“That’s the game and code that really stands out to me,” says Hansen. This finger-tapped formula also powered up Castlevania (50 lives), enhanced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (giving characters silly noises as they walk), and famously altered Contra (30 lives). The Konami Code, named after the game’s publisher, lived on far beyond just Gradius. Tapping in this code after pressing start (one-player mode only) would give the player’s ship all the power-ups, making the game immensely easier. This seemingly small piece of code would become seared into the minds of early gamers: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. So he created a code that was easy to remember so he could breeze through the tough spots. In the early 80s, a video game called Gradius was in the process of being ported to ultra-popular NES, and the game's developer, Kazuhisa Hashimoto, realized the game was too difficult during its debugging phase-so difficult that Hashimoto couldn’t even beat the levels himself. Historically, the way to do this was to “PEEK” into a section of the code in memory, then “POKE” it with an alternate value before loading the game. So to alter those settings, a player needed to change the variables in the game code. During gameplay, those variables will change depending on how well-or how poorly-you’re playing. Among the many lines of code in a game, there are variables that indicate the amount of lives the game character has, how much energy is available, and hundreds of other attributes.
These first cheat codes were known as POKE statements, a technique to reverse-engineer game code. “Also, maybe unintentionally, they can make games more accessible to inexperienced gamers.” "Cheat codes help with testing and iterating a game until it’s just right," Renne Gittins, indie game developer and executive director of the International Game Developers Association, told Popular Mechanics. But once a game was finished, it was easier for developers to just leave in their little hacks instead of manually pulling them out of the source code. In the early years of the gaming industry, developers baked cheat codes into games as a way to jump from level to level while beta-testing, Dustin Hansen, author of Game On!, told Popular Mechanics. Science & Society Picture Library // Getty ImagesĮarly cheat codes weren't really cheat codes at all-they were developer tools. The ZX Spectrum, one of the earliest home consoles and home of many POKE cheats.
0 kommentar(er)
