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Are You a Cheater?


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I've decided to become a cheater. It's gonna take a little dicking around to find out a sweet spot, but I'm going to utilize Game Genie codes accordingly in most games I play. For me, it's always been more about experiencing and interacting with the game in the way I want to play it that's enticed me about video games. I loved Castlevania as a kid because of the monsters and the story. I didn't really care about how hard it was. I like to throw it on today and get a bit over half way through, but then I get stuck. That getting stuck takes me out of the game, so I'm thinking of using infinite lives and keep weapons after losing a life via the Game Genie to make the game easier, but not so easy that it negates the game in and of itself. In a game like Metroid, it has an interesting GG code that never allows health to drop below 30. This is really cool, because in the parts where I'm exploring and I don't give a shit about the small enemies pestering me, I can not die facing them. However, when it comes time to fight a boss, I can farm health to max, use a save state so I don't have to do it again, and battle the boss legit. If I hit 30 health, I re-start the boss fight from the save state.

 

What I could do is go on Youtube and look up the strat to beat all these games anyways, but to me that's much less fun than using a Game Genie. I'd rather try to manipulate the game's difficulty/frustration levels to a manageable level where I can still enjoy playing a game rather than seeing the secret behind the magic spilled out to me before my eyes (ala all those Battletoads tutorials) and progress naturally.

 

Basically, my goal is to bend the rules of these games to a more respectable difficulty levels without ultimate breaking them or just becoming invincible. Hell, it could be equated infinite lives is just popping in quarter after quarter in an arcade. Has anyone else ever done anything similar? There's gotta be a few other cheaters out there.

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I don't really understand the whole concept tbh. To me, if the game is a single player game, do whatever the f*** you please! It's not 'cheating' if you're not gaining some sort of unfair advantage against another player. (Cheating in multiplayer is an entirely different story and makes the veins in my forehead go throbby)

 

I mean I have since beat the first three episodes of Doom, but as a kid, I spent hours running around in God Mode blowing things up and exploring levels with noclip and it was one of my favorite games, even though I couldn't come close to going anywhere in it 'legit.' I'm not against people using save-states to beat a game that's a bit too challenging or time consuming for them (though I really don't do it myself.) I'm fine with using turbo on emulators to speed up grinding in RPGs, etc. And come on. There's a good number of us that have never beat Contra without the 30 lives code *raises hand*

 

I guess I think we all have what we believe is the 'right' or the 'best' way to beat a game, or we have a certain thing we want to accomplish, and that's completely cool.. which is why the whole concept of 'cheating' in a single player game is weird to me... like I don't really understand how people get legitimately upset, offended, or whatever you'd like to call it. It's just enjoying your toy however you want to enjoy it. I mean I never liked pulling the legs off my GI Joes and I really suck at playing guitar in alternate tunings but ya know, if that's what you like to do, more power to ya.

 

That said, personally, I play games generally 'legit' in most senses. If I'm playing on an emulator, I'll sometimes use save states to make life more convenient, basically like saving a game away from a save point if I have to leave, etc (it's just a fancy pause button but you don't have to worry about your cat chewing through the power cable) but typically I do enjoy experiencing games as they were originally intended.

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I used to cheat back when I was a kid. It helped when the game stopped being fun. Grindy RPGs come right to mind.

 

These days if I'm not having fun with a game, I just play another one. I've gotten so I don't even use continues. I'll just keep starting from the beginning until I'm not having fun and move on to the next.

Edited by Reaperman
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I don't use codes or game genie-type devices, but I'll happily grab a walkthrough for anything. I have better things to do these days than run around a game mindlessly in the hopes of finding where I'm supposed to go. I'll do it myself when I get there, but I like a map sometimes. :)

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I used to be SUCH a cheater, like to a pathetic extent. If a game didn't have cheats, I wouldn't even play it. Doom with IDDQD and IDKFA was magical to me. Just remove all challenge and give myself infinite BFG ammo and watch everything crumble before my unstoppable badassness. I still like playing games with god mode turned on just because it lets me explore in ways that I couldn't normally.

