Say you're up late at night at a friend's house playing Grand Theft Auto and you're feeling a little wacky. What better occasion to employ a few cheat codes to up the wack factor? Turn the pedestrians against you and watch the bullets fly from every corner! The cheats for that game are especially cool, but almost every video game known to man has cheat codes installed in it. From back in the dawn of the gaming industry, in fact, developers included them for their own use-they made testing the games more efficient-and just never removed them.

Computer geeks being what they are, they discovered the codes, and in, addition, learned how to use what were called "POKES" to mess with certain memory addresses. The fun was just starting. When developers learned that gamers expected the imbedded cheats and unlockables, they began regulary putting them in every game.

Now, you can play with all sorts of game aspects using cheats. The ever-popular giant head feature, for example, is just one of many effects you can create, although unless you are just really slap happy it's hard to imagine why anyone would get a big kick out of that particular one. Shape shifting is a cool cheat in some games, though, and so is invisibility or the ability to fly. You can also use a "No clip" code and put the game into an otherworldly sort of mode where you can float through doors and walls.

Power hungry players have a world of options with cheats. You can play in God Mode, which means you are basically invulnerable to anything and cannot die. You can also add to your cache of weapons, money, or other useful possessions; you can become huge; or you could use a code to achieve infinite resources like ammunition.

So really, with cheat codes, you can play a game more than once and make it new every time. Even games you have beaten can still be amusing. And no matter what hard core, full time, live-in-their-parents' basement gamers may tell you, there is nothing wrong in cheat codes.