Cheat Codes

Codes worth remembering, typed from memory, from a time before a second screen open in your lap was how you finished a level. Type them exactly — there is no undo button on a code you fat- fingered.

Contra (NES)

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start at the title screen turns two lives into thirty. Famous enough that the sequence itself outlived the game it was written for, and now gets typed into things that were never built to recognise it.

Street Fighter II (Arcade)

Hold Start and press Kick twice quickly during the character-select screen to fight as your character's alternate colour scheme. Purely cosmetic, purely essential if your friend picked the same fighter you did.

Doom

Typing IDDQD mid-level turns on God Mode; typing it again turns it off. Typing IDKFA hands you every weapon and key in the level at once. Neither code cares whether you earned either.

General wisdom

• Write the code down before you try to type it from a screenshot.
• Most codes only work from a specific screen — title, pause, or select.
• If a code stops working after a patch, that's the patch, not your memory.