Inspired by the post about Mario an hour ago. We all found cheats and secrets via game mags, FAQs, strategy guides, and friends.
But what’s something wild you discovered accidentally while playing a game, without prior knowledge?
Mine was Hadouken in MMX!
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The Chris Houlihan room in Link to the Past. I found this as a kid somehow, could never see it again on other playthroughs. I didn’t have Internet or gamefaqs for like 5 more years after this and my Nintendo Power guide didn’t mention anything about it. Truly a secret that you had no way to prove to anyone it even existed.
The special circumstance, aka trigger, is to have full health, 4 lives, all heart upgrades, all sub tanks and all weapons. Then get to that ledge 3 times AFTER you already beat the boss. The 4th time it’ll appear.
Your claim is being doubted because there’s zero reason to do any of that without prior knowledge. Why would anyone go to that ledge more than once? The first time you go to the ledge there’s a heart. Why would you revisit once. Let alone 3 more times, let alone AFTER killing the boss and even more so after completing the entire game and getting 100% of the upgrades??
I unwittingly triggered an extra lives code in Deathbots, a pretty bad unlicensed NES game. It was the only time I was able to play through the entire game (there weren’t even Game Genie cheats available).
Could never figure out how to do it again, and never saw anyone mention the game having cheats online for years. But many years later CaH4e3 embarked on a journey to discover undocumented cheats in every video game and I sent them a heads up. And sure as shit, [they later found it](https://i.imgur.com/5W815nH.png) and it felt nice knowing it wasn’t all a hallucination.
The world skip in donkey Kong country 1. No idea how I did the “setup” process but kid me was just mashing buttons between stages and zoooooom
Midnight club 2, ghost riding motorcycles. If you start a couch co-op race on motorcycles you can shoot the other player off their bike just before the race begins. If you do then you can drive the motorcycle without a rider.
FF6 Subterranean Cave. Getting wiped by a sand worm has never been so rewarding.
I discovered the level select code for the Lion King game on Game Gear (rotating the dpad) by accident because I would randomly mash on buttons while it turned on.
I still never was able to beat that game.
I accidently unlocked reptile on mortal kombat for sega and spent fucking months trying to replicate how i did it.
I submitted to Nintendo Power how to throw floating proximity mines in GoldenEye 64 and they published it.
The hidden area in Adventure on Atari 2600. That was like 45+ years ago.
The hidden hearts/whip/item recharge in Super Castlevania IV. It’s right under the final steps before Dracula. I went to jump and whiffed hitting the visible stairs and was about to be pissed for making an easy mistake when I noticed I was just standing on nothing. Walked forward a bit and boom, full recharge. Sure made Dracula a breeze to beat.
Mine was dragon quest 3. I was playing the board game (pachisi) with the Hero and had to fight metal babbles, I killed 2 before they fled and leveled to max level and stomped the rest of the game with thunder/bolt and the mega heal spell, good times!
Leasure Suit Larry, I discovered you had to walk around your police car before driving to avoid getting a flat tire. I was a hero of my coworkers who were all stuck.
Figuring out the spells on Castlevania:Symphony of the Night by trying different button combos and smashing!
I ran into the headless horseman in his riding state (not at the grave) in skyrim before I saw things blowing up online about it at the time. Was just sneaking up on some bandits when they started attacking something! Thought it was one of the many random skyrim things before later finding out how rare it was to just run into him while riding without using mods.
Skipping the next-to-last boss in Metal Gear on NES. I entered the computer room and saw it looked like a boss fight. Instinctively dodged to the right, and boom, on to the final boss.
I was at Bullwinkles in Fountain Valley, CA. I had no quarters left and as I was running around the game room I went up to a pinball machine and randomly tapped the left and right flipper buttons in a sequential order.
The pinball machine suddenly turned on, and I realized I somehow got it to start up in some kind of testing mode and I got to play an unlimited number of games.
It’s not a video game but it’s still a game and I discovered it.
Final Fantasy Legend 2 on the gameboy. I found that around the Valhalla Palace world, you could go into your inventory and double select the trashcan. This would then let you choose one of your characters and improve their stats. The amount of times you could do this was always random, never felt like I got a huge advantage doing this, but I always did it once I found it.
I remember in twisted metal 3 or 4 there were a couple of basic up,up,down,down, or left,right,left,right codes with a few slight variations that gave you extra weapons & functions. I discovered 1 by accident so tried a few combinations out and discovered quite a few more.
1 combo was teleport and was useful if you fell off the map edge or couldn’t shake someone tailing you, another combo was to ‘jump’ your car over opponents and obstacles, another combo was a freeze bolt that temporarily froze & immobilized to opponent if you hit them, I think another combo was speed boost or something
Not much, but the PICO-8 easter egg in Celeste felt incredible rewarding. Also loved the Pointless Machines Heart Puzzle, but that’s not really a secret.
Gran turismo 3 had a glitch if you used the gameshark cheats for max series points. An npc car would start spinning in circles and fly randomly all over the track and even off the track at insane speeds. I have yet to find someone else who knows what I’m talking about.
Original Diablo potion duplication bug
I found a spot in the top of the balcony in the dining room in Resident Evil 1 Directors Cut where you could shoot the screen and have glass shatter. I know you could do it in RE2 but never saw anyone on the internet mention this specific spot in RE1 despite me searching all over for others who mentioned this spot
I found a wall-clip area in one of the ice cave levels on Donkey Kong Country. It didn’t do anything to help the game as all you could do was hop around in the ceiling, but I thought it was cool to find a glitch.
