I didn’t think that Nanotek Warrior would be our only example of using a cheat code to unlock a save menu but I didn’t expect another one would turn up quite so quickly! CyanRuby over on Jason’s PlayStationLibrary.com Discord server pointed out a new one in Twisted Metal III.
In Twisted Metal III, go to the password screen, and hit the start button five times. Then, go to the settings and change them in some way. Now, start a new game, and after you pick a character, it will ask if you want to save your settings.
It definitely works but it’s kind of odd that it only saves your settings: sound and music volume, display dithering, in-game menus, and the like. It is interesting that the game silently loads your save file on boot and if you were to time it just right (or wrong) you could damage the file if you pulled the memory card out while it was being accessed. But it’s just your basic settings anyways so I guess it wouldn’t be too much of a loss. Apparently not worth the QA time to build in an actual interface to show the player.
Like Nanotek Warrior, the design choice here is a mystery. Why hide a useful function like saving your preferences and automatically loading them behind a cheat code? We may never know but, hey, at least we found another memory card icon!
