8 Video Game Cheats You Were Forced To Use

8. Contra Code - Contra

You can't really speak of video game cheats that were spammed so much they belonged on an OAP lunch special without talking about the one and only Contra Code from the title of the same name.

It's pretty much a code so embedded into the public consciousness that anyone could rattle this off at any given notice, and the fact that so many other titles have put the sequences of up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start is a testament to how utterly essential this was to the game itself.

Contra might not be the most challenging video game out there, but it's not one that messes around, and will happily butcher the player at any given opportunity, therefore this cheeky 30-lives-for-free code was often used to help players reach the end.

Plus you have to think about things this way, would this code have become so prevalent if the game in question wasn't hard enough that it forced people to cheat? Unlikely, so I rest my case.