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I never use cheat codes or cheat devices of any kind on my first play through a game. I may reference a walkthrough guide if I get really stuck and can't figure out where to go or what to do next for more than an hour or so, but no cheat codes on the first run through. However, after I've beaten a game once I do sometimes go back and play though it again with cheats just to enjoy a relaxed and leisurely stroll through the game if it was particularly tough the first time around.

 

In short, I won't use cheats in a game until I've beaten it at least once without them. At that point I feel like I've earned the privilege of cheating if I want to. :)

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I used to be SUCH a cheater, like to a pathetic extent. If a game didn't have cheats, I wouldn't even play it. Doom with IDDQD and IDKFA was magical to me. Just remove all challenge and give myself infinite BFG ammo and watch everything crumble before my unstoppable badassness. I still like playing games with god mode turned on just because it lets me explore in ways that I couldn't normally.

 

I've actually used such an example as this with a friend. If I pay full price for a game, obviously I'm gonna play it on normal difficulty and experience it as it should be, but when I pay $10 for some BS game, I'm looking a lot of times to run through it like I'm in an 80s action movie just plowing through everything on easy like it wasn't nothing, or co-op online with a buddy which basically turns normal to easy. We used to set up AI bots on easy in COD and just blow the fuck out of them, constantly calling in our OP attacks and shit and just annihilate. It's a shitload of fun and also a way to experience tons of weapons you normally wouldn't use.

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I was about to just post: "At my age? Hell yes I am"

 

If its a series I love and enjoy and can beat without issue..... and everything is available to me and not locked impossibly away then no I don't cheat.

 

Otherwise:

 

Yep, I do without the least bit of shame. In fact, when it comes to stupidly hard games I look at it like "f~ck you I win".

 

Seriously though it opens up a lot of games the way you have never experienced them before. If I didn't there are some games I would never experience using certain weapons or features.

 

I have cheats enabled on every modded console I own...from the Wii, to the PSP etc. For a lot of games, depending on what "cheat" you enable it can make the game a lot more fun.

 

Love it.

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I'll admit to being a bit of a cheater for some games I play on an emulator, occasionally stooping to Save State scumming to get through tricky parts.

 

But in games where I'm not trying to prove anything about my skill, I'd much rather just skip the frustration and get on with the game than get held back forever by a really hard part. In the words of a wise man, video games that send you all the way back to the beginning with a game over are only doing you a disservice, because if you keep dying on a hard part later in the game, it's that part you need the most practice with to get through. Shouldn't a game's fair challenge come from its level design, not from having to play those levels over and over? The player's ability and frequency to save their progress is a conscious design decision in how difficult a game is...but it can often be a very stupid decision that confuses pointlessly frustrating the player with actually challenging them.

 

However, playing games with Save States on an emulator always does make me yearn to play the real thing authentically on cartridge, where I won't have that kind of crutch to lean on. There's a lot more intensity there, definitely, if I want to really "conquer" a game (if that makes sense). But if I'm just trying to experience a game, then yeah, emulators and their tools are very helpful.

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Is that Duke Nukem 3D?

 

We used cheats and trainers a lot in the 90's on PC games especially Doom. lol

 

We have a winner!

I loved this game back in the day. In fact it's the ONLY reason I have a Steam account to this day. I get online 3 or 4 times a year to, "Kick Azz and chew bubble gum".

 

duke3d.png

 

As for cheat codes, heck yeah, I have no shame in my game, or course I've used them!

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I remember that my favorite cheat code that a lot of games would have was "Big Head Mode," which despite being such a simple little thing, was always hilarious. It's a shame that with cheat codes kind of falling out of vogue, cool stuff like that - and other codes like low gravity modes - disappeared, too.

 

Although I do remember Batman: Arkham City having a very deeply hidden big head mode. Thank goodness someone in the studio remembered how much fun it is.

 

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When I got my first non portable game system, a Playstation, I did a lot because I only had access to a Telegames Atari clone, Game.Com, and old DOS computer growing up. I never had an 8 or 16 bit system when I was a kid.

