory despite the fact they just give it to you.

What happens is you forcefully close the game before it can save, therefore when you load it back up the game thinks nothing has changed. Quite simple right?

Oh I get it… Cloning weapons on a game you spent how many hours on? You sir are a Cad!!

I imagined him saying that in an old style British accent in a very angry tone. Anyway on to the forth example.

Jay: kind of like this?

Source: Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer - Hip-Hop Was To Blame After All

Resident Evil Remake

Now this glitch only works in the American Release of the game so I never got a chance to try it myself. What the glitch does is duplicate Grenade Launcher ammo using the storage box in any save room.

Now as I said I never got chance to try this trick so I don’t know what it involves but if you are interested you can once again find a quick tutorial on YouTube

man you can find a tutorial for almost anything on there

Aren’t you forgetting something? You getting senile in you’re old age?

Alright enough of that, I know damn well what your getting at. Please excuse him it’s been a long time since he was let lose on a blog post to have a go at me.

Anyway what he was getting at is something called Trainers.

Now these are primarily for PC games, they are little programs that run in the background while a game is running and either at the player minimising the game and going to the trainer or pushing certain key combinations can activate certain effects: Infinite life/health, Infinite ammo/resources, infinite time or money - that kind of thing.

Jay: they work the same way as Game Genies by manipulating data in memory

Handy little things to have for either a hard part of a game or a ruthlessly hard game.

Yes I have to confess I have used these in my gaming past, however I have never used these to get achievements or gamerscore in any way so please no angry comments, emails or laser guided killer pigeons.

Had enough of them this year!

I asked nicely before, I’m gonna get tetchy soon!

Okay I’ve left you hanging long enough. Lets make Jay groan.

You ready fella? Manx TT superbike on the Saturn. So I’ll let Jay explain this one real quick I think.

Jay here.

Manx TT Superbike was a 1995 arcade game developed by Sega’s AM3 and AM4 divisions. It was later ported to the Sega Saturn and Microsoft Windows in 1997.

In both the arcade and home release versions, you could enter a certain code at the transmission select screen

Automatic (which has always been easy mode) or Manual transmission, that is

which would change the game ever so slightly, but in the most hilarious way.

The game is an arcade version of several stages from the famous Isle of Man TT race, so you’d race about on an unnamed Superbike. Except that the cheat code would swap the Superbikes out for … well, sheep.

Seriously

Instead of the roar of the engines, you’d head the clatter of the sheeps feet going like the clappers; instead of the screeching of the wheels as you skidded around corners, you’d hear birds chirping; and on top of it all, the popish guitar lead music was replaced with a stupidly fun chiptuney dance pop song.

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a video must be worth about a million. So I’ll let YouTube user Saturn Memories show you the affects of this cheat code:

So now that thats out of the way

OHHHH YEEAAAHHH!!! man that felt good… er… please continue

Now that thats out of the way I shall give you a quick list of some of my most used and favorite cheats/glitches and game breaking bugs I have ever used.

Just to be clear most of these are going to be from older games so it’s a good chance to look up games you may never of hear of before.

Comix Zone

There is a certain sequence of music you can play in a certain order from the sound menu to activate Infinite life. Useful but not a guarantee that you will complete the game, ‘tis quite a tough old game, this one.

psst… I’ve written about Comix Zone before, just sayin'

Streets of Rage series

There is a certain button input at the main menu screen to unlock a secret menu screen to alter difficulty, lives and few other things. I used this to crank up the difficulty to MANIA!!

Altered Beast

Pretty much the same as Streets of rage series.

I’ve written about Altered Beast before, too

Manx TT Superbike

This wasn’t a game breaking cheat code but more of a immersion breaking cheat code. See above.

Revenge of Shinobi

If you changed one of the sound settings to 00 and left it there for about 10 seconds the symbol would change to an infinity symbol letting you use infinite shurikens in the main game.

Resident Evil 2 (PC, Dreamcast and US PSX version)

Now this code differs for each platform:

On the PSX version you go into the pause menu and go to key config settings, put the cursor over the exit button; hold R1 and tap the Square button 10 times

I think, it’s been a while

to get Infinite ammo with all weapons.

On both the Dreamcast and PC versions go to your inventory screen and put the cursor over the bottom left slot and then push up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right then the aim bottom and you will see the infinity symbol over you weaponry.

I’m going to be completely honest here the only reason I used this code was to see the infinite ammo symbol over the knife, yeah the knife. It made me chuckle every time. Never actually used it for the main game.

Skyrim

I used the invisible chests glitch to start off characters with a decent amount of gold most of the time. Oh and something I forgot to mention, the travelling sales Khajiit would wonder so if you waited a few days the box would refill with items and gold.

This trick works on the switch version as well

Wolfenstein 3D Orginal PC Version

A simple three button press would get you full health and ammo. Can’t quite remember what it was but a quick El-Goog search will tell you that.

Dead Space

Yes even the first of these three titles had tap in codes, inputted from the pause screen you could refill your oxygen and stasis. Bonus credits and power nodes could be obtained this way as well.

I used these codes on a separate save I had just for cheating with.

Tomb Raider 2

I didn’t think I could miss this one off. There is a set of input commands to use while in game to unlock all weapons no matter how far you are in the game. The only thing is you jump at the end of the input sequence, if you jump the wrong way you explode.

Guess which way I was told about to begin with?

Jay: click here for a visual on that one, it’s pretty funny

That can’t be all of them surely?

No it isn’t.

See nowadays you can just do a quick El-Goog search and find whatever you need. I grew up playing games before the Internet was available to everyone so I had to rely on cheat code books I got from Game magazines like GamesMaster.

and sometimes, the odd scrap of paper in the box of a second hand game, left there by the previous owner… of the Gods of gaming themselves.

That’s going back a bit

So who remembers buying these back in the day? Come on show of hands.

Yeah that was back in the day, I also got a certain amount of strategy guides this way, Resident Evil Zero and Silent Hill 2 being just two of the ones I got from games magazines.

I would like to mention something just very quickly before I sign off:

you would get sections of games magazines where people would write in

yep that’s using pen and paper

and tell of cheat codes they had found or records within games to brag.

Oh I know where your going with this, your going to mention Akuma aren’t you?

Indeed I am.

Now the details are sketchy for me

I do nearly all of these blogs using what I remember after all

but a games magazine back in the day stated that through a series of actions you could unlock the playable Street Fighter character Akuma in Resident Evil 2. Going so far as to show an actual screen shot of Akuma near the parking lot basement area of the main game.

This was, unfortunately not true. It would of been amazing to HADUKEN! zombies left right and centre, not to mention slapping Birkin all over the place but alas it wasn’t to be.

Jay: here’s a short article on the hoax

Do you or have you ever overtly cheated in games? Or were you good and struggled to overcome all obstacles?

What were you’re favourite cheat codes or glitches? Did you use them for comedy or exploit purposes?

Let me know in the comments whether you were a heavenly soul playing for the forces of good of a dirty cheater like me, wanting nothing more then to kick the most crap out of your enemies as possible.

Thank you for reading this blog post about cheating and exploits, I look forward to writing the next blog post and recording the next podcast episode for you guys.

Jay: you do know that we have a podcast, right?

And as always I shall catch you some other time. Peace out.