In the spring of 1984 the letters pages of Britain’s computer magazines filled up with a seven-digit number. Type 6031769 while Manic Miner is running, Sinclair User’s readers learned in March, and “a boot will appear by the lives at the bottom”; then hold down combinations of the number keys and the game jumps to any of its twenty caverns. By June Computer & Video Games could begin a tip with “Everyone must have heard by now that it’s possible to cheat on the Spectrum version of Manic Miner”.
A cheat code is a secret input, a number, a word or a sequence of buttons, that changes a game’s rules: more lives, a level select, invulnerability, all the weapons. Unlike a POKE, which alters the program from outside, a cheat code is something the game itself was written to recognise.
Put there for testing
Very often the person who wrote it in was the programmer, who needed a way through their own game. Wireframe reported in 2022 that Manic Miner’s number was based on Matthew Smith’s driving licence. When the game moved to Software Projects, the code changed with it. In September 1984 C&VG’s tips columnist, who admitted to being confused too, set out “the codes for the last time”: 6031769 for the Bug-Byte tape, TYPEWRITER for the Software Projects one, and WRITETYPER for Jet Set Willy.
Kazuhisa Hashimoto put what Wireframe calls “the most famous cheat code of all” into Konami’s Famicom Gradius in 1986 because, as he later said, he could not finish the game himself. Andrew Braybrook, author of Paradroid, told Wireframe that publishers sometimes pushed developers to add cheat modes “so they could see that the game is all there, or skip past a bit that wasn’t working properly”, and might then insist the cheat stayed in the final master. Once a code was in a released game, he added, “it’s going to get published sooner or later”.
Wireframe suggests an earlier candidate for the first cheat code: XYZZY, the magic word in Colossal Cave Adventure, which carries the player between two distant locations and saves a long walk back with the treasure.
How the codes travelled
The magazines ran on readers’ discoveries, and they printed the finders. CRASH’s tips pages in August 1984 signed off each tip with a name and a town, David Fortune of Bramley, Leeds, or Kris Hammond from Whitchurch, Bristol, and C&VG told readers they had “Simon Stokes from Erdington, Birmingham to thank” for one of its tips. Nintendo Power’s Classified Information column did it differently: its tips came “From Agent #312” or “From Agent #010”, a numbered secret agent rather than a named reader. Its January 1993 column gave the Konami Code a heading of its own and described it as “a long-standing code which makes for special circumstances in several games”: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start.
The telephone was the next channel. By 1991 British magazines carried adverts for “Dial-a-Tip” cheat lines on premium-rate 0898 numbers, “updated weekly”. One in Amiga Action in June 1991 charged 33p a minute cheap rate and 44p at other times, and printed the line “PLEASE GET PERMISSION TO RING”. Hint Lines follows that business.
The playground needed no adverts. In April 1994 the German magazine PC Player opened an editorial by asking what the most frequently asked question in Germany’s school playgrounds was, and answered: “Kennst du schon den Blood Code für Mortal Kombat?”, do you know the blood code for Mortal Kombat yet? On the Mega Drive version, pressing A, B, A, C, A, B, B at the code screen unlocked the blood and the fatal finishing moves that the conversion otherwise hid. The German Video Games had printed it in November 1993 as the “Gore Code”; the American fanzine Digital Press listed it the same year as the “Quick Blood Code”.
Codes without translation
A cheat code is a literal string, so it crossed borders unchanged. id Software’s Doom (1993) answered to typed words such as IDDQD, for invulnerability, and IDKFA, for every weapon and key. Germany’s PC Player explained IDDQD in February 1994 (“Mit »IDDQD« machen Sie sich unverwundbar”, with IDDQD you make yourself invulnerable), and Computer Gaming World did the same in April. The Italian MC Microcomputer called them “famosi ormai”, famous by now, in February 1995. That January the Russian magazine Games printed the Doom II codes and, beside them, the codes for Heretic, where the same two strings had become traps: IDDQD gave instant death and IDKFA took every weapon away.
