10 Classic Cheats That Shaped Video Game History

3. Spawn Anything, Or God Mode (Grand Theft Auto series)

GTA

Grand Theft Auto games are massive. There are hundreds of cars, weapons, costumes, and other items the player can acquire and getting them all on one playthrough takes more time than most people have. Fortunately, the game€™s developer, Rockstar, are kindly enough to make cheat codes available to the player. With the right code, players can summon a bazooka and an armored car or helicopter out of thin air as soon as they fire up a new file of the game. Since Grand Theft Auto is such a free-roaming franchise to begin with, having anything and everything the game can throw at you available from the very beginning means it€™s possible to do just about anything you want to without playing a single mission. It€™s a good enough game that playing through it the right way is fun, but the Grand Theft Auto series is unique in the possibility to enjoy playing it without doing a single thing the designers really want you to do. There are many games where developers give you the option to play God. Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis, for example, featured an unlockable debug mode where the player could place any random object they wished into a level and then play through it, collecting insane amounts of coins or encountering ridiculous numbers of enemies. Goldeneye for Nintendo 64 allows players to unlock just about everything in the game immediately. You could get whatever weapon you wanted and the game even had a big-head mode a la NBA Jam. Tricks like these are always fun to tinker with, but very few games come close to the scope of Grand Theft Auto€™s cheating potential. As if it wasn€™t teaching bad enough lessons already€
 
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Kyle Schmidlin is a writer and musician living in Austin, TX. He manages the news blog at thirdrailnews.wordpress.com. Follow him at facebook.com/kyleschmidlin or twitter.com/kyleschmidlin1.