Smokey Maverick

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness got it right. This can be said, and strongly supported, on many different levels, but we’ll just be looking at a small slice of one of the levels.

During any point of the single player campaign, one could enter in some witty cheat codes to get all spells {/Every little thing she does}, unveil the map {/Showpath}, speed up your building {/Make it so}, etc.

You’d then proceed to steam roll your adversaries with your new found and unexplainable God-like powers. All was well and good in your fantasy world, that now required cheats to further appease your desires (somehow magical Ogre shamans were not enough – they now had to have unlimited mana). You’re egghead ego was further ballooned when you checked out the games final “numbers” (WC2 paying tribute to it’s D&D roots) and you could laugh at how puny the underdeveloped A.I. was to your intuitive human cerebellum.

And this is where they got it right: After the stats, a splash screen rudely blindsides you with a booming voice proclaiming “You Cheated!” (Portal and others have since copied this approach). And Blizzard’s right, you did. And after the novelty of this screen wears off, it kind of haunts you a bit – like a successful conscious that a mother’s cultivated over the years.

Obviously, WC2 was nowhere close to ground breaking with cheat codes – which have been around since the dawn of video games. But where they did successfully differ was in their over the top acknowledgment of your cheating.

All of this incredibly insightful banter came to mind when I was recently considering how I’d tackle a challenge at work. To over simply a bit, I basically had to pass a few hundred Test Scenarios. A sly grin crept over me as I thought how sweet it’d be if I could just enter “/Seize the Scenarios” into life’s command line and they’d all magically move to passed. Then life’s experiences got the better of me (or was it that WC2 splash screen?) and I found myself grateful I couldn’t cheat my way out of this challenge. Cheating would sap the fun out of any sure ‘victories’ I’d achieve. The fun is in the challenge – is in the journey, and the not the destination.

This concept is painfully obvious to anyone over the age of 14, and has been written about in a much more effective manner 3,411 times, but framed using the old games video games that raised me gave me the excuse to strut down Memory Lane. That, and I miss playing Warcraft.

* Other memorable games to cheat in: Age of Empires, Half-Life, Donkey Kong, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam
** Other memorable games that did not allow cheating (or ones I didn’t cheat in): Oregon Trail, Myst, Lords of the Realm II, SNES’s 94 Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball
*** I clearly recall my good buddy Scott mentioning (bragging?) that his older brother had beaten WC2 – without using any cheat codes. This exponentially raised his coolness factor in my eyes, and has yet to drop since the day I’ve learned of said acomplishment

Tags:   Blizzard rules · Cheat Codes · Ken Griffey · strikethrough for Boydie · WarCraft II2 Comments