Welcome to the 32 Dangerous Cheat Codes, a brand new series that will run daily between November 24 and December 25. Join us as we discuss the hazardous ramifications of some of your favorite cheat codes. Today we're proving the point that everything is better with a hidden post-credits sequence. This includes Ground Zero: Texas, a horrible full-motion video game released on the Sega CD. Find out why this scene is worth checking out what you watch today's episode of the 32 Dangerous Cheat Codes.


If there's one thing Hollywood has been able to rely on, it's that movie-goers love big explosions. We can't get enough. Even when it makes absolutely no scientific sense, we still want to see a massive fireball reach high into the air. We don't even care how many people died or the cost of cleanup, because we just want something to go boom. And thanks to a never-ending supply of action films and comic book movies, audiences will likely never run out of explosions to ogle.

For whatever reason, explosions aren't nearly as big of a deal in video games. Perhaps it's due to the interactivity or the overabundance of things that go boom, but most games aren't as fixated with the beauty and destruction of a slow-motion explosion. It's hard to get too excited about a big bang when that kind of thing happens every time you shoot a red barrel. Games need to do a lot more than blow shit up to impress us.

But sometimes an explosion is more than it appears. This is the case with General Chaos, the comical four-player war game from Electronic Arts. If you want to get more bang with each grenade, then all you need to do is pause the game right after you've thrown the explosive at the enemy. It will continue its trajectory and create an even larger explosion right on top of the enemy's frozen army. It's pretty much the easiest way to win any game of General Chaos.

But this type of pause trick is not exclusive to one obscure Electronic Arts game. In fact, you'll find an even more effective version of this cheat in the Nintendo Entertainment System classic, Blaster Master. When you're fighting a boss in one of the overhead action levels, just pause the game the moment a grenade hits the enemy. Instead of freezing all of the action, the grenade's blast will linger, continuing the damage the boss until you unpause. There's no question that it's cheating, but given the hell the game puts you through, I think the move is fair play.

Of course, there's a strong possibility that neither SunSoft nor Electronic Arts intended to ship their games with pause cheats. This issue more than likely snuck by the play testers or developers crunched for time. The theory that it was simply a programming accident is backed up by the fact that none of the Blaster Master follow-ups featured anything similar to the pause trick. The same can be said about General Chaos, though that's because EA never gave the game a sequel. I think it's probably about time we bring back General Chaos.