Legacy Games
Today’s gaming world is a lot different than the golden era, in the nineties—or the eighties; depending on who you ask. Gaming historians tend to separate gaming golden ages into two distinct but different eras.
The era of the eighties was the era of the arcade. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Street Fighter are just a few of the most popular games from that time (for a more comprehensive list of the top arcade games of all time, visit Nerdleaks.com).
The nineties was the era of the console. Both had their respective peaks. Really, golden era arcades peaked around 1994, while consoles still haven’t hit the “ceiling”, as it were, regarding their capabilities. However, it’s widely recognized that from the late nineties until about 2007 was the “golden age” of console games.
This is when cheats were at their most mainstream, and some of the funniest ones will be found during this time when consoles ruled the gaming world. With that in mind, following we’ll explore some of the funniest known video game cheat codes out there.
Most of these will be from the console era of the nineties, but there are other hilarious opportunities for cheats in modern games as well.
The Infamous Resident Evil 2 Tofu
- You’ve got to beat the game with Leon and Claire, then make it through Fourth Survivor mode using the “Hunk” character. Do that, and you’ll be able to play as a giant block of tofu in the “Fourth Survivor” mini-game. Yes, it’s worth it. Well, if you love Resident Evil, anyway.
This “Tofu” character ultimately showed up in many other Resident Evil games as a result of its popularity in Resident Evil 2.
- More of a Generalization: Using Code to Make Your Own Jokes
PC games have their own hilarious cheats too, but you can just use DLL injections to make such games do whatever you want; so you can really be the author of your own in-game comedy. True, the capability existed to do the same during the golden era of gaming, but you’d really have to know how to program.
Online games today can be made to do as you will at your whim, if you’re willing to conduct the research into existing code options. For example, through Guided Hacking’s game hacking bible, you can find all sorts of amazing in-game hacks; some quite hilarious, some of the classic variety.
- Tomb Raider II, 1997 – But Not What You’re Expecting
Whether or not the “nude code” exists for the 90’s Tomb Raider series, featuring busty Lara Croft, is still a matter of conjecture. What’s not a matter of conjecture is that there’s a cheat code that will make Lara literally explode, and it was touted as the famous nude code. This is a practical joke code.
You can have your friend input it expecting one thing, then “boom!”. You can look online for more details, but you basically go one step forward, one step backward, turn around three times, then jump either forward or backward.
- TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, 2005: Man-Made Gun Sounds
So the folks who made TimeSplitters and TimeSplitters: Future Perfect are also the folks primarily responsible for Perfect Dark and Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64. In those games, you could have paintball mode, or DK mode, also known as “big head mode”. Both were activated by cheats, and were a lot of fun to play around with.
For TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, there’s a cheat that replaces the sound of bullets with the sound of a human being making bullet noises. This is absolutely sidesplitting, if a bit juvenile.
This cheat is also easily unlocked, you only need to earn the bronze level on a challenge called “Cat’s Out Of The Bag”; voila: human gun sounds. This cheat can only be used in “Arcade” mode, though.
Getting the Most Out of Any Game, and Laughing, Too
All games have cheat codes that produce funny results, these are just four of the funniest you’ll find in some of the world’s most popular games. From anthropomorphic gun sounds to exploding Lara, generalized code manipulation using known cheats, and playing as a giant piece of Tofu, these are some of the funniest cheats out there.