Video Game Victories and Cheating

I’ve beaten about 85 video games; maybe I’ll post the list just for the doom of it. But in keeping track, I’ve had to define what it means to beat a game. This involves answering a couple of questions:

1. When is the game complete?

2. What methods are valid to get you to the end?

The first is usually straightforward, but some games (like Dr. Mario) will repeat forever until you turn them off (or lose), and others may have multiple endings depending on previous accomplishments. I believe that the following are all sufficient conditions for having completed a game:

· A victory results in rolling the credits and/or displaying “The End”, or a similar message.

• So in Super Mario Kart 64, you’ve beaten the game if you beat the Special Cup circuit on 100cc, even though you can play on 150cc after that.
• Sonic the Hedgehog is beaten if you defeat Dr. Robotnik, even if you don’t have the Chaos Emeralds
• Bomberman 64 is beaten if you beat Altair, even though the game will progress past that point if you come back after collecting all of the Gold Cards.

· In a game with distinct levels, all are completed

· In a game with repeating levels at the end, all distinct levels are completed.

• So in Dr. Mario, the game is over if you beat Level 20. The numbers continue up to 24 and then repeat forever, but those are all duplicates of Level 20. (Also, it shows the viruses leaving Earth after you beat Level 20, which is arguably analogous to the first condition)

As for cheating, I consider the following to be invalid in terms of declaring victory on a game:

· Any use of external hardware, such as Game Genie

· Use of passwords you did not earn, or secret codes. “Secret” is defined as button presses that are outside the context of the defined uses for the game’s buttons.

• The pause trick in the original Mega Man may seem like cheating, since pausing the game repeatedly in order to score multiple hits with a single shot doesn’t make sense in the context of the game story. But pausing the game is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, so I don’t consider this trick cheating. Same goes for the similar trick in Blaster Master.
• By this definition, the Konami Code in Gradius is a cheat. In some ways it doesn’t feel like it should be, since it can be used only a limited number of times and because it is so well known as to be practically part of the instruction book. But it’s not part of the book, so I still consider it cheating. (That said, it’s a great way to “train” yourself on a Gradius game.)

· Help from another person. I suppose participation in a two-player game is exempt from this, but I prefer to play through games in one-player mode so that I feel like I really completed the challenges instead of just following behind someone who knew what they were doing.

In closing, I’ll add that I’m not generally a fan of games that you can’t beat, like Tetris, or (cringe) those multiplayer online games that people have to schedule time to meet up with guild members to play. Like movies and books, games make you want to stay involved as long as there’s story left, and if they never end they can suck you in forever. Just saying.