10 Genius Ways Video Game Developers Outsmarted You

In the case of Sonic 3D Blast, developers Traveller's Tales pulled a fast one over not only players but also Sega themselves. Though you can enter a cheat code to access the game's secret level select menu, you may also encounter it during gameplay in a seemingly random fashion.

This is because the lead programmer of the Mega Drive version of the game, Jon Burton, coded it to throw up the level select menu whenever players encountered a game-breaking bug.

This allowed players to resume from any level they wished while also disguising the fact that the game just effectively crashed from both players and, perhaps more importantly, Sega's certification team.

In more recent years players also noticed that they could trigger the level select menu by wiggling the game cartridge around, which is actually due to the connection between the cartridge and console being broken, which the Mega Drive would of course register as a bug and immediately transport players to the level select screen.

In a word, genius.