The Cheats Of Video Games Part 1

Terms, definitions and other information about cheats and their use
Playing with video games is one of the most widespread forms of entertainment nowadays. Children from the age of 5 or 8 and even the older generations can find a video game to their taste that can help them escape to another world for a few hours. You can experience virtual adventures, wonder in the worlds of long forgotten empires, lead space battles, play the last week’s game with your favourite basketball team, control airplanes and submarines with the help of simulators and you can also be a part of the most blood dripping scenes in a matter of minutes.

There are limitless opportunities that are only bounded by the minds of the video game developers. Fortunately, nowadays PC’s are not the only possibilities to enjoy video games but you can also enjoy the benefits of other game systems like Sony PSP, PS2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo which operate with the help of a digital disk and can be plugged into your TV set providing you with the special experience of playing your game on a huge TV screen.

Not only are there an immense variety of video games on the market but they have also become more and more difficult and time consuming recently. Many game enthusiasts do not have enough patience and time for such games because they are only playing for the sheer enjoyment of the game and for killing some time. It is also often the case that during your playing you get stuck at an unsolvable point of the game with which you end up in losing your interest in the continuation of the game.

But what can be the solution in the above-mentioned cases?
The answer is very simple: cheat or the use of some other kind of help. Many people, in general, consider cheating a sinful act but cheating in a videogame is not considered illegal, at all. Of course when you play online with the multiplayer mode on, it is not ethical to cheat because it spoils the fun of other players. Consequently, cheaters will not only be excluded from the particular game but they will also receive strong resentment from the online players’ community.

But when sitting alone at home in front of one’s favourite video game, after many unsuccessful attempts, who on earth would not like to see the next level of the game? And who would not like to skip the most challenging parts of a game when someone wants to play their favourite games again?

Let’s not worry about certain moral issues and if you feel like it then just try to make use of those cheats or loopholes that are even built in the game. Since game developers has built most of the cheats in the game software for test purposes.

All this sounds nice, but how can you cheat?
Video game cheats has many different forms and many of them are freely available on the Internet. You will find a detailed description of the different cheat types and their use below.

Cheats, cheat codes:
These are the simplest ones of all cheat types. These are sometimes available from the menu options or you can simply type in a certain combination of keyboard or a gamepad buttons and with the help of these secret codes you can reach some hidden features that make the game easier for you. These cheats can give eternal life, invulnerability, the constant restoring of someone’s health, unlimited ammunition, money codes, etc.

Game developers used to hide these features, but nowadays they offer these cheats as extras of video games.

Command line cheats:
In case of some games you can only initiate cheats if you give so-called command line parameters. When you use command line parameter cheats you start the game with a special command. Click on the start menu and find the starting icon of the installed video game. Click on the game’s icon with the right mouse button and select the features option. A new window pops up. You can find the exe. file and its route in the target box. (E.g. "C:\Program Files\Installedgame\Game.exe")

This is the line you have to modify. Write the appropriate shortcut after it. (E.g. "C:\Program Files\Installedgame\Game.exe" -console)

You can notice that it is separated with a space and a hyphen. Save the changes by clicking on the OK button.

Important. The reason why the ‘exe file’ in the target box is in quotation marks is that the route contains a space. In this case you always have to place the parameters outside the quotation.

The following examples are bad and won’t work:
"C:\Program Files\Installedgame\game.exe - console" // inside the quotation
"C:\Program Files\Installedgame\game.exe- console " // no space and inside the quotation
"C:\Program Files\Installedgame\game.exe"-console // outside the quotation, but there is no space

Passwords:
Passwords are used for jumping levels and for other types of cheats and they usually have to be typed in on a special screen such as “Password Entry" screen or "Name Entry" screen or „Stage password” screen. With the help of these passwords, we can choose from the different levels of the game, open new features or activate new cheat functions.

