Cheating at Video Games

I found an article at Slate today that I wanted to share. It's about video game cheating.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, B, A

If you know that code, you had a Nintendo in the 80's! The article is dead-on about the acceptance of cheating in "old-school" video-games and the problem now with cheating in the new era of MMORPG's (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games.)

But "up, up, down, down, left, right, b, a" takes me back. It was 20 years ago, when Elie and I would sit in my kitchen on snow-days surrounded by junk food and engage in marathon sessions of games we rented at the local video store. Ah, those marathon sessions of Contra & Super Mario Brothers! Always with the cheat codes and extra live tricks were there to keep us going!

In college it was "god-mode" for 1st-person shooters like Dark Forces, Castle Wolfenstein and DOOM! Nothing better than playing DOOM "god-mode" at 2am in your dorm room when you should be writing that history report! Chainsaw FTW!!! (for the win!)

Now, not so much. There are times when I miss the days of cheat-codes and actually "winning" a video game instead of the constant, endless pseudo-reality of World of Warcraft. Ah, nostalgia...

up, up, down, down, left, right, b, a