Once a Cheater...: Oh, Pooh...When I was but a whippersnapper, playing bootlegged games on my dad's Commodore Amiga computer, the choice seemed obvious. If I could play the game with a "trainer," I did so. A "trainer" was a little piece of code, inserted into many cracked distributions of games, that allowed you to play through a game with infinite lives, invulnerability, or some other such option that would let you blaze through the game without fear of a premature "game over." I doubt I could have ever beaten games like Turrican and Blood Money without one of these trainers. The games were brutally difficult, and, besides, the appeal of these games (for me, at least) wasn't so much about developing lightning-fast reflexes as savoring the amazing graphics. It was also exhilerating just to deal massive amounts of carnage. The trainers seemed to eliminate the frustration and lower the bar to the point where an average kid could get all the way through some of the most difficult games of the era.