10 Video Game Cheat Codes That Changed Your Life
When replayability didn't come with a price tag.
The era of the cheat code was a damn special, nostalgic thing.
For me, it was a time of Xploder cheat cartridges; of printing out reams of button combinations, only to sit and tap them all in, one by one, until your game of choice was a blur of unlockables, special modes, floating cars, big heads and everything in between.
There was a joy to this stuff that almost feels like the console equivalent of modding on PC. The idea of taking a base game and twisting it - but within the realms of what a given developer had allowed.
Things like the Xploder, Game Shark or other third-party hardware would go further, often breaking some titles along the way, but the safety blanket of developer-approved codes were a blast to experiment with.
Many have since become legend; an essential part of revisiting any classic title, and the formation of why you fell in love with video games as a medium - let alone specific franchises, characters, world designs etc.
Obviously today the industry has found a way to monetise unlockables with microtransactions, DLC or segmented releases, but back before the current generation, it was a paradise of possibility.