CHEATING IN VIDEO GAMES

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Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
Recently, I got a gameshark for my PS2. This got me to thinking about cheating in games in general.

By cheating, I'm narrowing the field down to third party products like game genies, gamesharks, etc. Certain games have little tricks in them to make the game easier, like getting the final sword with careful item creation by the end of disk one - I'm not counting stuff like that. I'm talkin straight up cheating.

How often do you do so: all the time, only when you need to, not at all? Did you used to cheat when you were a kid, but then stopped? Is there a system you prticularly do it for?

Me - not long after I got a nintendo, the Game Genie came out, and it was like the greatest thing ever invented by man to me and my brother. It started off a chain reaction where I tried to find every (normal) cheat in games (like that one mega man game where if you held some buttons on the second controller, you could jump super high and not die from pits). It was so cool that you could only have three codes active at a time, so we'd look through the code book and try to maximize are awesome by picking the three absolute best codes, or trying weird codes and see what it affected. We had a blast, and before long I was always using it so I could finish games before I had to return them to the rental place.

Eventually, the SNES came out, and half-way (?) through its cycle, the snes game genie came out. This was a godsend for me, and I jumped on it. While I loved my RPGs, I was rather bad at them by the time the endgame came around. I needed a jump to level 99, and fast. It wasn't long before I was scouring magazines to try and find ANY codes for my games (i remember only ONE magazine having codes for Secret of Mana, and I was so happy when a kid I knew had it.) and soon after THAT I was prining off 60 page game genie code sheets off the dot matrix for games like Final Fantasy 2 and 3. I tried almost every code, just to see what it was like. Most of them weren't even useful, but it was sure fun. I still have those sheets, somewhere...

After that the gameshark for the Playstation was like... an order of magnitude better - and more refined. I could watch the AMVs off of games, have all the codes already entered and turned on at the touch of a button - but I didn't use it much after my first few years after getting it, probably because the PS2 came out and the shark only worked on the original PS.

Finally, I got my Gameshark 2 v.3 for the Playstation 2 after I realized something. I just plain suck at video games. I love them to death, but I have more fun just plowing through them when I can play them how I want to play them. It's just somehow... freeing. Like if you played some game and want to do it again, but quicker - you can make your own new game + for a game that doesn't have one. Knowing that if I screw up somewhere, or get held up somehow, that I don't have to stop. True, that sense of magic about them is gone - They don't make codes anymore to, say, give you three cecils after one battle, or turn terra's hair white - but when there's a code to let me save wherever I damn well want, I am satisfied.

So please, share your opinions, and your shame.
(and I know everyone's at least once played rpgMaker games in debug mode so they could walk through walls)
Beat the game legit first. After that, go nuts.
I've never used third party products to cheat. Well actually that's not true, a friend of mine owned a game genie for the NES and we played through Total Recall with it (that game was not only bad but also impossible).

However I'm not against cheating with the tools provided to me. (such as secret codes and built-in cheat modes and stuff like that). The only real reason I've never used third party stuff is because I don't want to install some weird "cheater" on my computer just so I could have a weird game experience. I don't tend to install a whole lot of mods for my games either.

But generally I don't like outright cheating if I'm playing a game for the first time. I'd much rather spend time to "game" the system than modify the parameters. And by gaming the system I mean exploit the AI or a randomness factor in the game (a.k.a quicksave/quickload)
I always beat a game first, and I cheat to play around and learn stuff. Fire Emblem for the GBA (any) really had fun keeping you from save cheating- if you turned off the power and turned it back on, you get to watch the same exact battle happen with the same exact outcome and watch your character die again ^^

Not only did it save every time you made a move, it also saved the outcome (or the random seed).
I don't like cheating, once i start it opens up a massive hole where i just use every single cheat until i've completed the game.
Yeah i stay away.
tardis
is it too late for ironhide facepalm
308
post=114558
Beat the game legit first. After that, go nuts.


My philosophy. On very rare occasion, I will lose all patience with a game (say it has a roadblock i have been incapable of passing for a month+) and if i'm not really enjoying the whole game that much, i've cheated to finish.

Outside of that, cheats are pretty much just used for fun/amusement. Although every time I do a playthrough of a pokemon game after gold/silver, I say fuck it to the starter pokemon and hack in my own selections of say 3 pokemon that amuse me all at level 2. Then I go from there. No legendaries though, legendaries are stupid.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=114584
post=114558
Beat the game legit first. After that, go nuts.
My philosophy.

