Gaming Hacks

Create PS2 Cheat Codes

Need alternatives for exploiting Grand Theft Auto 3 for your PS2? Try some cheat codes.

You’re playing your favorite PlayStation 2 game, but you’re bored of the gameplay. Wouldn’t it be neat to mix things up a little bit; maybe turn on infinite lives, skip levels, or reach new areas? Unfortunately, because the console is a black box, it’s not easy to change game saves or enter cheat codes. You need some way to enter cheats from external sources into your beautiful console.

If you consider the proprietary nature of next-generation consoles, in which you can’t burn discs for unmodified consoles (unlike, say, the Dreamcast), and add the fact that modifying these next-gen beasts is fraught with legal peril, you have a situation in which it’s difficult to alter game variables easily. That’s perfect fodder for a hack.

If you’re prepared to piggyback on completely unofficial hardware and software work from commercial variable-hacking experts,^[14] you can cause havoc in game code in no time flat.

Although each of the major current-generation consoles (the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox) have significantly different ways you can access them (and different games that are particularly fun to hack), the most popular system for cheat code hacking is the PlayStation 2.

Variable Hacking on the PlayStation 2

Datel’s Action Replay (and some versions of the Gameshark) led the pack of cheat-code devices for the PS2 until 2003. This unofficial CD boots on unmodified PlayStation ...