Question for Genesis gamers back in the day

atheistgod1999 · Post by **atheistgod1999** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:12 pm

I already know the whole Mortal Kombat SNES vs Genesis blood thing, but I'm wondering: since this was before the internet, how did you people know the "Blood Code", and that it even existed? Was the code in the manual or something? I don't understand how the code and the blood in that port could've been common knowledge before people could just google it.

BIL · Post by **BIL** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:18 pm

It was in all the popular magazines of the time (referring to NTSCU and associated territories - no idea about Europe). I'd guess Acclaim themselves would've publicised it, if anyone.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:25 pm

Holy fucking shit, I don't think there's been any topic in forum history that's made me feel older than this one.

Codes were nearly always leaked via gaming press, especially the MK one (that was one of its main points of sales).

Back in them thar days we used to rely on paper print and word of mouth for our gaming myths and legends. It was awesome, you missed out.

o.pwuaioc · Post by **o.pwuaioc** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:34 pm

Skykid wrote:Holy fucking shit, I don't think there's been any topic in forum history that's made me feel older than this one.

Codes were nearly always leaked via gaming press, especially the MK one (that was one of its main points of sales).

Back in them thar days we used to rely on paper print and word of mouth for our gaming myths and legends. It was awesome, you missed out.

Basically this. It was truly magical when one of the gang came over for a game of Mortal Kombat with a whole book of special moves. We spent 30 minutes copying down everything (maybe skipping the characters that weren't our favorites) and then the rest of the weekend just practicing.

BIL · Post by **BIL** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:39 pm

My fondest memory of ye olde print days was EGM's Sheng Long April Fool's for the arcade version of SFII: The World Warrior.

Not for the hoax itself, but later on when a UK magazine got caught red-handed reprinting it (for the SNES port, no less). Dude even wrote up some fanfiction about the "exhausting and satisfying battle" he'd narrowly emerged the victor of before enjoying an "epic ending scene."

broken harbour · Post by **broken harbour** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:43 pm

Skykid wrote:Holy fucking shit, I don't think there's been any topic in forum history that's made me feel older than this one.

Codes were nearly always leaked via gaming press, especially the MK one (that was one of its main points of sales).

Back in them thar days we used to rely on paper print and word of mouth for our gaming myths and legends. It was awesome, you missed out.

Same, this topic just made me feel like a geezer.

I remember talking to other kids on the playground about easter eggs and hidden things in games back in the early/mid 90s, there was no internet to check facts. You could swap stories with your buddies if you got farther than they did and they couldn't just run to Youtube and spoil the game for themselves. Was an amazing time.

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Thu May 28, 2015 7:50 pm

Somehow I managed to avoid most of these things, but even I know about the EGM / NP 2 kid pipeline from back in the day. Of course, we were told that there were some people who were just really good at finding codes, and got their codes printed regularly in the mags - I wonder how many of them were just corporate aliases, though?

drauch · Post by **drauch** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:22 pm

Kid down the street had them written out nicely in a little notebook guide he made. What a stud!

Otherwise it was always waiting for the magazines at the library or kids you knew that had subscriptions to get the codes. Game Genie and later Gameshark as well made things easier, if you could afford it/borrow one.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:28 pm

I used to be late for school everyday because I would wait for WH smiths to open before I caught the connecting bus in town in hopes that CVG latest issue was out.

Not only that but you would often meet gamers in WH Smiths giving tips and wow'ing over 2D sprite games, often speaking of when games would look like TV. Now that time has arrived nobody talks about it anymore.

Remember we had arcades in those days, word of mouth, observing and magazines were your google power then.

Ruldra · Post by **Ruldra** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:40 pm

I used to have a huge stash of gaming magazines back in the day. It was my own personal Google - I could find any code or secret in that stash, but I had to spend hours looking up every magazine in my collection.

I remember looking them up to find the password for the sunken ship in Super Mario RPG, how to enter the black hole level in Star Fox and MK fatalities. Good times.

