Argonaut Games’ cult classic survival horror FPS Alien Resurrection has been hiding a secret for 23 years: it contains a cheat code that lets you play backup disks on PS1 without having to mod the hardware at all.
In a fascinating video essay from Modern Vintage Gaming, it’s revealed that a fairly straightforward cheat code will let you swap Alien Resurrection for seemingly any burned PS1 game, and it’ll boot up without requiring an additional mod chip, soft mod, or even a memory card. All you need is a copy of Alien Resurrection, any official PS1 console, and the cheat code itself, which you can enter after a few key steps that any casual modder or retro enthusiast should have no problem with.
In the video, you can see an original copy of Alien: Resurrection running on a stock PS1, and then after the cheat code is entered, the actual PS1 game is removed and a burned copy of 1999’s Silent Hill is inserted into the disk drive and, after just a few seconds, the ROM starts up without issue.
Why, you may be asking, did Argonaut Games turn Alien Resurrection into a boot disk for backups? Well, according to Martin Piper, a developer who worked on the game and revealed its long-held secret to Modern Vintage Gaming, the intent was experimental. Piper wanted to find out if disks could be changed without having to reset the PS1, and he didn’t tell any of the other developers, nor Sony itself, about his little technical test.
To be clear, when a developer submits a finished game for publication, it’s supposed to reveal all of its cheat codes, but this particular one was never disclosed for the simple reason that Sony would’ve undoubtedly kicked it back to development for removal. Apparently, Piper isn’t too worried about letting his secret out into the wild more than two decades later.
“I figured it was so long ago and that I didn’t want to get old and die without letting go of these kind of secrets,” said Piper.
Alien: Resurrection didn’t quite make the cut for our list of the best PS1 games, but we might have to reconsider after this stunning revelation.
