We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. Sometimes our indiscretions are tiny white lies, like where you hid the body or youthful indiscretions such as being charged with breaking and entering when you were only fourteen. Sometimes though, what we’ve done, the blemishes in our past, are so dark that we dare not share them with anyone lest these secrets become public knowledge and ruin the very personas we’ve spent years trying to perfect. I am, of course, speaking of the skeletons in each of our gaming closets. These go beyond merely games we’re embarrassed to have played. I only wish that tapping my feet to Britney’s Dance Beat was my greatest crime. I’ve decided to reveal to the public parts of my gaming past that I have never revealed to even my closest friends. So join me as I reveal my own gaming shame; bring some Axe body wash though, you’re going to feel dirty after reading this.

I beat Final Fantasy X using a Gameshark
I’ve since beaten the game without the use of this horrible device, but on my first play through I was having major trouble on the final battle with Sin. I was young and full of disposable income at the time, so I went to my local Best Buy and purchased a Gameshark. When I got home I went into my bedroom, locked my door, and entered in the code for maxing the character levels. I breezed through the final battles and was able to finish the game. The worst part is my best friend at the time was having trouble near the end as well and I confidently told her that all you had to do was take the time to level your characters like I had and she’d be fine. To this day she doesn’t know I had cheated.

I know every song from Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure by heart and sing it often in my car
The same friend from above and I both own the soundtrack and actually will sing different parts when we’re together. I always get to play the role of Cornet though, always! I also thought long and hard about trying to see if I could adapt it to be a stage musical. It doesn’t stop with Rhapsody, if a game has a poorly written theme song you can bet I know all the words and have dreamt of performing them on stage with fives of tens of fans. And those Little Mermaid song levels in Kingdom Hearts II, yeah, know all those too.

I can’t ever get anywhere in The Sims without using the money code
In The Sims 3, my virtual boyfriend and I got married and raised a kid together. It sure was easy since we were self-made millionaires with a perfectly designed and immaculately decorated house. Being uber traditional, I also opted to allow my child two stay-at-home dads because daycare can turn children into serial killers. I read that somewhere. All this was possible thanks to a few keystrokes and massive amounts of cash. This has probably warped my own sense of financial responsibility, seeing as how I try to enter a similar code at the ATM and it just spits my card out and laughs at me.

I never beat Final Fantasy VI
Technically I played the final battle using a friend’s saved game. Otherwise I’ve only gotten to the part where the world gets a Joan Rivers’ style face lift. I own three different copies of the game for Terra’s sake! I beat Final Fantasy X-2 three times though, does that make it worse?

I shoplifted a copy of Fantastic Four for the Playstation
Back when I was much younger than my current 22 years (give or take two…ish), fine merchants trusted their customers to not rob them blind. I might have been on a bit of a klepto streak and rather than stealing items of value I focused on anything I could get my hands on. This lead to the swiping of one of the worst games of all time, Fantastic Four. This was long before the movie and the only notable feature this game had was the ability to play as She Hulk…which also made the name of the game false advertising as you were technically the Fantastic Five.

I’ve bought every Grand Theft Auto game since GTA 3 and haven’t played any of them for more than a couple of hours
I hate the driving portions of these games so much that the first time I’m told to race a car somewhere or to pick people up under a strict time limit, I break from the game and do my own thing. This has yet to stop me from picking up the series, mostly because I want to seem cool in front of my friends. Causing mass destruction is fun and all, but maybe by GTA 5 they’ll actually fix the nasty controls. That’s right, bring on the hate mail!

While watching my friend play Final Fantasy VII for the first time, I had him skip saving Jesse at the beginning, causing him to die, give up in frustruation, and handing me the controller
Needless to say we’re no longer friends. I made up for this by showing my cousins how to manage their materia since they decided reading was beneath them. I tend to prefer when people watch me play games and not the other way around. On the subject of Final Fantasy VII, I am also able to dictate exactly how to breed a Gold Chocobo without the use of any type of notes or guide. That shite should be on my resume!

There is a oddly sexy fan drawn picture of Sigurd from Xenogears floating around the net, it was my desktop wallpaper for three months
There is a site out there that caters to RPG fans. I’m not saying who they are, but they have a vast section of fanart. The Sigurd picture in question I have dubbed “Is it hot in here?” Please don’t try to locate it.

I rename characters in games to be based on people I know…or am currently stalking
This worked best in older RPGs when I would change everyone’s name to parallel real life. There was something heroic about fighting alongside my friends, siblings, cousins, and really touchy-feely teacher. It eventually evolved into renaming the love interests to match my own. This trend didn’t stop as very recently I changed the name of a tank in Valkyria Chronicles II to someone I have a massive crush on.

I tried having my name changed to Link
Seriously, it wouldn’t be that hard. I looked into it.