Speaking of which, magazines back then used to give you an Ecco the Dolphin password that would send you to the second-to-last level without the ability to breathe underwater. It was impossible to beat the game that way. I have no idea how they came across the password since there was no way to get it by playing the game normally. I suspect one of the devs sent that password to magazine publishers just to mess with the players.

GohanX · Post by **GohanX** » Thu May 28, 2015 10:05 pm

Yeah, the mags all published the ABACABB code before release so everybody knew the code by the time it came it out. The DULLARD code wasn't discovered until a bit later.

broken harbour · Post by **broken harbour** » Thu May 28, 2015 10:15 pm

Awww man, I had this SF2 guide back in the day (I Think EGM produced it, I forget) with all the moves drawn out, how to pull them off, and every combo listed. Now those moves are just muscle memory...
I still have my original FF7, OoT and Star Ocean guides... plus a few others from way back then, still refereed to them when I played those games last year.

I used to also have a massive stash of mags back in the 90s, mostly Gamefan, but some Game Players, Edge, EGM, and a few Gamepro's... ah the memories. Dunno what happened to them.

I always assumed, even as a kid, that the developers leaked the codes to the magazines.... I mean some of those games were impossible or near impossible to beat otherwise.

guigui · Post by **guigui** » Thu May 28, 2015 10:16 pm

Thank you for the thread, YES ! Gaming magazines, codes to be read in the "cheats" section, only five games at home on the genesis system, CRT scanlines screen bought with my own money in my bedroom, thumb hurts because of rusted Dpad, Shining Force II, parents and family kindly mocking me because I play too much videogames, waking up silently at night to play, clearing games, memories

Now back to 2015, internet, FAQS everywhere, 478 games at home, dead pixels on my LED display, touch control, Final Fantasy XLVIII 2nd rebirth, wife mocking me because I play too much videogames, going to bed at 4am to play, not clearing games, present.

too !

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Fri May 29, 2015 3:18 am

Skykid wrote:Holy fucking shit, I don't think there's been any topic in forum history that's made me feel older than this one.

I had a subscription to Gamepro, not to mention multiple others mags, and there was one entirely dedicated to cheat codes. I can't remember the name of that one. Hell, before I subscribed, I would simply read the mag while my mother was shopping and write down the codes for the games I had.

Goddamn I feel old.

Skykid · Post by **Skykid** » Fri May 29, 2015 3:39 am

Actually I don't feel old because I'm not old, but the shock of being asked what you did before google was pretty weird.

Great opportunity for a nostalgia thread. My first gaming magazine love was Super Play (recently finally completed my set + 4 binders!) My local newsagent used to be able to set his watch by me coming in for my reserved copy each month. I used to read them cover to cover. I remember reading one issue and totally deciding I was going to be a games journalist, inspiring me to write constantly in my spare time and even producing a short lived fanzine with a friend - although gaming I knew and loved had changed a lot by the time I finally got a professional shot at it.

In school we used to pore through each other's mags: Mean Machines, Official Nintendo, Maximum (awesome), Edge, Gamefan, EGM, Gamesmaster etc, and I had a phase of collecting CVG when it was awesome for about a year (tons of import coverage and arcade games). I even used to read Amiga Power and old C64 mags in the school library.

They were fun times. There was something interesting and special about getting the news first on the shop shelves, especially when there was a big announcement and all of them were screaming about the next big thing on the covers.

Playground console wars were also plenty of fun, and the different format magazines definitely encouraged it by unashamedly ragging on each other!

chempop · Post by **chempop** » Fri May 29, 2015 3:52 am

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Fri May 29, 2015 4:39 am

I remember reading NP, seeing a code for Over Horizon and actually thinking the game was released in the US. lol. I used to have a bunch of those and always found it frustrating when I see something unreleased like Triple A (possibly a localization of Vattle Guice) that was mentioned in NP, but with no information on the internet. I also remember a Mega Man-ish game being previewed that I couldn't place. Turned out to be Power Blazer, which was heavily altered into Power Blade for the US.

