When Cheat Sheets Became Mountains
In the early days of home consoles and PC gaming, cheat sheets and strategy guides were whispered secrets passed hand-to-hand in school hallways or scrawled in the margins of printed magazines. Players sought hidden warp zones and invincible codes, driven by the thrill of discovery more than the satisfaction of completion. These slender booklets offered shortcuts through sprawling worlds, transforming curiosity into conquest in half the time. The culture of quick victories was born in this era, where the value lay in the secret itself rather than the journey that preceded it. As gaming libraries burgeoned with the shift from