Cheating in video games
Cheating in video games involves a player
of a video game creating an advantage bey-
ond the bounds of normal gameplay, usually
to make the game easier. Cheats include ad-
vantages
such as
invulnerability
("God
mode") or an infinite amount of some re-
source such as ammunition. Cheats may also
create unusual or interesting effects which
do not necessarily make the game easier to
play, such as making enemies tougher, or
giving characters (including enemies) differ-
ent appearances, such as large heads. Cheats
often take the form of ’secrets’ placed by
game developers, usually to reward dedic-
ated players.
Cheats may be activated from within the
game itself (a cheat code implemented by the
original game developers); or created by
third-party software (a game trainer) or hard-
ware (a cheat cartridge).
History
Cheating in video games has existed for al-
most their entire history. The first cheat
codes were put in place for play testing pur-
poses. Playtesters had to rigorously test the
mechanics of a game and introduced cheat
codes to make this process easier. An early
cheat code can be found in Manic Miner,
where typing "6031769" (the phone number
of the developer, Matthew Smith)[1] enables
the cheat mode.
Cheating on early home
computers
In a computer game, all numerical values are
stored ’as is’ in memory. Gamers could liter-
ally reprogram a small part of the game be-
fore launching it.[2] In the context of games
for many 8-bit computers, it was a usual
practice to load games into memory and, be-
fore launching them, modify specific memory
addresses in order to cheat, getting an unlim-
ited number of lives, immunity, invisibility,
etc. Such modifications were performed
through POKE sentences. The Commodore 64
and ZX Spectrum also allowed players with
the proper cartridges or Multiface add-on to
freeze the running program, enter POKEs,
and resume. Some games tried to detect the
Multiface, and refused to load if
it was
present. The earliest models had no ability to
"hide". Later revisions