In September 1993, Dan Amrich raced home from Electronics Boutique and jammed his shiny new Mortal Kombat cartridge into his Sega Genesis. After the SEGA logo flashed on his screen, Amrich’s speakers pumped out heavy percussion as text describing three types of codes—ethical, honorable, and secret—engraved itself across a stony background. The last line caught his attention: Mortal Kombat adheres to many codes, but does it contain one? As a matter of fact, it did, and Amrich was one of a select few who knew about it.
Shortly after he began playing, his friend Carl called to tell him about a code he’d found on Usenet, an online bulletin board. Carl didn’t have a copy of the game, so he asked Amrich to try the code. At first, Amrich thought he was referring to ABACABB, a sequence of button presses in the Genesis version of Mortal Kombatthat unlocked all the gory fatalities from the arcade version that had invoked the ire of U.S. politicians. Carl’s find was way better.
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