10 Video Game Traditions That Are Dead And Buried

For better or for worse, these are all things of the past.

video game traditions
WhatCulture

Being a hardcore gamer, for many, includes celebrating the history of the medium. Whether you were there or not, it's important to recognise where gaming has been to understand where it is and, by extension, where it's going.

Naturally, a look back at history allows for a soft-hearted reflection on video game traditions that were staples and are now no more than nostalgic memories for those who experienced them.

Now let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. This list does not exist to express that gaming used to be better in any particular era.

There are positives and negatives to every decade, and for all of the sentimental warmth that parts of this might illicit, we must not forget that it's important that things always move forward. "Stagnation" sounds gross on purpose.

Most of the entries on this list were lost to time because of the nature of technological advancement and, for one reason or another, they became an irrelevant or outdated practice. Still, that doesn't mean you can't have fond memories of magazine demo discs and GameGenie mayhem.

10. Cheat Codes

video game traditions
Rockstar

Whether it’s the Konami Code you know or Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’s health, armour and money cheat; button inputs that hide boons were a part of video games for a long time. In the earlier days, it was the main way for developers to hide things in their game. Be that easter eggs, secrets or just a way for the player to be a big, dirty cheater.

Level selects, infinite lives and who could forget the classic itself: Big Head Mode?

It was an omen of what’s to come when GTA IV changed its cheats from strings of muscle memory button taps to memorising phone numbers. Still, it sometimes feels like GTA is one of the only franchise to still bake-in cheats.

Before the existence of online multiplayer giving games a theoretically unending life, cheats were the ideal way for players to fool around with a game they had mastered and have totally different experiences. For others, it was a way to… well, cheat; to overcome hardships and see the rest of the game before YouTube was the answer.

No, the early days of the gaming internet were held up by pillars like SuperCheats, CheatCC and CheatPlanet. And before that? The magazine free gift of the sacred text that was the cheat-book. Praise be to these collections of codes that brought much joy and infinite ammo carnage.

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The Red Mage of WhatCulture. The one with all the hair. She/they.