I also subscribed to Video Games and Computer Entertainment. I remember when the early version of SF CE for Genesis was previewed and it was different from that one proto that leaked.

louisg · Post by **louisg** » Fri May 29, 2015 5:07 pm

It's the same way anyone knew the special moves for these fighting games

And the blood code is probably easier than those fatalities, holy shit.

Anyway, you should look up old game magazine scans. They're really neat. What's cool too is being able to read magazines from other parts of the world and seeing how the hype and everything there was different. Like I enjoy reading Zzap64! because the computer mags here (US) were more focused on strategy/RPG gaming and aimed at older gamers, so you get a really different take on things. Different popular games, etc.

MOSQUITO FIGHTER · Post by **MOSQUITO FIGHTER** » Fri May 29, 2015 5:32 pm

Wow! Yeah, you pretty much had to figure it out yourself, buy a book/magazine on it, or someone tell you in person. It always amazed me how anyone found those codes to begin with. I mean did they just sit in front of the tv trying random stuff for hours or what?

o.pwuaioc · Post by **o.pwuaioc** » Fri May 29, 2015 5:47 pm

MOSQUITO FIGHTER wrote:Wow! Yeah, you pretty much had to figure it out yourself, buy a book/magazine on it, or someone tell you in person. It always amazed me how anyone found those codes to begin with. I mean did they just sit in front of the tv trying random stuff for hours or what?

Or instead what others in the thread have already said.

LEGENOARYNINLIA · Post by **LEGENOARYNINLIA** » Fri May 29, 2015 6:25 pm

At some point CVG moved the cheats to a pull out feature called Freeplay in the middle of the issue. It was printed on this yellow paper with just black ink. It had more than just cheats, but if you pulled it out you didn’t have to go through your magazine stashes and could just check them for the cheats. Probably handy to fold into a pocket and take with you to an arcade as well.

TransatlanticFoe · Post by **TransatlanticFoe** » Fri May 29, 2015 6:33 pm

I had an SMS and every magazine had the same wrong blood code printed for Mortal Kombat. I do wonder how many codes were misprinted by one person and circulated without anyone verifying it? They got Johnny Cage's nut punch and Sub-Zero's slide wrong as well, all the magazines printing the same incorrect moves. Probably because no-one really wanted to play MK on the SMS!

Secrets and codes in general, if it wasn't magazines it was through spending so much time with games. Pocket money only went so far, so it's time to look for secrets and glitches because that's your lot until xmas! Well, as an SMS owner I also had the infamous early games with the really shitty artwork, because nowhere charged more than £10 for them new.

Never_Scurred · Post by **Never_Scurred** » Fri May 29, 2015 6:59 pm

Man, we used to rip them shits out of the magazines at the store, or your homeboy wrote 'em down for you in exchange for one of your porno mags you stole from your big brother. To think, if the internet ceased to exist from this day onward, nearly a third of the population would die from acute helplessness.
I wouldn't miss 'em.

JBC · Post by **JBC** » Fri May 29, 2015 7:20 pm

Anyone remember when EGM (I think...?) posted that image of unlocking Akuma in Resident Evil 2? Supposedly he was to break out of a stasis tube in the underground Umbrella labs beneath Raccoon & then go on his own empowered Survivor mode with unstoppable signature moves. Can't remember if it was an April issue or not, but wow did that get my hopes up as a kid.

gct · Post by **gct** » Fri May 29, 2015 7:27 pm

I had a subscription to NP back in the day (and totally bought into the pro-Nintendo anti-Sega propaganda), one thing which I remember but never figured out why until a few years ago was that an "infinite burgers" password for Legend of the Mystical Ninja didn't actually give you infinite burgers, and started you at the amusement park stage. Turns out it was just someone who played the game to that point, got a whole bunch of money to buy burgers and got the save/resume password... load of BS.

