10 Insane Video Game Secrets You Had To Cheat To Unlock

Cheating has been a part of video games almost since the beginning. The halcyon days of the 1980s and 1990s were rife with talk of certain strings of button inputs that could show you secrets, unlock new content or make you unbeatably powerful.

Whilst the nature of the cheat code sometimes made it hard to know what was real and not, especially before the days of the internet, this was all part of the fun.

In the modern gaming space, cheating can take any number of forms. Whilst the classics might be a rarer sight, the on-set of mods and hacks are a fresh new way to see and find things that developers tucked away - whether they anticipated players would find them or not.

Unlockable characters, secret abilities, hidden modes and mind-blowing Easter Eggs: there really is no end to secrets in gaming and we're all the better for it. This list celebrates just a few video game cheats, from the retro to the modern day, and some of the best and wildest secrets that can only be found if players are willing to get their hands dirty.

Cheaters may or may not win, but they at least have a story to tell.

We’ve all seen the “out of bounds - return to map” sorts of messages in games. Gone are the days of invisible walls trying to keep players on the right path. If we try to leave a map, developers will just set up a kill zone to stop us.

By activating a hack that bypasses the standard countdown warning, Battlefield 3 players are able to really explore what’s out beyond a stage’s boundaries. Most of the time there isn’t much to write home about, except on the mission Kaffarov.

Outside of the expected area there is, for whatever reason, a huge map to explore. Sure, there’s not a lot here (or so it seems at first) but it’s truly interesting to see how much additional space was rendered and constructed complete with foliage and, after several minutes of sprinting, a road by the ocean. Tucked away beyond this little walk through nature lies an interactable SUV.

What is it doing here? Whilst the SUV appears throughout the campaign, why is this the only example of this vehicle being drivable in all of Battlefield 3? The answers to these questions we can only guess but at least it gives us an opportunity for a leisurely drive by the coast. Nice.