The 10 Greatest Cheat Codes in Gaming History

While cheat codes don't seem to be in that many games these days, there's still definitely a great history behind them.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Cheating on your girl? Not cool, man. Cheating in video games? Pretty awesome. While video games are all about the challenge involved and overcoming said challenges, cheat codes just make video games more fun and more interesting. And while cheat codes don’t seem to be in that many games these days, there’s still definitely a great history behind them. Care to take a look…cheater?

Mortal Kombat 9: Input codes on the verses screen

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Mortal Kombat: Blood Code

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How to Activate: From the “Code of Honor” screen, press A, B, A, C, A, B, B on the Genesis controller

Speaking of Mortal Kombat. If you enter what essentially sounds like the band, Genesis’, 11th studio album at the Code of Honor screen (ABACABB), you’ll get sweet, glorious blood for the infamous, blast processing Sega Genesis. Sure, in all later console versions of MK, blood would just be in the game from the get-go.

But back in 1993 when the SNES and Genesis were competing, which version of MK did YOU buy? The version that had sweat fly out when you uppercut someone (SNES), or the one where you could enter a code and BLOOOOOD would fly out (Genesis) instead? Yeah, we chose the Genesis version, too. 

Street Fighter: Play as Akuma in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo

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Sonic the Hedgehog 2: Debug Mode

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Legend of Zelda: Second Quest

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NBA Jam: Play as Special Characters

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Metroid: Bikini-clad Samus

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Doom: God Mode

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Grand Theft Auto: Various cheats

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The Konami Code

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