Same here. One thing that I really liked was the eggs in Jak 3 - you could purchase the silly "cheats" for cheap (BIG HEAD MODE GO) and then save up for the end-game and run around with your cars++++.

Also, I have never even seen a gameshark. I have friends that talk about them, but I'm like "...I like to beat something with my own abilities, tyvmgth"
halibabica
RMN's Official Reviewmonger
16873
The only time I've really cheated at a game using a Game Genie/Shark was in Pokemon to get the ones you can't get normally like Mew and Celebi (which Nintendo refused to include 'cuz they're bastards). I agree with a lot of what's been said so far. Cheating to make a game easier just doesn't feel right. I suppose it was different back in the day when games were genuinely hard, but nowadays they're catered to a wider group of people (with the truly difficult stuff being optional).

I think cheating is the sort of thing you eventually grow out of. Once you hit a certain age/skill level, the things you found too hard before seem less impossible, or even become easy.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
Yeah, it usually best to play as far as you can before you resort to cheating. That way (i think) you still get the feel of the game, and can get all nostaligic about it later, even if you had to cheat to finish it later.

Heh, I still remember playing Secret of mana, i hate this no damage code that I could turn on and off - only I think I figured out that it made no damage to ANYTHING possible. So, there I was at the final battle, frantically turning the game genie on and off when I was attacking and trying to keep from being attack, all while trying not to waste all my magic because you neeeded that one sword buff to beat the game.

Fun times.
Ocean
Resident foodmonster
11991
I play legit first, until I find it too hard, then I cheat. I cheat fairly regularly though, which contributes to me sucking at games. Usually through save state abuse. Then again it's not like being good at games would seem like a particularly useful skill for me. And some games difficulty comes from all the wrong places (YOU NEED TO LEVEL A LOT TO BEAT BOSS), so I don't feel bad cheating/exploiting it. For the most part I enjoy the game more when I cheat than when it's too hard, that just frustrates me.

And I'll install mods and stuff to make the game more convenient for me, like no item limits, and things like that. I tried Oblivion without infinite holding, and I couldn't take it and went back.
I've never beat a megaman game without cheating :(
The only game I have legitimately cheated on to beat is Fear Effect, and if you've played it you should understand why.
Also, i ctrl + f'd "grand theft auto" and NOTHING came up.
Really? No mention of GTA in a cheating thread?
There are some games that make me want to (I'm looking at you Castlevania 3), but honestly I don't find much fun in game cheats. I guess I'm just not that kind of person to go crazy over them.
The last time I played FF10 I just cheated my way to hitting fifty balloons and dodging three hundred lightning bolts and abused save states to catch butterflies because fuck that kind of shit. I cheat when I think it'll improve the game.

Or cut out bullshit
I don't have a principled stance against cheating, however I never do it because I find I can't control myself after I cheat just a little bit, so it ruins the game for me.
Well if it is a single player game and you feel you can't go on without a cheat, i believe you.... you do not deserve to play that game YOU CHEATER!

.... some games lose the hole idea after you cheat..
TehGuy
Resident Nonexistence
1827
I play through without cheats, then I turn on whatever I want and go nuts the second time.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702
It's nice to see that people still enjoy doing whatever they want when they've finished the game. I always like to see what happens when you are over powered and beat story sequences you're not supposed to - I like to see if the game programmers anticipated that.

Since I got the gameshark, i actually did put it to good use. Ring-of-Red. A Fantastic game that really makes world war 2 seem like a fun time, with rickety old walking tanks walking around shooting giant shells at each other- very visceral and satisfying.

The downside to the game is that battles can take a REALLY LONG TIME, and eventually the maps get to be so huge and so full of enemies that completing a single mission would take you three hours+. I had given up after a dozen or so missions, it just got to be too crazy hard. Knowing I would never have the strength of will to put in in again and plow on through, I can alter the difficulty to something more manageable, and still enjoy the game. THAT is what cheating is for. I even noticed a cheat for FFXII that could alter enemy max hp by 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16. how cool is that?
Those cheats were made for Yiazmat. Fuck some three hour fight with 1/16th HP maybe it won't take ages!

Now they just need to remove those Become-Invulnerable-To-Everything skills because seriously?
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