No, cheat codes as debugging tools is like 25% of the story at best. That may be how they got their start, but it completely misses how they were very much a wider cultural phenomenon for some time.
In 007 there’s a cheat to make everyone’s heads comically bigger. In Tomb Raider, entering a cheat input incorrectly causes Lara to explode. In Heretic, if you enter cheats from Doom you’ll get the opposite of the intended effect. In Gauntlet: Dark Legacy there is an entire litany of secret character models you can play as, if you choose the right character and give them the right name. There’s a cheat that turns Banjo-Kazooie into a washing machine. Another one that initiates a zombie mode in Scott Pilgrim. There was a golfing game where hitting the ball 100 times and then inputting a shortened version of the Konami code generated a completely different Fantasy Zone minigame.
Do those sound like helpful debugging tools?
There was a time when entire websites were devoted to cheat codes and easter eggs (of course the most enduring ones were the broader sites that included whole walkthroughs like GameFAQs), and entire books would be published just for cheat codes.
Ultimately cheat codes were far more about easter eggs and unique game experiences than they were for debugging purposes - especially since as plenty of people have already pointed out, it wasn’t long before better debugging tools were invented anyway.
The end of the day it was just a trend. People had interest in these things, then interest subsided.
No, cheat codes as debugging tools is like 25% of the story at best. That may be how they got their start, but it completely misses how they were very much a wider cultural phenomenon for some time.
In 007 there’s a cheat to make everyone’s heads comically bigger. In Tomb Raider, entering a cheat input incorrectly causes Lara to explode. In Heretic, if you enter cheats from Doom you’ll get the opposite of the intended effect. In Gauntlet: Dark Legacy there is an entire litany of secret character models you can play as, if you choose the right character and give them the right name. There’s a cheat that turns Banjo-Kazooie into a washing machine. Another one that initiates a zombie mode in Scott Pilgrim. There was a golfing game where hitting the ball 100 times and then inputting a shortened version of the Konami code generated a completely different Fantasy Zone minigame.
Do those sound like helpful debugging tools?
There was a time when entire websites were devoted to cheat codes and easter eggs (of course the most enduring ones were the broader sites that included whole walkthroughs like GameFAQs), and entire books would be published just for cheat codes.
Ultimately cheat codes were far more about easter eggs and unique game experiences than they were for debugging purposes - especially since as plenty of people have already pointed out, it wasn’t long before better debugging tools were invented anyway.
The end of the day it was just a trend. People had interest in these things, then interest subsided.