Your cheating heart
This is just brilliant. Some geek wired up his Playstation 2 controller to his computer, and had it do a brute-force attack on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, trying out thousands of button combinations -- in an attempt to find secret game-cheats. It worked: He discovered several hilarious ones, including:
Cars Fly
UP, DOWN, L1, R1, L1, RIGHT, LEFT, L1, LEFT
But not like the old Dodo cheat. You have thrust while you're in the air, and can go faster than any airplane. Great for bookin' around the map from place to place.
Mega Punch
UP, LEFT, X, TRIANGLE, R1, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, CIRCLE, L2
Punches send people flying into the next block. One hit kills. Watch out, peds have it too!
I particularly love that former cheat, since it reminds me of the Matrix-like quality of gamespace. Much as in a dream, when you're inside a game, you can oftentimes do something -- type in some subtle cheat code -- that transforms the nature of the world, and suddenly, hey, you're flying! (Actually, in his book Playing the Future, Douglas Rushkoff argued that games could quite precisely be compared to dreams, and that this is why they ought to be analyzed with psychoanalytic rigor.)
More importantly, this guy's discovery reminds me of the weird semantics of game "cheats". Because of course, most of today's cheats really aren't cheats, at least not in the classic sense of cheating. The early cheats -- such as the famous Asteroids cheat that gave you hundreds of extra men -- were genuine bugs, little burps in the code that were included by accident and discovered by sneaky, infinite-monkey gamers. By the mid-90s, game designers realized the cheats were so popular that they began actively designing secret codes into the game. At this point, discovering a cheat was no longer an illicit affair; you were merely happening upon an extra easter egg the programmers had included specifically for you to find. But since gamers love feeling like rebels, the game companies continued to call these things "cheats", even though the companies began profiting wildly by publishing guides to the cheats.
Antonio Gramsci couldn't have dreamt up a better illustration of hegemony.
Nonetheless, this guy's discovery of the new San Andreas cheats falls somewhere close to the original meaning of "cheat". His discoveries were genuine secrets: Though Rockstar's designers obviously programmed them intentionally into the game, they have never actively published or promoted them.
(Thanks to Slashdot for this one!)
Posted by Clive Thompson at January 19, 2005 01:40 PM
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I always assumed that at least some of the cheats were there to help the game testers so they could skip over something they've tested already and get to the bit they're supposed to be testing, or things like that.
According to a friend who worked on a certain popular first person shooter, one of the guys at his company hid a room full of weapons, armour and health in a death-match map and had a key combination that teleported him in and out of it. He'd put it in there to cheat, but one of the QA testers had found it when flying around the map in "noclip" (a testing mode that lets you fly through walls). It was too late in the QA cycle to redesign the map, so they just stubbed out the key stroke so you couldn't get to it.
Posted by: Paul Tomblin at January 19, 2005 2:52 PM
Is it legal to say "Antonio Gramsci" in your country?
;-D
Posted by: Mario at January 20, 2005 7:52 AM
up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A
Posted by: brian at January 20, 2005 9:31 AM
There was a Konami Super Nintendo game where that code would kill you. The real code substituted the shoulder buttons for the left and right.
Posted by: Jeff Liu at January 20, 2005 10:47 AM
Heh. I like the idea of a suicide code. Paul, that's really interesting -- I wonder how many other cheats were created for testers?
Mario, it isn't illegal to talk about Gramsci here ... yet.
Posted by: Clive at January 20, 2005 10:56 AM
Clive,
Funny you should mention a suicide code - my roomate and I have just re-discovered the joy of Mortal Kombat now that Halo 2 is out of our lives. I was reading up on some fatalities to drop on him outta the blue when I came across a new feature in the latest MK installment -
Hara-Kiri! http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/mortalkombatdeception/review-2.html
As far as I'm concerned, this is a brilliant addition - possibly empowering the loser of a match by allowing them to dispatch themselves before being dealt a fatality by their smug peer.
Score another point for the evolution of game-based shit talking.
Posted by: brian at January 20, 2005 11:36 AM
just checked my Echelo*n keyword list, and "gramsci" isn't there. so with impunity, all: gramsci, gramsci, gramsci.
