The 10 Greatest Cheat Codes in Gaming History

Image via Complex Original

How to Activate: From the Versus Loaded screen, enter specific numbers to open cheats

One of the reasons Mortal Kombat 9 was so cool was because it harkened back to what made MK’s 1-3 rad—one on one, spine-rippin’, 2D kombat. But another awesome feature about this latest edition was all the kool kodes you could enter, which was reminiscent of MK3. Wanna fight armless? Then enter 911 911 at the verses screen.

How about zombie kombat? 666 666. Seriously, just tapping buttons—like the good ol’ days—could go a long way in this game. It’s a blast and makes us upset that video games so rarely use cheats in their games anymore. It’s a cryin’ shame. 

How to Activate: Highlight Ryu on the character select screen for three seconds, then go to T. Hawk for three seconds. Then press left and highlight Guile for three seconds. Press down and left to highlight Cammy for three seconds. Press left and up to go on Ryu for three seconds. After three seconds are up, press HP + MP + LP + start. Ta da, Akuma activated. 

By now, Akuma is standard and is in pretty much every new entry in the Street Fighter saga. But back in the day, when hidden characters were all the rage with Mortal Kombat, Capcom took it upon themselves to take an April Fool’s Joke from EGM and run with it. They did so by creating the character, Akuma, in response to EGM’s infamous “Sheng Long,” code. Everybody knows that you can fight Akuma in SSF2T if you go undefeated to the end of the game. But did you know that you could also play as him as well? Yep, it happened. And all it took was a few seconds on the character select screen. Who knew? Well, besides us, of course. 

How to Activate: Go to the Option Menu and go to the Sound test. Play these songs in this order: 19, 65, 09, and 17. Press start and exit. When the game starts up again, hold A and press start. Next, play the music tracks in this order: 1, 9, 9, 2, 1, 1, 2, 4. Before selecting a stage, hold A and press start. 

This code was just crazy. After a little tinkering with the music in the option menu and some button presses, you could turn Sonic into a ring, computer monitors, and other items in the game. You could also fly all over the place. It was like a bad LSD trip, with Tails running into spikes for comic relief, we guess. 

How to Activate: Enter the name "Zelda" when your asked to pick a name

Call us idiots, but back in 1986 when the original Legend of Zelda came out, many of us were either 3 or newly born (or not even born yet at all). So by the time we were old enough to actually hold a controller in our hands, a lot of us heard the title and instantly thought that the main character of the game was named Zelda instead of Link, as how were we to know that Zelda was a girl’s name back then? That said, a lot of us entered this code (write Zelda when you’re tasked to choose a name), by accident. Let’s give a big hip-hip hooray for ignorance, people!

How to Activate: In the original NBA Jam, enter a series of combinations to unlock specific players.

In the Wii NBA Jam, at the front end menu, press left 13 times, and then press + for the Democrats, and for the Republicans, press right 13 times and press +

NBA Jam has always been about out of control, Boomshakala gameplay. But one of the coolest features was being able to unlock special players like the Beastie Boys or the Clintons if you just entered a few codes.

Hell, even Reptile and Raiden from Mortal Kombat fame came out to sink some threes and do some killer dunks once in awhile. But the trend didn’t die with this generation, as you can do the same in the latest iterations, too. The last game for the Wii allowed you to play as Republicans and Democrats, so, you know, that’s ONE way for you to show your support for a specific political party. Take that!

How to Activate: Enter Justin Bailey at the password screen.

Who or what is Justin Bailey exactly? Nobody knows for certain. But if you entered the name in the password screen, you could see sweet, Samus Aran, wearing nothing but a one-piece suit and a blaster.

Nowadays, EVERYBODY knows that Samus Aran is a lady underneath that bulky power suit. But back in 1986, nope, nobody knew. So finding out back then that “he” was a “she” led to a lot of prepubescent pee-pee’s getting hard. And yes, we can say that. This is the internet, dammit, and that’s pretty tame by its standards. Where’ve you been?

How to Activate: Type in IDDQD during gameplay

Yes, God Mode existed before Doom, but the mode just seems to fit best in a game that takes place in Hell. God! Damn it! 

How to Activate: Enter specific button presses on the controller during gameplay—for example, all weapons in GTA3: R2, R2, L1, R2, left, down, right, up, left, down, right, up. 

While it may have looked like you didn’t know where you were going or that you had ADD whenever you input the myriad codes in the GTA series, no other video game in recent memory gave you more for your cheating heart than this series. Infinite weapons were only the beginning, hombre. You could do so much more if you just futzed around with the buttons and controls.

Foggy weather, Get a tank, and a whole slew of other codes were all fair game. With an open, sandbox game like this, entering codes and fooling with them was like a totally different game entirely. It made the game that much better, and it was already a pretty awesome game to begin with.

How to Activate: Either while the game is paused or at the opening screen, press Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A. 

Yes, you knew this was coming. The Konami Code is probably the most famous code in all of gaming and for a reason. While it didn’t start out in Contra (Gradius is the recipient of that title), it was probably most beloved in the Contra series just because of the game’s damned difficulty.

But once the cat was out the bag, it became a mandatory procedure to try it out in EVERY Konami game ever made, just to see if it would work. Now THAT’S a code.