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[Zedix]

[invfish]

[Leeravitz]

Maybe. Again, my lack of encyclopedic knowledge of arcade games past may be shown up here, but most of the really old ones only let you input three letters into the High Score Table anyway, if I recall correctly. And I'm not 100% sure how a 'cheat code' for an arcade game would have disseminated anyway - the 'cheat code' industry only really got going with the advent of a computer owning community, surely.

And then, there must be hundreds of potential arcade games to choose from: from Space Invaders and Donkey Kong through to Virtua Fighter and on...

But it would explain, perhaps, why no trace of the code can be found on - line...

The only other thing that might be assumed is that the reason the code can't be found on line is because it wasn't used for a modern game; the Net tends to deal with stuff that's current...So, if this was a cheat code for, say, some obscure C64 game back in 1985, then, quite possibly, it won't have a Net presence. But, as all the other listed games are not just significant but arguably *very* famous, that does seem like an odd distinction for this code to have...

It's a real puzzler...

[Kalt]

I don't believe the games are meant to be obscure. I'm pretty positive it's something many of us have heard of, but either not catalogued properly on the Net or not translated properly into our terms of thinking about cheats.

Oddly enough, I couldn't even find the semifamous cheat from Zork,

[nichtwahr]

[hamatoyoshi]

Just some offtopic links...

[invfish]

[hamatoyoshi]

[Mikeyj]

Inventory?

Doesn't really fit this style of game though...

[Leeravitz]

As I said before about the peculiarity of 'I', it's not at all obvious what it might stand for. The one thing that rings a bell with me (because I was a particularly avid adventure gamer in my youth) is that, in some keyboard controlled stuff, I seem to recollect that 'I' would (logically) call up an 'Inventory' or sometimes 'Items' or even 'Information'. While I wholeheartedly agree that a) most platformers wouldn't bother with such controls and b) most adventure games of note have no notable cheat codes that I know of, I think it's still possible that there may have been cross - over type games on the market, that combined platforming or omni - directional controlling with calling up inventories of one sort or another. My memory is very hazy, but there were certainly early PC games with this kind of set up (Mech Warrior, simulators of one sort or another, things like that).

The other thing that may not be of any help to anyone, but I'll note anyway is where the corresponding keys are placed on a QWERTY keyboard: the noticeable thing about JKI is that they form a cluster, only C is far removed from them.

This doesn't suggest much to me, but it *could* perhaps indicate a game within which those buttons were important as controls (I guess we've estimated that already) because they are within easy reach of one another when you're playing at speed. What I remember about Spectrum games, for instance, is the way you always had 'Q' and 'A' as up/down, 'O' and 'P' as left/right, in the days before good joysticks and arrow keys, and, naturally, the programmers went with controls that were pretty easy to access, without paying too much attention to what your fingers were doing.

Being strictly 'crypotographic' about the approach, if you like, you might then hypothesise that 'J', 'K' and 'I' had important movement control functions (maybe the letters don't strictly correspond, and 'J' is down, say', while 'I' is left and 'K' is right). 'C', which is further away, and on what I would tend to consider the 'control line' might be something less continuously utilised like a 'fire' function (on most Spectrum games, this would be 'N' or 'M', I think, which are interestingly in the same line - space bar which is just below would also be utilised to do things like 'fire' or 'pause' not irregularly). This could mean that a letter like 'U' completed the movement cluster. In truth, the actual cluster is rather clumsy if looked at as a four - character group; as three (JKI) it might be feasible. In fact, from a purely ergonomic point of view (!), I'd have to say that having 'J' and 'K' as left - right controls and 'I' and 'C' as jump/crouch would be the most sensible combo I can think of. As I've said before, that pattern puts my fingers in mind of the original PC versions of Prince of Persia, (for which if someone can put me out of my misery and remind what the controls were, I'd be very grateful:)).

Of course, this is all complete speculation. What we are tending to assume, for a start, is that there is a direct correlation between controls used in the game proper and an inputted cheat code. That seems to me the application of sensible logic; after all, it's reasonable to assume that a game which possessed the cheat code 'KJIC' actually utilised the control characters , 'K', J' 'I' and 'C', to a significant degree. But I guess we a) have no idea if these were the only significant characters utilised in - game and b) whether these characters do meaningfully correspond to functions. It's true to say that, by the time the PC boom started in the early 90's, programmers had started to come up with interfaces that were more user friendly than they had been, and doing something like having 'U' for 'Up' and 'D' for 'down' was hardly unheard of. Back in the 80's, no such logic prevailed, as far as I can recall, although most games did work by defaults (so, as I've said, 95% of all Spectrum games went with 'O' and 'P' as left - right).

I'm not sure if that helps anyone at all...

[BrianEnigma]

[Kalt]

Just a quick note--Apple IIe games in America (Think Quick, and other games of which I don't remember the titles) generally used I as up, J as left, K as right, and M as down. I'm having a tough time remembering any other controls, though.

[oliverkeers13]

It isn't a keyboard code. Notice that the

[Leeravitz]

While I'm hardly assuming that our latest speculations are anything other than total guesses, I don't quite follow the logic that states only an encased code represents something that was originally typed. I agree that the presence of the red highlighting (or whatever it was on the card) must have been included in order to represent something, but it might actually be little more than a design feature to draw your attention to the fact that the code comprised complete words rather than random strings of letters. After all, any Spectrum cheat worth its salt (i.e. code 10) had to be typed in physically. So, code 10 at least is clearly keyboard - specific, and yet appears to be unencased. I felt a few of the other codes also incorporated bits and pieces that couldn't have been inputted simply by pressing the requisite keypads, and only code 1 and code 3, I think, had any obvious 'encasing' going on.

Which is not to say that any theory thus far put forward about the mysterious KJIC is correct...but, after all, if it isn't keyboard specific in some respect, than how do we explain it as a viable code at all?? When non - keyboard systems tend to reduce your input to A, B, X, Y, specific colour codings or directional inputs etc., what's left? This is also the reason, I guess, why we were suggesting it might be an arcade game, although even that seems pretty unlikely...

[Leeravitz]

Oh, I did have another thought. Given the obsession with card games (namely, poker) round Perplex City way, could it have anything to do with a famous gambling simulation or something like that? I mean, obviously, K= King, J = Jack and...er...yes...everything breaks down at that point, I guess. Just a wayward thought...