Amaterasu, the brave adventurer from the widely popular and standard setting Okami game, has just entered an area with a tree, a dark looking tree without further use than being just a tree… or is it…? Looking closer you realize there is a ribbon tied around it and your gamer instincts tells you that ribbon has a meaning but what on earth could it be?

You try different approaches, Amaterasu tries all the powers he have and still you just stand there beside a dark tree with no clue as how to move on in the game.

Would you stop playing? No. You would resort to one of the very popular “game cheat sites”. The word cheat would put off many who do not really know what these sites are about. Sure can be certain to find real cheats there, in the form of special codes that you can enter with special game console peripherals.

But for the most part people come to these sites in search of Guides and Tutorials. It works like this; say you are playing a Zelda game and Link, the hero, is stuck in a fire temple room. You have tried for three hours and simply can not find out how to move that blasted obstacle blocking your way.

Enter the Cheat site, and you search for the game you are playing. Great, you find 5 different tutorials so you enter the first one, search within the document to find “Fire temple” and you read, scroll, read and recognize every step you have taken within the temple and WHAM it hits you in the face, all you needed was to light the torches and then use the mirror spell to remove the block why on earth didn’t you think of that? (Or why on earth did Miyamoto think of that, might be a sound question).

So you remove the obstacle and can keep playing, leaving the cheat/guide site and try to figure out the rest of the way in the game for yourself without outside help. Until you confront that “Unbeatable” boss…

Is it cheating? That’s really up to each person to decide. Personally I don’t consider getting outside help now and then cheating. Putting in codes for unlimited life, unlimited ammo etc on the other hand, yes, that’s what we call cheating.