Do You Think Infinite Lives is Cheating?

[DeadPark]

I love to play retro games. But most of them are so hard, and i am not a very skilled player. So growing up, it was rare that i ever actually BEAT a game. Now with emulators and the built in cheating devices, i give myself infinite lives, and i can finally see the end of those games.

I try to be fair about it. If the game has continues, I'll do infinite continues instead of lives. That way i still have to beat the stage in however many lives they give me. But i don't have to start from the very beginning of the game when they're gone.

My justification has always been that the lives were only there to make the game feel longer, and feel like a better value. Just thinking about playing modern games like dark souls with limited lives seems laughable, but also feels like the same situation. Giving myself infinite lives feels like it fixes an otherwise broken game.

What are your opinions?

[Pulsar_t]

To me, it's only cheating if you use an exploit to top public leaderboards or gain an unfair advantage over online opponents. Otherwise, it's all up to the player.

[Ziggy]

Didn't we have a thread similar to this recently?


Using a code for infinite lives is cheating, by definition. Some one on another forum put it in good words. If I lose all my lives and have to start over from the beginning of a level, or even the beginning of the game, I'll eventually play it enough times to get past the part I keep dying at. But I'm adult. I have a job and other responsibilities. I use infinite lives or infinite continues to save me time, not necessarily cheat. A lot of times, I don't have the time in the day to keep replaying a level because I keep dying at one point near the end of the level. Infinite lives is used just to save me the time it takes to replay an entire level, the parts that I've already mastered. So in that context, I don't consider it cheating.

Using invincibility, or something that gives you all the weapons or super stats, unlocks things you shouldn't have at certain points, abilities you shouldn't have, etc... THAT'S cheating. No way to justify that.

I like to beat games without cheating. But I'm not gonna lose sleep over using infinite lives or continues to beat a game. It's always a lot better feeling when you don't use ANY cheats, but hey, I'm adult and I have a life.

I suppose there are certain types of games though where using infinite lives is basically like making yourself invincible. Certain shooters are like this, where when you die the only penalty is losing a life (doesn't start you at beginning of level, take away weapons, etc). If you have infinite lives, then you're basically invincible since you can just plow through the game and not care when you get hit.

[dogman91]

Another thing.... is it cheating to use savestates for a particular boss or section you're having trouble with to practice, then when you finally have it down in your muscle memory to start the game over from the beginning and play it legit with no savestates/continues?

[prfsnl_gmr]

i give myself infinite lives

cheating

use savestates for a particular boss or section you're having trouble with to practice, then when you finally have it down in your muscle memory to start the game over from the beginning and play it legit with no savestates/continues?

not cheating

[Ziggy]

Another thing.... is it cheating to use savestates for a particular boss or section you're having trouble with to practice, then when you finally have it down in your muscle memory to start the game over from the beginning and play it legit with no savestates/continues?

Now I definitely remember a recent thread just like this one.

Save states can be cheating depending on how you use them. If you're using them to make up for the fact that a game has no save feature or password system, then I personally don't consider that cheating. Using it right before a boss, that's more of a grey area.

[Sarge]

Yep, not sure which thread right now, but that's how I did my Battletoads run. It's most certainly "cheating" in that it compresses the learning curve, but I still beat the game legit on the hardware once I had it all down.

Honestly, it's probably better overall than the way things used to be, where you'd read a magazine to figure things out, or watch a friend and how he did it. Today, you can just hop on YouTube and see any number of strategies for games, and it really does trivialize the difficulty sometimes. At least with save states you're figuring it out yourself.

Short version: There are lots of things that can be considered "cheating", but as long as you do it legit when you claim victory, all tools to get to that point are in bounds.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I occasionally use save states but only as an "extended pause" for older games that lacked real saves or passwords. See Rygar, Super Mario Bros. 3, etc.

Theoretically this could be done with original hardware (though I assume it isn't a great idea to leave an NES on pause for 10 hours). Thus, I don't consider it "cheating."

I never use save states for "save scumming" - once I load a state, I consider it gone forever.

[Ziggy]

Theoretically this could be done with original hardware (though I assume it isn't a great idea to leave an NES on pause for 10 hours). Thus, I don't consider it "cheating."

I rented Super Star Wars from Blockbuster once and left it on for days.


I left Castlevania on for quite a few hours once. When I came back to the game and continued playing, it froze on level 5. The NES is unreliable for this sort of thing.

[marurun]

I think if it's a port of an arcade quarter-muncher and they don't limit continues, that's fine, because the score usually resets, meaning you'll have infinite lives, but the score, the true measure of your finesse, won't be very good.