 

 

Alien Trilogy was one of the first games I had for my Playstation and couldn't get pass the second level since it was the first fps I ever played. I wanted to have fun and see all the game and not get stuck. After that I used a game enhancer for every system that had them. I find games are easier now so I don't need to cheat. Alien Isolation is the last game I cheated because it was terrifying and I wanted to explore more. Plus it was before the patch with an easier difficulty.

 

Sometimes cheats will ruin the experience. XCom, old and new, springs to mind. I do use a save editor for the original though.

Edited by xenomorpher
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If you're not competing, cheat your ass off, especially if the game designer was a sadist, an A-hole, or a moron.

 

So many people have been brainwashed into thinking that the word play is a synonym for toil. If it's more like tedious work and less like fun, I'll use cheats to see more of the game and skip the sadistic bullshit. Give me invincibility and I'll have fun plowing through the game as if I'm a God-like character from an Avengers movie. Cheating was really important when renting a game. I only had a short amount of time to see as much of the game as I could, so I'd Game Genie the crap out of it.

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Um, yeah, sometimes.

 

In the Atari days, there were very limited ways to "cheat". There were things like the double shot trick on Space Invaders, but most of the time, if there were cheats, I never heard of them.

 

NES days, I saw codes and things in magazines and such. I would try them all out. If there was a game in the codes section of Nintendo Power, and the game was at the local rental place, I rented it so I could try the cheat. Also, if it was a Konami game, I damn sure tried the code every time.

 

Next system I had was the TurboGrafx. I never saw too many cheats for it. There were a few I saw in magazines, but never really used them that I can remember. There's a trick I use for extra lives on Blazing Lazers that I've mentioned before on other threads here, but that's about it. Oh, and I found out that there are like three different starting difficulties (for lack of a better term) for Military Madness. I would attack a certain unit with a certain other unit at the beginning of the game and it would kill either 3, 4, or 5 of the enemy units. (Not sure now about the actual numbers, but it was something like that.) If I got the 3 or 4, I'd keep resetting and retrying until I got the 5. The difference being that if it only killed the 3 or 4, that unit would disengage and go back to get repaired, but if I killed 5, I would end up destroying the unit before it got away. I did this mainly for the "last" level... it was such a close battle that if I didn't kill that first unit, I couldn't beat that level.

 

The Playstation was the first system that I had a Game Genie for. I remember using it a few times, but it seemed like too much of a hassle usually. I remember there was a trick on Breath of Fire 3 that would make you invincible or something. But then, (spoiler) there's a fight that you're supposed to lose somewhat early in the game and the invincibility cheat made it so you couldn't lose it, but you couldn't win it either, so you were kinda stuck. I remember using a cheat on Suikoden's cup game... I had read about different patterns that you could use to know what came next, but I never got them right... so what I ended up doing was running my Playstation through a VCR, recording the moving cups, going back and rewatching the tape in slow motion to follow the one with the ball, then going back to the game and picking the one that had the ball.

 

PS2 had some cheats I used, but never very many. I remember using an infinite gil trick in Final Fantasy X, then using the gil toss or spare change or whatever attack for like 9999 damage on every turn. But off hand, I can't remember using too many others.

 

Most other systems I haven't really cheated much on that I can remember. I only just recently got a Action Replay cartridge thing for my Saturn, but the only cheat I've used on it is full power, infinite bombs, and infinite lives on Darius Gaiden.

 

There are some people who will argue that using a controller with turbo fire is cheating. Well, I do that, too. Especially any shooter on the TurboGrafx (heck, it's built into the standard controller!), but I also will use the NES Advantage on shooters for that system. Looking to get a stick with auto fire for the Genesis so that Truxton won't kill my thumb.

 

Does the cheating cheapen the game? Somewhat. I remember back in my NES days, I had a spiral notebook with a list of all the games I played. I had columns and check marks and such for all kinds of things such as if I owned or rented it, if I liked it or not and if I wanted it, and if I beat it or not. But there was an asterisk next to any game that I had only beaten with a cheat code.

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