Manufacturers take a dim view of Action Replays and the like, arguing that they can damage your machine. Also, it's a short step between hacking and piracy. Sony recently removed the serial port on the back of the PS because of the advent of a device for chipping the machine that used it, dooming the Action Replays that used this port to the bin. Opinions are fairly mixed, in fact. Some games have no cheat codes at all (Gran Turismo) while others have hundreds (Tomb Raider), leading to the conclusion that some developers don't like cheats much while others rely on them to sell games.

So is all cheating bad? Does it spoil the game? Some would argue that if a game is too hard, you could at least get some further enjoyment out of it and see the end by using a cheat code. Difficulty varies from person to person, they say, and why should their fun be so restricted? Others would say that cheats are too lazy to learn to play the game properly and they should just practise like everyone else. Walkthroughs help if you're truly stuck on an in-game puzzle, and provided you just look at the bit you're totally stuck on, can free you up to play the rest of the game independently. When used as a dot-to-dot style guide, they remove any challenge from the puzzle side of many games, and the pleasure from solving them, which arguably destroys the game.

I had someone complain to me once that Final Fantasy VII only took him 40 hours to complete and was too easy. It turned out he'd used a walkthrough guide and deliberately missed out certain parts of the game. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed and told him so. The guy just didn't seem to see why he should actually play a game unaided and does this with every game he has.