How about some nostalgia, I went to elementary school that had a lot of Hongers, we used to trade Super Nintendo ROMs on 3.5" floppy diskettes that we made ourselves from dumping rentals. The most awesome thing to happen was when one of the guys came back from Hong Kong with a CD-ROM full of ROMs that had nearly every game released in both North America and Japan. It even came with a colour paper catalogue that had a screenshot of every game's title screen so that you could know what game each ROM number on the CD corresponded to.

MintyTheCat · Post by **MintyTheCat** » Sat May 30, 2015 10:44 pm

It was indeed a hardcore time. I remember when the NeoGeo arrived on the shores of the UK and how it was talked about at the time. This was well before it became anything close to an inkling in the Magazines at the time.

You used to get a fair amount of bullshit too with people talking shit but over all a lot of information was passed around.

This reminds me of the massive pirating scene back then too on the atari ST and Amiga

It was a magical time reached at a point in technology and society.

I too really got into Superplay and one of my fondest memories is getting my first copy of the first issue. I have since gotten all issues except one issue - think it is #37 with the dezaemon review for the SNES:

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/dezaemon/dezaemon.htm

It was a magical time whereby we got a sort of 'on the ground level' update on gaming activities happening in Japan at the time through updates from journalists and technologists in the field. This all kind of fueled a sort of feeling that Japan was eons ahead of us sitting in the UK that harkens back to the late 1980s

(the crash in Japan happened around 1995/1996...).

What I liked was at that time Superplay was not just about "I am a Gamer and therefore I am" it was much broader in the sense that it encourage people to look into things and showed the virtues of researching into things. That kind of stayed with me life-long thus far. I didn't view Japan and indeed other countries as being something unobtainable and in a way that is the way of the future for us all.

I was indeed very fortunate in that the legendary Console-Concepts were in my home town. They would get releases often before they were released officially in Japan. I would see the games appear way ahead of Super-Play literally on their shelves in store. I saw my first NeoGeo AES there with Top-Hunter, Last-Resort and samurai-spirits. I also saw my first PC-Engine in the flesh. It was absolutely awesome at the time. I remember the shop operator playing R-Type 3 on the SFC and he had gotten stuck on level 3 in the corridor section. He passed me the joypad and gave me a go. I got past that part and then took out the spider boss to the cheers in shop from the chaps watching. You cannot really beat that kind of experience, you really can't and the Arcades were the same. It was like a brotherhood in a way to us lot and it was more hardcore than hardcore these days as it was just so underground at the time compared to today.

It may have all been fireworks and technology and a pure gaming sense but it was a bloody good time to be growing up as a kid I can tell you and I would not swap it for anything now

Cheers,

Minty.

copy-paster · Post by **copy-paster** » Sat May 30, 2015 11:12 pm

Back then when I buy some local VG magazines, I didn't know much about videogames. I've only search some MK fatality codes, some secret items on Mega Man X, etc. And here's a some April fools joke like getting Ninja suit on MGS, getting naked Jill in Resident Evil 3 if the game was beaten 10 times using knife only on expert difficulty, Beating RE2 20 on expert diff. using knife only will unlock Akuma in SF series became playable character. What a fucking childhood memories

Ed Oscuro · Post by **Ed Oscuro** » Sun May 31, 2015 5:42 am

8BA wrote:Anyone remember when EGM (I think...?) posted that image of unlocking Akuma in Resident Evil 2? Supposedly he was to break out of a stasis tube in the underground Umbrella labs beneath Raccoon & then go on his own empowered Survivor mode with unstoppable signature moves. Can't remember if it was an April issue or not, but wow did that get my hopes up as a kid.

Think EGM overestimated themselves that time. Shoulda come up with a new joke!

Watching this thread is kind of funny as an "outsider" - I think most kids, or at least a lot of them, just got tips and things through friends and so-on. Figures the more knowledgeable and hooked-in people from back in the day would still be sharing today!

Satan · Post by **Satan** » Sun May 31, 2015 9:11 am

Never_Scurred wrote: I wouldn't miss 'em.

Strider77 · Post by **Strider77** » Sun May 31, 2015 7:02 pm

atheistgod1999, I have to ask, how old are you?

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