Also, in the course of many, many hours of multiplayer in Goldeneye, we discovered the quick detonate trick on the remote mines, which became a central part of my strategy.
John Elway Football – there was a specific play you could run that would make the receiver have super speed and be able to comically outrun the defense. You could spend an entire quarter running up and down the field without risking getting tackled. I shared it with my friends and we all agreed we wouldn’t do it when playing against each other.
Starcraft cheats. Warcraft 2 had clever cheat strings like “Make it so” and “There can only be one”. I guessed at “Show me the money” as a cheat given the popularity of the phrase at the time.
[found Romero’s head in Doom II](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Romero%27s_Head), (which you had to be cheating to find)
I also got one of the hidden Fez left/right patterns by accident. Was just mashing the keys and it locked in.
I found a way to have 3 weapons on the first level of Halo. Was trying to rush into the action. The grunts right outside the bridge didn’t spawn. Ran back after clearing the cafeteria and the grunts showed up after t he pistol showed up in my hands. Cycled my weapons and had 3
If you had the “all weapons” cheat unlocked for goldeneye, you could mix and match guns. My favorite was sniper rifle in one hand and rocket launcher in another. All you had to do is fire one of the doubles and while in reload animation, switch to the next weapon. The one in reload animation would stay but the other would swap.
In Skyrim, if you pick pocket the Briar Heart out of a Forsworn Briarheart, he dies. I was confused, but I realized I took his heart out and I laughed a lot.
A message in Dark Souls pointed out the first illusory wall in Blighttown for me, but the crappy item in the chest behind it made me suspicious, and I found the second illusory wall that leads to The Great Hollow myself.
My brother found an infinite 1-Up farm in Yoshi’s Island. I think it’s in 4-1 or 4-2 where you can bounce a koopa shell forever against a Shy Guy pipe and max out your lives.
Here’s a video of someone else doing it https://youtu.be/LMeWpwyqTos?si=TFN6WU-hfp5ATFV3
We were just kids who didn’t google stuff so I was always impressed he figured it out.
I had a sega and randomly typed in a code one day for the game, Altered Beast. I heard a noise and all the sudden a cheat code activated. I had no idea what I entered, so I left the default on for daaaays. Never could do it again
ive seen a lot but one of my most recent ones is that every azalea tree in minecraft has a lush cave under it
Finding the blue gem in Crash Bandicoot 2. You have to get through the first level without breaking any crates. I searched all over the level to no avail then just decided to try this randomly. 7-year old me felt like a genius haha.
Also stumbled upon Chimecho in Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire without a guide. It’s in an out of the way area and only has a 1% spawn rate. I don’t think any NPCs even use one in the game so you’d have no way to know it even existed otherwise.
Fucked around and drove backwards while starting a San Francisco Rush race and found out about finding keys to unlock cars. That lead to the secret underground skatepark. Also changing car size and tire size. That game fuckin rules.
MMX!! Sigmas first form can mostly be beaten/avoided by sliding slowly down the middle of the left wall iirc. I found the halfway boss on the chameleon level on accident.
Holding right on the D-pad of controller 2 playing Megaman 3.
I discovered the secret island in SMB3. That was the pinnacle of my gaming career.
In the first level of ToeJam and Earl, there’s a small island that I found that drops you to a level zero filled with goodies. Found it while bored and fooling around trying to clear every level.
Super Mario World
I don’t remember the exact situation since this was around 30 years ago. Found out that SMW had extra levels by accident. I think it was one of the levels that you had to fly to complete it. I either went lower than the flag or over the flag and ended up completing the level the alternate way. My friends and I were all stunned as the map opened up a different route than the main one. Then we noticed that you could see alternate roads next to some of the castles. Again, apologies for any inaccuracies. 30 years is a long time!
In Zelda there’s a cave of trials with progressively difficult enemies in each room ( I think there are 50 levels?) on dragon roost island. I found out that you can bypass literally every level by using the wind boomerang on the two torches beside the locked door leading to the next room. Cleared it in like 5 mins lol.
I actually stumbled into the Chris Houlihan room on A Link to the Past during a run to fight Ganon back when I was a kid. No idea what happened or how I did it. Couldn’t replicate it. My brothers and friends all thought I made it up until years later they heard about it. I legit thought I was crazy
I beat ruby weapon in 1999 before any of my friends.
I discovered the inverted castle in Symphony of the Night just from exploring on my own and being very thorough.
When playing *New Leaf*, I didn’t realize that slingshots were a thing. So, I figured out you could use the axe on the balloons (provided you are on a high enough platform).
Finding Ash Lake accidentally in Dark Souls 1 was straight up mind blowing
Unlocking the Mantorok rune in Eternal Darkness. Had to do a lot of backtracking on the level but boi that rune was spicy. I did also get THE Gladius organically, by fluke since one of the statuettes is invisible that is required to get it but I must have had detect invis still active for whatever reason.
Crash Bandicoot 2, jumping on the polar bear.
I guess it’s not much of a secret, as the bear is just sitting there, and you are jumping on everything at that point. But when the extra lives came out, I was at least a little surprised.