Posted by: christo at January 20, 2005 8:22 PM
J. Huizinga said that secrets were an important part of ludic activity. The one who can answer a challenging riddle is allowed to pass into secret areas or is allowed to join more select members of a play-group. Those who have secret knowledge mark themselves as members of an elite sector of a play group.
R. Caillois cut secrecy from his theory of games but the gaming culture that has grown up around the discovery of codes, game-breaking combos, etc. suggests that the economy of secrets should be part of any ludology.
P.s. An 8 year old kicked my behind at Halo2. I am not leet.
Posted by: Erik at January 21, 2005 8:49 PM
It would have been cooler if he reverse engineered the PS2 game controller protocol and had the computer send emulated signals directly.
Posted by: Nathan J. Yoder at January 22, 2005 2:38 PM
Posted by: dishnetwork at February 12, 2005 7:51 PM
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I always assumed that at least some of the cheats were there to help the game testers so they could skip over something they've tested already and get to the bit they're supposed to be testing, or things like that.
According to a friend who worked on a certain popular first person shooter, one of the guys at his company hid a room full of weapons, armour and health in a death-match map and had a key combination that teleported him in and out of it. He'd put it in there to cheat, but one of the QA testers had found it when flying around the map in "noclip" (a testing mode that lets you fly through walls). It was too late in the QA cycle to redesign the map, so they just stubbed out the key stroke so you couldn't get to it.
Posted by: Paul Tomblin at January 19, 2005 2:52 PM
Is it legal to say "Antonio Gramsci" in your country?
;-D
Posted by: Mario at January 20, 2005 7:52 AM
up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A
Posted by: brian at January 20, 2005 9:31 AM
There was a Konami Super Nintendo game where that code would kill you. The real code substituted the shoulder buttons for the left and right.
Posted by: Jeff Liu at January 20, 2005 10:47 AM
Heh. I like the idea of a suicide code. Paul, that's really interesting -- I wonder how many other cheats were created for testers?
Mario, it isn't illegal to talk about Gramsci here ... yet.
Posted by: Clive at January 20, 2005 10:56 AM
Clive,
Funny you should mention a suicide code - my roomate and I have just re-discovered the joy of Mortal Kombat now that Halo 2 is out of our lives. I was reading up on some fatalities to drop on him outta the blue when I came across a new feature in the latest MK installment -
Hara-Kiri! http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/mortalkombatdeception/review-2.html
As far as I'm concerned, this is a brilliant addition - possibly empowering the loser of a match by allowing them to dispatch themselves before being dealt a fatality by their smug peer.
Score another point for the evolution of game-based shit talking.
Posted by: brian at January 20, 2005 11:36 AM
just checked my Echelo*n keyword list, and "gramsci" isn't there. so with impunity, all: gramsci, gramsci, gramsci.
Posted by: christo at January 20, 2005 8:22 PM
J. Huizinga said that secrets were an important part of ludic activity. The one who can answer a challenging riddle is allowed to pass into secret areas or is allowed to join more select members of a play-group. Those who have secret knowledge mark themselves as members of an elite sector of a play group.
R. Caillois cut secrecy from his theory of games but the gaming culture that has grown up around the discovery of codes, game-breaking combos, etc. suggests that the economy of secrets should be part of any ludology.
P.s. An 8 year old kicked my behind at Halo2. I am not leet.
Posted by: Erik at January 21, 2005 8:49 PM
It would have been cooler if he reverse engineered the PS2 game controller protocol and had the computer send emulated signals directly.
Posted by: Nathan J. Yoder at January 22, 2005 2:38 PM
But irony doesn't only operate directv free along the axis of value. If we direct tv give up the idea of "liking things dish network ironically" as we surely should directway that doesn't mean our aesthetics satellite tv are suddenly irony-free. (To claim satellite tv this would be as silly as all those directtv pundits saying that irony was dead dish tv post-9/11.) Because irony can also satellite internet
Posted by: dishnetwork at February 12, 2005 7:51 PM