I still remember the first cheat code I ever learned. It wasn’t even from a magazine or the internet—those weren’t really options for me back then. It was passed down like sacred knowledge on the playground during recess, a third-grader with a Nintendo Power subscription whispering it to me behind the slide: “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.” The Konami Code. When I got home that day, I immediately tried it on Contra, and suddenly I had 30 lives instead of the usual punishment of 3. It felt like I’d been handed the keys to a secret kingdom.
There was something magical about cheat codes back then—something that today’s games with their achievement systems and microtransactions just can’t replicate. Entering a cheat wasn’t just about making the game easier; it was a ritual. A communication between you and the developers, like they were winking at you from behind the screen saying, “Hey, we know this part’s tough. Here’s a little help if you need it. Don’t tell anyone.”
My brother Dave and I kept a tattered spiral notebook filled with cheat codes. We’d copy them from friends, magazine pages, or discover them through sheer accident. Some pages were so worn from frequent reference that the pencil marks had turned into shiny grooves on the paper. IDDQD and IDKFA for DOOM were practically etched into my muscle memory—I’m pretty sure I could still type them without a second’s hesitation nearly thirty years later. God mode and all weapons? Yes, please. Sometimes you just wanted to rip and tear through demons without the stress.
Cheat codes existed for all sorts of reasons, many of which modern gamers might not realize. A lot of them were actually developer tools that were left in the final game, either intentionally or because removing them might break something else. Programmers needed ways to test specific sections without playing through the entire game, or to check how their code handled a player with maximum stats. Dave and I discovered this firsthand when a Power Overwhelming code in StarCraft accidentally let us see unit pathfinding logic that was normally invisible. For about a week, we thought we had broken the game somehow.
Other cheats were just straight-up Easter eggs—developers having fun. I spent hours in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 playing as Spider-Man or with a giant head because why not? Some of my favorite gaming memories involve the ridiculous chaos of Grand Theft Auto cheats. My roommate Josh and I would take turns entering increasingly absurd combinations of cheats until the game inevitably crashed from trying to process too many flying tanks and pedestrians with rocket launchers.
The social currency of knowing a rare cheat code was immense. In sixth grade, I became temporarily popular because I knew how to access the debug menu in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that let you play as any level with any character. For about two glorious weeks, kids who normally wouldn’t give me the time of day were suddenly inviting me over after school. The popularity faded once everyone had written down the code, but for that brief moment, I was the keeper of arcane gaming knowledge, and it felt amazing.
Gaming magazines capitalized on this, of course. The “Cheat Code” sections were often the first pages I’d flip to whenever a new issue arrived. Some publications even built their entire business model around them—Tips & Tricks magazine was basically a phonebook-sized collection of cheat codes with some screenshots thrown in. I remember saving up allowance money to buy their Street Fighter II special edition, which contained every move and combo for every character. That magazine became so worn from use that it eventually disintegrated, but by then I’d memorized most of it anyway.
The effort required to execute some cheats added to their mystique. The Mortal Kombat blood code on Genesis (A, B, A, C, A, B, B) had to be entered at just the right moment on the right screen, or it wouldn’t work. And fatalities? Those complex button combinations performed within a tight time window were practically a separate skill set from the actual fighting game. I spent hours practicing them, much to the horror of my mom who happened to walk in during a particularly gruesome spine-ripping sequence. “It’s just a game, Mom!” didn’t seem to reassure her.
Different types of cheats served different purposes. Level selects were great when you wanted to show a friend a cool later area without making them watch you play through the early game. Infinite lives or god mode helped when a section was just too frustratingly difficult (looking at you, water level in every game ever). Cosmetic cheats like big head mode or silly costumes were just pure fun—gaming for gaming’s sake.
The Sims was a particular goldmine for useful cheats. I can still type “rosebud ;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!;!” with my eyes closed—that semicolon exclamation point pattern repeated to trick the game into giving multiple money rewards instead of just one. My sister Emma and I would build elaborate dream houses that we could never afford through normal gameplay. When I asked her recently if she remembered those cheat code sessions, she laughed and said, “Remember them? I still use ‘motherlode’ in the new games out of pure habit.”
Some games took cheating to an art form. Goldeneye 007 on N64 had the infamous DK Mode that gave everyone giant heads and long arms, transforming a serious spy shooter into a carnival of absurdity. Action Replay and Game Genie devices took things even further, letting you modify games at a deeper level than the built-in cheats allowed. I saved up for weeks to buy a Game Genie, only to discover that my parents were less than thrilled about a device that essentially “hacked” the games they’d paid good money for. “You’re missing the point of the challenge,” my dad argued. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but sometimes a kid just wants to see what happens when you give Mario 999 lives and moon-jump capabilities.
There was an ethical dimension to cheating that my friends and I debated constantly. Single-player cheats? Generally accepted as fine—you’re only affecting your own experience. Using cheats in multiplayer without everyone’s knowledge and consent? That was gaming’s cardinal sin. I still remember the fallout when we discovered my friend Tom had been using a map hack in our StarCraft sessions. He wasn’t invited to game night for a month, which in teenage terms might as well have been excommunication.
The decline of the traditional cheat code began gradually. As games shifted toward achievement systems and online connectivity, developers became more hesitant to include ways to bypass challenges. Why include a level select when you can sell level skips as microtransactions? Why offer cosmetic cheats when those alternate appearances can be packaged as DLC? The economic incentives shifted, and the secret handshake between developer and player faded into gaming history.
I noticed this change most acutely with my nephew Jake. When he was about ten, I tried to pass down the sacred gaming knowledge as my birthright to the next generation. “Want to know how to get infinite money in this game?” I offered while watching him play some modern title. His response stopped me cold: “I can just buy in-game currency with my allowance if I need it.” The concept of working around the game’s systems with cleverly input codes seemed foreign to him—almost like cheating was actually cheating now, instead of an accepted parallel path through the game.
The modern equivalent of cheat codes often involves actual cheating—third-party software that gives unfair advantages in competitive games. That’s not the same thing at all. The spirit of the old cheat codes wasn’t about ruining the experience for others or gaining unfair advantages in competition; it was about options, customization, and occasionally just breaking the game in entertaining ways to see what would happen.
I still have a soft spot for games that include old-school cheats as a nod to gaming history. When I discovered that the new DOOM games included classic codes like IDDQD as unlockable rewards for finding secrets, I felt that old thrill again. It was like running into an old friend you haven’t seen in years and picking up right where you left off.
Sometimes I boot up an emulator and play those old games with all the cheats activated, just for the pure nostalgic joy of it. Infinite lives, all weapons, level select—the digital equivalent of being a kid in a candy store with no adult supervision. There’s something liberating about it, a reminder of a time when games weren’t quite so serious about maintaining their internal economies and achievement tracking.
My old cheat code notebook is still in a box somewhere in my office closet, a paper relic from a different era of gaming. I should dig it out sometime—not because I need those codes anymore (they’re all readily available online now), but because those pencil-scrawled pages represent something beyond the codes themselves. They’re a record of traded secrets, playground currency, and the weird sub-language of gaming that helped shape my childhood. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start isn’t just a sequence of buttons—it’s a passage back to a time when the right combination of inputs could make you feel like you’d hacked the entire universe. And honestly, what could be more magical than that?
