After 23 years, developer reveals he snuck a cheat code past Sony that turns a cult-classic horror game into a godsend for retro enthusiasts

bbbhltz@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 142 points –
After 23 years, developer reveals he snuck a cheat code past Sony that turns a cult-classic horror game into a godsend for retro enthusiasts
gamesradar.com
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It's in the video provided in the article. It's pretty complex and lengthy. You have to put in like 3 cheat code menu entries, then go to a level select option and hold down l1 and x, then the disk will stop, oh you had to keep your disc eject propped down so the console won't detect the tray has been opened, switch out the disc, hold like triangle and x, let go of l1, triangle and x all at the same time, then it will boot into whatever pirated disc you switched out without the checks.

I can see why it's not in the article, it's hard to accurately write down and it would be almost as long as the article itself. That said, I don't know how much of a godsend this is, it requires a copy of a pretty undersold and otherwise mediocre game. That said, I am not that into retro gaming so maybe this is truly a major change for the community.

It's useless. It's already fairly easy to boot burned CDs on an unmodified console, and mods already exist to run games from a microSD card.

Maybe nowadays it is... but I guarantee you the devs very much used this code for "backups"

Alien Resurrection came out in 2000. We had known about hot swapping PSX disks and other softmods for years by that point. So yeah, this would have been a fun quirk even when it happened. Still fun, though.

A lot of people never got the swap trick message it seems. Especially the quad-swap that worked on later consoles.

It was my main method, but I’ve talked to a surprising number of people who told me it didn’t exist/work

Watching the video this cheat code method seems more complex

The quad swap trick worked... but was a fucking nightmare. If you got the timing off by just a second, the game would either not boot...boot and crash...or have no sound....and there were four opportunities to fuck this up. Source: my own experience

To have a flawless swap trick that stops the drive was much much better

For as much as I engaged with the PSX I was an early adopter (I'm talking keep it upside down because overheating early), so swaps were trivial.

Maybe this is the reason why the guy bothered with it as late as 2000, get some later models on equal ground there. Although by that time it was also trivial to get some hard mods, also.

Fair enough

I had good luck with quad swap but I’d easily believe the ease of operation depended on exact version of the console etc

I doubt it, it's much easier to mod the console. Or just use a boot disc (or whatever those were called, I had the chip mod, so I don't remember, but my friend used to have the disc which he had to insert before playing a pirated game).