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Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Up, Up, Up (netflix.com)
145 points by edward on Sept 24, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 35 comments


A friend of mine worked on the netflix debugging tools for a majority of their players (tvs, blu-ray players, consoles, etc) and there are a number of remote combinations like that inside the players to bring up all sorts of goodies.


I'd love a combination to keep Netflix signed in on my Samsung TV. It's something like a 50/50 chance every time I load it that I have to sign in again.


I'd suggest grabbing a dongle. TV-based apps are notoriously buggy overall and rarely updated to fix bugs.


Heh, it's pretty close to the Konami Code, I wonder if that was the inspiration? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code


Agreed, I was thinking "... and your TV will jump up, flip, and deliver a crushing hammer blow to its opponent!"

Related anecdote, I was trying to explain covert channels to a new engineer as a means of sending a message through something which wasn't really designed to send messages (my goto example was using screen dimming to send code data) but they immediately came back with "Oh like the secret moved on Street Fighter!" Yes, it made me feel old.


It was. We call it the Konami code internally. :)


It is similar to the Sonic 3 code too - 'Up-up-down-down-up-up-up-up'


I was sure this article would be about Gradius but no...


Every time I need to unlock developer settings in a recent Android phone I get a little nostalgic for the codes of old.

If you're of that era you likely also remember...

007 373 5963

...and...

JUSTIN BAILEY

------ ------


I'm also disappointed that cheat codes don't seem to make it into release builds any more. (Or do they? I haven't seriously played anything modern for a while now - I'd love to be proved wrong.)


Some companies realized you could charge money for them and thus was born the pay to win version of free to play games.

Consider Contra's 99 lives cheat code vs candy crush's extra lives for cold hard cash.

Though by far the most popular is a version of starcraft's instant build cheat coupled with a persistent RTS game.

As to traditional cheat codes, there more common in RPG's. Skyrim console being a great example of a classic cheat codes.


IDDQD IDKFA


Ever try typing those into Heretic?

Was Sega not very big in the US in that era? Most of the old gaming references I see online are NES-based (or at least Nintendo), but the first cheat code I learned was Up, Down, Left, Right, A+Start.


Up, C, Down, C, Left, C, Right, C, A+Start was cooler.

Sega was pretty much unknown in the US until the Genesis came out, and never really beat Nintendo in popularity.


There are, in fact, some "cheat codes" in stock android, though. Try entering this in dialer, for instance: ##4636##


A winner is you, my friend.


ICARUS FIGHTS

MEDUSA ANGELS


My first thought was that it was a sequence for a Mortal Kombat fatality.


The contra code . . . you'll never forget . . .

popularized among North American players in the NES version of Contra, for which it was also dubbed both the "Contra Code" and "30 Lives Code"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code


Very close to the Contra code, not quite though.


Partially OT: For Roku users (e.g. Netflix app on same), this page describes some hidden controls (bit rate et al.):

http://mkvxstream.blogspot.com/2013/01/secret-roku-troublesh...

I ran across this when my Roku XD (generation 1) started glitching again due to a known issue with its marginal wall-wart transformer.


When I saw the title for this post at first, I imagined I was going to enter the sequence on the site and see something crazy happen...


Somewhat related, but have you ever tried entering the konami code on reddit. At least, it used to do something cool.


missed opportunity here


I suppose with a limited controller, you need a way to get to less used functions (such as logout) without accidentally triggering it. It's not that annoying of a sequence, compared to something you don't want regularly popping up.


I have unfortunately had to use this before seeing this post on a Samsung TV.

I honestly didn't believe the documentation at first. I remember Googling it again and then found someone's post that said, 'No really. That is how you do it."


Not "Up, Up, Up, Up"; "B, A, B, A" of course.


bzzt. The Konami code only has one "B, A".


Yes, and some games needed "Start" as well in the end.

For a real nostalgic magic code, have a read about Xyzzy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xyzzy_(computing)


Is this the way out of the maze in Colossal Cave Adventure?


HADOUKEN!

Whats a vizio device by the way?


http://www.vizio.com/en-ca/tv-overview


Vizio is a TV manufacturer. I assume that these instructions are for product line that has Netflix built in.


It's a brand of "smart" TVs.


“‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’” - Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson’s biography.




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