Taking games to the limits

In 2000, when I was 7 years old, my family got our first PC ever. Before that, I never touched one.

It had 60 MHz CPU, about a couple hundred MB of RAM and an HD of 1.5 GB. Unfortunately, I don't remember GPU characteristics.

We installed Windows 95 on it.

On there was a demo version of Monster Truck Madness 1 - it featured one track and two vehicles. It was originally released in 1996.

This was almost the single one game I played for 3 years in a row, until we got a little more powerful machine. I knew every little corner of the scenery on and off the track, I climbed every hill there was, interacted with every object.

Later, around 2003, I discovered GTA III.

Playing GTA III, I discovered a bug in the game. I used a cheat code that made pedestrians chase me. I gathered a solid crowd of people and made them approach a vehicle. Then I would shoot the vehicle so that it exploded and the crowd would loose their limbs and heads.

And when I used the “replay“ feature, in the replay, all those people were chasing me already without their limbs, even before the explosion. That was funny. I loved to film those replays with a screen recorder. Maybe I will find those records sometime.

Another entertainment was to use a cheat code that made gravity smaller and then ride a tank with it’s muzzle turned backwards. I would shoot from the muzzle and it would propel the tank into the air. I could fly the tank in the sky this way.

Also, at a later time, I discovered GTA Admin Console which opened up a whole lot of new possibilities. Particularly, there were hidden scenes, made accessible with the Console.

It was always interesting to me how things worked, not just following the plot of the game.