Unlockables:
These are characters, ranks, stages, items, weapons, costumes, hidden features that usually become available for you if you complete the different missions assigned at the different levels of the game. These tasks are assigned in the following forms: defeat ‘X’ main enemy and then you can play with character ‘Y’, or if you complete stage ‘Z’, you will get object ‘Y’. These are not considered cheats, they simply help you understand the goals of the game. They often give you the opportunity to try out new things that would be only available for you if you played the whole game again and again.

Easter-eggs:
They mean those extras that are independent of the story of the game and the discovery of such items do not give you any advantage in the progress of the game, these are only built-in just for fun. It is extremely complicated to find them and they require an unusual way of thinking. These can be, for example, the pictures of the game writers, jokes or funny objects.

Glitch:
They are meant to bring about a certain trick or anomaly in the game that can produce an effect that was not intended by the creators of the game. With the help of these you can double certain objects or you can opt for some characters that are originally not offered by the game.

Hints/tips:
These give you hints or tips on how to accomplish certain tasks in a video game, which facilitate playing. For example, what movements are needed to defeat the main enemy, or general hits and tips and they are not considered cheats.

Secrets:
Tricks belonging to this category do not seem so obvious during the game. They can be hidden objects, weapons, tricky exits, the weak points of your main enemies and with the help of them you can easily go on to the next level or get more money depending on the game’s profile. Usually not found in the normal way, while you playing with the game.

(Continued in Part 2.)

Sudoku Puzzles

Sudoku Puzzles are brain teasers that have also been called wordless crossword puzzles. Sudoku Puzzles are often solved through lateral thinking and have been making a large impact all across the world.

Also known as Number Place, Sudoku puzzles are actually logic-based placement puzzles. The object of the game is to enter a numerical digit from 1 through 9 in each cell that is found on a 9 x 9 grid which is sundivided into 3 x 3 subgrids or regions. Several digits are often given in some cells. These are referred as givens. Ideally, at the end of the game, every row, column, and region must contain only one instance of each numeral from 1 through 9. Patience and logic are two qualities needed in order to complete the game.

Number puzzles very much similar to the Sudoku Puzzles have already been in existence and have found publication in many newspapers for over a century now. For instance, Le Siecle, a daily newspaper based in France, featured, as early as 1892, a 9x9 grid with 3x3 sub-squares, but used only double-digit numbers instead of the current 1-9. Another French newspaper, La France, created a puzzle in 1895 that utilized the numbers 1-9 but had no 3x3 sub-squares, but the solution does carry 1-9 in each of the 3 x 3 areas where the sub-squares would be. These puzzles were regular features in several other newspapers, including L'Echo de Paris for about a decade, but it unfortunately disappeared with the advent of the first world war.

Howard Garns, a 74-year-old retired architect and freelance puzzle constructor, was considered the designer of the modern Sudoku Puzzles. His design was first published in 1979 in New York by Dell, through its magazine Dell Pencil Puzzles and Word Games under the heading Number Place. Garns' creation was most likely inspired by the Latin square invention of Leonhard Euler, with a few modifications, basically, with the addition of a regional restriction and the presentation of the game as a puzzle, providing a partially-complete grid and requiring the solver to fill in the empty cells.

Sudoku Puzzles were then taken to Japan by the puzzle publishing company Nikoli. It introduced the game in its paper Monthly Nikoli sometime in April 1984. Nikoli president Maki Kaji gave it the name Sudoku, a name that the company holds trademark rights over; other Japanese publications which featured the puzzle have to settle for alternative names.

In 1989, Sudoku Puzzles entered the video games arena when it was published as DigitHunt on the Commodore 64. It was introduced by Loadstar/Softdisk Publishing. Since then, other computerized versions of the Sudoku Puzzles have been developed. For instance, Yoshimitsu Kanai made several computerized puzzle generator of the game under the name Single Number for the Apple Macintosh in 1995 both in English and in Japanese language; for the Palm (PDA) in 1996; and for Mac OS X in 2005.