Whatever happened to cheats?

If you take a process which makes sense, and then do the complete bloody opposite, it does not make sense. I think we can all agree on this. For example, if you had to fly to another country in order to obtain your passport, this would not make sense.

Back in the olden days, when consoles proudly announced they were “16-BIT” or could display 32,768 colours (only 256 simultaneous colours, though), there were also these little things called “cheats” built into the game. These cheats, as you might guess, enable you to cheat. A sequence of button presses at the title screen, playing the background music files in a certain order (how come you can’t do that anymore either?)  or jumping and ducking in a particular spot would unlock things like invincibility, infinite ammo, the ability to skip levels or jump higher.

These cheats were a rather good idea, partly because in the pre-web days you were well chuffed with yourself for finding one out by reading “Nintendo Power”, or better yet, because Patrick Moore told you on GamesMaster’s Consoletation Zone. But the best thing about cheats is that they could help you if you got stuck. Dara OBriein once pointed out that video games are probably the only medium in which, after spending £40, you may well get stuck only be able to play through the first five minutes. Cheats got around this by making life easier for you. It was fun and made sense.

Today, for some reason, in order to obtain infinite ammo or invincibility, you first have to complete the game. This, friends, is flying to another country to obtain your passport. It’s having to swim across a piranha-infested river to collect your boat. Guess what? If I somehow survived the river, I don’t need the bloody boat anymore.

“Congratulations, you have finished ‘Uncharted 2′, now you can do it again with unlimited grenades”. Why the hell do I want to? I already killed the baddy and chose the more boring, less attractive woman for some reason. Why would I want to do it again only easier? The game is done and I don’t want to do it again. This is like eating a plate full of old arseholes and being too full for the delicious dessert.

So, cheats at the start, not the end. And put the BGM and SFX sounds back in the menus.

Fin.

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