Current Events > GTA cheat codes... where were they published? How did they become known?

(+) Yeah! (+)

During the GTA days I'd go to game sites to find the cheat codes and wreak havoc in Vice City or 3 or San Andreas. But how did the game sites know of them? Were they published by Rockstar somewhere? Were they in those gamer magazines that used to exist?

Magazines usually had a section dedicated to cheat codes

I always bought the Tips & Tricks magazines for my codes back in the day.

saspa posted...

Were they published by Rockstar somewhere? Were they in those gamer magazines that used to exist?

A combination of official releases, data mining, and experimentation.

SMAP- posted...

Magazines usually had a section dedicated to cheat codes

Wonder where magazines got their sources back then

saspa posted...

Wonder where magazines got their sources back then

I'd wager there was some kinda arrangement between game companies and them. Basically pay a small fee to be told the cheats then make money selling it

I don't know about GTA3 and VC, but I remember a lot of SA cheat codes were actually discovered on here. I believe someone on the SA board way back when set up a script that tested random inputs.

I remember BSTARD getting posted in EGM summer of 98.

Damn does Tips and Tricks still exist?

found this thread:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/914983-grand-theft-auto-san-andreas/58886166

which has this link:

https://www.gtasanandreas.net/cheats/ps2.php

which cites this thread:

https://gtaforums.com/topic/172825-newly-discovered-button-cheats/

which is actually the thread that the guy made discovering the cheats. they were not published by rockstar.

Smashingpmkns posted...

Damn does Tips and Tricks still exist?

Memory unlocked

I remember being dragged to the grocery store with my parents as a kid and Id get my dad to buy a Tips and Tricks for me each time there was a new issue

What a great magazine

my quality research will be acknowledged here

Smashingpmkns posted...

Damn does Tips and Tricks still exist?

littlebro07 posted...

Memory unlocked

I remember being dragged to the grocery store with my parents as a kid and Id get my dad to buy a Tips and Tricks for me each time there was a new issue

What a great magazine

Tips and Tricks was my go to. I got one every time.

Deleted the post that had the links to the threads where the SA codes were found and published.

This one?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/4/3/AAFOjXAADAqX.jpg

o i guess they were worth saving

The Prima Guides were written while the game was being developed IIRC so that's probably the first place that published them.

I was a kid at the time but my brother worked at a rest stop that sold magazines and would grab the gaming magazines, sneak them into the back, scan each cheat page for games relevant to us, and come home with anywhere from like 5-20 pages of cheats. If it wasnt that, it was gameshark for us.

Damn that took me down a crazy rabbit hole of history, if the GTA codes were literally just discovered like that... what was the developers' intention with them, if they didn't intend to release them? Messing around in the GTA world with the cheat codes is basically one of the more iconic components of the series, crazy to think it wasn't intentional.

apparently a few cheats in san andreas PC had unintentional nonsense combos (like HESOYAM) that were discovered years before the intended cheat lol. this vid breaks it down well
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_eFZ4HzU7Q

I think R* told some of them, others were found by software.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I was in the thread that discovered the early long version of how to get the IWHBYD skull. We jumped through rings for so long trying to get that skull. Last I saw there was a shorter version of it as the one we eventually found had like 12 steps.

Those pencil puzzles in Tips & Tricks that always had you sketching out a video game character <3

saspa posted...

Damn that took me down a crazy rabbit hole of history, if the GTA codes were literally just discovered like that... what was the developers' intention with them, if they didn't intend to release them? Messing around in the GTA world with the cheat codes is basically one of the more iconic components of the series, crazy to think it wasn't intentional.

Well, "cheat codes" started out as just debugging tools, so I wouldn't be surprised if that's what GTA's mostly were.

saspa posted...

Damn that took me down a crazy rabbit hole of history, if the GTA codes were literally just discovered like that... what was the developers' intention with them, if they didn't intend to release them? Messing around in the GTA world with the cheat codes is basically one of the more iconic components of the series, crazy to think it wasn't intentional.

Cheat codes back in the day were used internally at game companies to help test games faster for bugs and to help stretch the limits and possibilities of what would happen in a game so they could determine if the regular game was even going to break or not. It's this crazy old thing we called quality control because back then, you couldn't patch a game. If you shipped it broken, it stayed broken and the only way to "fix" it was to correct future copies of the game...and that usually didn't fly well to make a customer buy something twice.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what use turning the entire pedestrian population into clowns would be to the game testing process, so some of them were probably just for shits and giggles.

Lunar_Savage posted...

Cheat codes back in the day were used internally at game companies to help test games faster for bugs and to help stretch the limits and possibilities of what would happen in a game so they could determine if the regular game was even going to break or not. It's this crazy old thing we called quality control because back then, you couldn't patch a game. If you shipped it broken, it stayed broken and the only way to "fix" it was to correct future copies of the game...and that usually didn't fly well to make a customer buy something twice.

I kind of miss that era of video games

It's honestly really lame that games don't have cheat codes like that anymore. It's like developers are afraid of people breaking games under any potential context.