When do you cheat and why?

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Classic gensis sonic debug mode all day! WOOOOO

 

[Pleng]

Infinite lives/save points/hacking to max lives - always. Because lives are a terrible way to judge a games difficulty/impose artificial difficulty upon a player, and are a legacy system that developers have been far too slow to try an wean gamers off.

Infinite time hacks in Sonic & Mario - all the way... because again.... these limits don't make sense... Certainly, in a thinking game like Lemmings where the object is to "save x creatures with these tools in this amount of time" there is often a point to the time limit - there may be several ways to accomplish the task with the tools provided, but only 1 viable way given the time constraint. But if I've spent 8 minutes trying to navigate those awful energy balls in Sonic Mania's Metallic Madness Zone, just to be left with no possible way to actually finish the level in the allotted time... no thanks! The only way, of course you'd be able to complete the level is hit the checkpoint, wait around for 2 minutes to time out, die and restart from the checkpoint with a fresh 10 minute clock - that very much sounds like a broken game mechanic that cheating could avoid. In Mario games you generally have plenty of time to get from A-B... but if you want to spend some time exploring a level then you can find yourself out of luck. Again... what's the point of having a time limit that doesn't really impede you from finishing the level; but does impede you from having a wander around?

Level Skip. Rarely, but it has its uses... If there's a particular part of the game I just *can't* master, or even really don't enjoy, and it's a blocking part of the game (unable to progress unless task is accomplished) then it seems there's two choices - give up on the game and deny myself the chance to experience the rest of it, or skip that level. As there aren't a massive load of games out there that I actually enjoy playing, it seems silly to deny myself a good chunk of a game that I *do* enjoy, simply because of one blockade.

 

[Song of storms]

When you have a supposedly balanced card game and a lot of the cards are locked until you find them (exhibit A: Pokemon TCG GB).

 

[BORTZ]

Some people would say no, but it's hard to distinguish, and it ultimately depends on what you're savescumming for. If you make a save state immediately before a boss to save a few minutes of walking from the save point, I think that's fine. If dying sends you basically to the same point, i.e. you're not playing hardcore/ironman mode, I don't see the problem. But, if you're saving before every RNG-based event (like I did before picking pockets in Skyrim) you're guaranteeing yourself the best outcomes each time, and it definitely ruins some of the challenge/point of the game, at least in my opinion.

Food for thought: Some of the newer VC releases directly from Nintendo and other retro re-releases like the most recent Sega Genesis Collection have save states built right into the games. As well as the ability to Fast Forward and Rewind. Not saying that doesn't make them cheats, but just muddies the waters further imo.

I dont tend to cheat the first time I play a game. I see what the game offers and then I try to suck up all the fun I can playing legitimately. I do usually download or find a list of cheats before I start so I know what is possible with cheats. Sometimes, I will enable quality of life or EXP multipliers depending on the game. I don't have as much time in invest into individual games like I used to, so things that speed the process along help me experience more games in less time.
Once I deem I have beaten said game, I then enable cheats, if I want to keep playing for some reason.

On an emulator I do abuse save states as well as liberal use of the fast forward ability.