Some codes outlived their games. More than a decade after Manic Miner, DMA Design’s Grand Theft Auto (1997) accepted 6031769 as a cheat when typed in as the player’s name. C&VG and the Australian PC PowerPlay both listed it in June 1998.
The Konami Code
The Konami Code, ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A, began as Hashimoto’s shortcut in the Famicom Gradius in April 1986. The NES Contra made it famous in America as the way to start with 30 lives, and by 1991 Nintendo Power was calling it “the Konami Code”. Its history has its own entry.
Fewer codes
Wireframe describes the 1990s and early 2000s as “a golden era for the popularity of cheat codes and unlockable secrets”, with tips magazines, official guides and websites such as GameFAQs. Online play, Wireframe argues, made cheating less acceptable, because one player’s advantage came at other players’ expense. It also suggests that button-press codes became rare because they “can mess up carefully designed achievement systems”, and some publishers began to sell unlocks instead. Some games kept them anyway. Wireframe names Fallout: New Vegas, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto V, which let players cheat but switch off trophies and achievements while they do.
Sources
- Sinclair User issue 24, March 1984, readers’ pages: the Manic Miner tip, “type 6031769. A boot will appear by the lives at the bottom”.
- CRASH issue 4, May 1984, readers’ letters: the same code, “A boot appears where the lives normally are displayed”.
- Computer & Video Games issue 32, June 1984, tips: “Everyone must have heard by now that it’s possible to cheat on the Spectrum version of Manic Miner”; “Simon Stokes from Erdington, Birmingham to thank”. Issue 35, September 1984, tips, “All the codes”: “for those of you who, like me, still get confused”, “the codes for the last time”: 6031769 (Bug-Byte), TYPEWRITER (Software Projects), WRITETYPER (Jet Set Willy).
- Personal Computer Games issue 13, December 1984, p. 128: the Bug-Byte and Software Projects codes for Manic Miner.
- CRASH issue 7, August 1984, pp. 80–81, tips: David Fortune of Bramley, Leeds; Kris Hammond from Whitchurch, Bristol.
- Phil King, “Cheat codes”, Wireframe issue 68, November 2022, pp. 58–61: XYZZY as a contender for the first cheat; Hashimoto; Manic Miner’s code and Matthew Smith’s driving licence; Andrew Braybrook on publishers and cheat modes; the Mortal Kombat Blood Code; the “golden era”, online cheating, achievements, paid unlocks and the games that keep cheats.
- Nintendo Power issue 44, January 1993, Super Power Club insert, Classified Information, p. 26: “The Konami Code” with Start; tips “From Agent #312”, “From Agent #010”, “From Agent #614”.
- Dial-a-Tip cheatline advertisement, Amiga Action issue 21, June 1991: 0898 numbers, 33p and 44p a minute, “PLEASE GET PERMISSION TO RING”. The same service advertised in Zero issue 15, January 1991.
- PC Player (Germany), April 1994, editorial: the Blood Code as the playground question.
- Video Games (Germany), November 1993, Mortal Kombat tips: the Mega Drive “Gore Code”, A, B, A, C, A, B, B.
- Digital Press, Tricks version 3.0 (1993), edited by Joe Santulli: Mortal Kombat, Genesis, “Quick Blood Code”, A, B, A, C, A, B, B at the code screen.
- PC Player (Germany), February 1994, Doom tips: IDCLEV, IDDQD, IDBEHOLD.
- Computer Gaming World issue 117, April 1994: Doom’s IDDQD “to render yourself indestructible”.
- MC Microcomputer (Italy) issue 148, February 1995: “Famosi ormai quelli di Doom (IDDQD o IDKFA ad esempio)”.
- Games (Russia), January 1995, cheats pages: Doom II codes; Heretic’s IDDQD, “instant death”, and IDKFA, “complete loss of weapons”.
- Computer & Video Games issue 199, June 1998, and PC PowerPlay (Australia) issue 25, June 1998: Grand Theft Auto codes typed as the player’s name, including 6031769.