What game bug or cheat do you know now that you wish you did back in the day?

[TK_Monkey]

Care to explain this one? Never heard of it, sounds interesting...

I had to look this one up too, I hadn't heard of it:

"When flying in the trench towards the vulnerable exhaust port, "USE THE FORCE" is spelled in green until you fire a shot. If you dodge the fireballs, do not fire any shots and use one shot to fire your torpedoes in to the exhaust port, you get a sizable "USE THE FORCE" bonus. This is encouraged by Obi Wan himself at the beginning of the trench sequence. "

From http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Arcade_Game

 

[ZEFF]

you dont even have to be THAT precise.... once youre at the port you can let loose on it- it doesnt have to be just one shot

 

[CrazyKongFan]

I don't think you lose the bonus if a fireball hits you or you hit a wall either, you just lose a shield each time it happens (not good if you're playing with TG tournament settings )

 

[Doughbroz]

"was there ever a game that had a bug that would let you play for free without crediting?"

Yeah, the Nintendo coin doors on Donkey Kong, etc. No slam switch in the door, so all you had to do for free credits was thump the door with your hand, which momentarily shorted the coin switch. No idea how much income that cost me. I think I eventually installed slam switches wired into the audits circuit or something like that. Give the Japanese credit for coming up with JAMMA, but their coin doors and coin mechs were the suck.

 

[nomore25s]

Not really so much a 'cheat', I just wish I'd had all of these machines at my home back then so I could play them better in the arcades!

The one that "gets" me is that some players had access to "board advance" Pacman, giving them the ability to play/test boards without playing all the preliminary boards first.

 

[EVB]

This use to work for Midway games too, at least some of them. You had to slam the door with a D cell battery right below the coin return button. Didn't work on all of them but the ones that it did it worked like a charm. I remember seeing a lot of coin doors with dent marks below the coin return buttons.

"was there ever a game that had a bug that would let you play for free without crediting?"

Yeah, the Nintendo coin doors on Donkey Kong, etc. No slam switch in the door, so all you had to do for free credits was thump the door with your hand, which momentarily shorted the coin switch. No idea how much income that cost me. I think I eventually installed slam switches wired into the audits circuit or something like that. Give the Japanese credit for coming up with JAMMA, but their coin doors and coin mechs were the suck.

 

[tb lilley]

Maybe someone else could confirm/deny this, but I think I read here there were games you could credit up with a static shock to the coin door... shuffle feet, touch, spark, play!

Yeah, there's some truth to that. We used to strip the piezo crystal mechanisms from electric cigarette lighters and then jump the static spark onto the coin doors. Didn't work on all games, but did work on quite a few. When using that trick on Hunchback you could play 1 credit, but the graphics were all wrong. They stayed wrong until you were awarded the 'SuperBonus' (5 bells in a row), then the graphics would return to normal and you'd be awarded 20 odd credits. Wierd, but true.

 

[gamefixer]

Did anyone mention the straw through the coin door hinge on Donkey Kong? That one was cool and got me and a friend of mine a bunch of free Pizza's!

We used to go to this pizza place that help weekly high score contests. If the game was DK it was up to Dan to get the high score for the week. My game was Defender. We liked the DK weeks because we could coin the game up with a straw and end up with a free large pizza!! LOL

 

[vicjw66]

Guiles super throw in SFII.

 

[CamW]

would you sell astroides or space invaders

 

[SpiffWilkie]

Not sure if this was a short or what, but while playing Tekken 2 BITD at the movie theater, it suddenly jumped into service mode where we changed it to free play. To this day I don't know how it happened...but I liked it.

 

[Slackmoe]

I used to do that trick back in the day well still do

Andrew

+1

I used to play Galaga a ton and this would have been "helpful"

 

[K3587]

Not sure if this was a short or what, but while playing Tekken 2 BITD at the movie theater, it suddenly jumped into service mode where we changed it to free play. To this day I don't know how it happened...but I liked it.

I did the same thing, except it was no glitch. It was on a Soul Calibur II in a showcase cab, and they left the CP unlocked. I reached down and hit the button.

 

[Vabeachrunner3]

Mat Mania

Growing up going to the local boys club, I remember spending a ton of money on Mat Mania never figuring out Cocoa Savage! The super easy and really effective rope and run technique where you can execute any move successfully afterwards would have come in handy back then!

 

[casm]

Did anyone mention the straw through the coin door hinge on Donkey Kong?

Yep, we did this one as well. Worked on Donkey Kong Junior conversions as well.

I remember it not so much because of the free credits, but because the operators eventually got wise to the trick and blocked the inside off from the hinge

 

[jimkirk]

Not a bug but I used to string credits on games.
I used thread and a small piece of band aid on a quarter to put credits on a game.
It worked best on Defender,Stargate and Gorf.
I got so good that I almost always got my quarter back.
We would put 99 credits on Stargate and play till we had enough.
I then put 99 more and sold them.

 

[SeanMcL]

Yep, we did this one as well. Worked on Donkey Kong Junior conversions as well.



I remember it not so much because of the free credits, but because the operators eventually got wise to the trick and blocked the inside off from the hinge

I gotta try this on my DK. Just to see it work.

 

[rabid bear]

Pushing the gas petal lever on Spy Hunter for that extra boost of speed. I know play it with my right foot bare to pull my big toe into the action.

 

[Glitch]

Growing up going to the local boys club, I remember spending a ton of money on Mat Mania never figuring out Cocoa Savage! The super easy and really effective rope and run technique where you can execute any move successfully afterwards would have come in handy back then!

Mat Mania had a max of 3 times of jumping off top rope before your opponent would immediately get up and turn against you. You can point press doing the following:

1. Get opponent into corner of ring, next to left or right turnbuckles knocked out on ground
2. Climb to top rope and jump onto his stomach, total of 3 times
3. Pick up opponent and throw against ropes and let him run into you, knocking both of you down.
4. Immediately get up and repeat steps 1-3 until timer is close to running out.

Works on all wrestlers.

 

[Glitch]

There was a trick in My Hero in which you would rescue your twin and he would follow you through the level beating up the bad guys with you. However, it was just as much as a chore babysitting him when you came up to the bomb/walls portion of level 1.

As long as you did short jumps up the walls (avoiding the tossing bombs), you can leave your twin behind, safe and sound. After passing the walls, hit jump a series of times and he would catch up to you unharmed.