Cheats

Cheat codes

A set of 12 cheat codes appears in the game code.

To enter a cheat, type it on the keyboard (not case sensitive), hitting the Return key before and after the code. You can chain together multiple codes this way. You will hear a beep if a code has been entered correctly.

Bjork

Voice test. Hit A-U to test one of the 21 voice samples. There is a bug: it doesn’t validate for keys below A, so you get interesting results pressing a number key: if you press 1, it may ask for disk Σ (character 0x6 in K240’s font). Press space to exit.

ICBM

Give 4 of each missile and 4 spy satellites to the currently selected asteroid, whether it belongs to you, an alien, or nobody. Limited to 4 because aliens are capped to 5 of each missile, so this way it’s safe even if the alien builds one right after you hit the cheat. Of course, aliens can’t use spy satellites as they have no satellite silo, and Tylarans have no missile silos. If you ICBM an empty asteroid, the missiles will still be there when you colonize it later.

Iceman

Freezes all asteroid movement. Use again to restore movement again.

Lemings

Add 50 population to the current asteroid, regardless of who owns it. Note that the cheat code is deliberately spelled with one M like this. The cheat code entry method ignores multiples of a letter, so typing lemmings or even lemmmmminnnnggss will work fine.

Loadsadosh

Give 100,000 credits. Around 0x1a7fa in the game executable playk240 (v1.886) you will see the number 000186a0. Hex edit that to 000f4240. Now it will instead give 1 million. The cap is 9,999,999 (one less than 10 million).

NASA

Create a ship at the current location. It has random hardpoints, like a ship acquired via reinforcements. Such a ship will always have a weapon in its first hardpoint to ensure it doesn’t accidentally generate an unarmed ship, even though you may want a shields-only build for a Scoutship or Transporter. It will also never generate a ship with a Static Inducer or Warp Generator, although it can generate the other blueprint-only hardpoints (Deflector, Shield X40, Shield X50).

Noises

Sound test. Press A-W to test one of the in-game noises. Unlike the Bjork cheat, this correctly validates its inputs.

Panel

Extracts a useful set of buttons. The buttons don’t show until the screen is refreshed, but the easiest way to do this is to tap the left and right cursor keys to rotate the asteroid and back.

Skyscraper

The build time of all Terran buildings is reduced to one day. Doesn’t affect buildings already under construction.

Telescope

You can see all asteroids on the field view without scouting for them first, and view the surface of enemy asteroids without a spy satellite. However, in all other ways, undiscovered asteroids still count as undiscovered. Missiles you fire at them will disappear (peculiarly, the Tylarans, who do not use missiles, are exempt from this). Scoutships will still earn rewards for discovering asteroids.

Tracey

Toggle voice on/off. Named after Tracey Park, who provides the voice samples.

Widget

Toggle which blueprints you own. This is a bother because even though you gain every blueprint you didn’t already have, you lose every blueprint you already had, and they’re usually good ones so you have to buy them back. Clicking on the Sci-Tek button when you own every blueprint does nothing. If you bind a building to one of the number buttons before you trade it away in the Widget toggle, you can still press that button to build it.

Glitches and tricks

Ship repair glitch: Repair Facility repairs ships in hangars, but it does not account correctly for shields. Any ship which currently has more Armour than default for its type (i.e. due to having shields) will continue repairing up to 255 Armour. Any higher will overflow back to 0 and destroy the ship. However, any ship reduced to the unshielded default Armour or below is capped at the default.

Glimpse enemy asteroids: Set a hotkey to an enemy asteroid. Go to colony view of one of your own asteroids, or an empty asteroid. Now hit the hotkey. You’ll get an error message, but for a second the game will let you see the enemy colony.

Faster scout report: A Scoutship gives its report when it returns to the asteroid it set out from, but that doesn’t have to be one of your colonies. You can speed up scout reports by sending the scout to a closer unoccupied asteroid, then scouting from there. You will get the report when it returns to the unoccupied asteroid it set out from.

Even better, if you do an ore survey at that asteroid, you will get it immediately. In other words, send the Scoutship to the asteroid, then when it arrives, order it to do the survey. It will “return” to the asteroid it just surveyed and give you the report immediately.

Other minor features: See bugs and miscellaneous features for a few other quirks of the game. Notably, the Photon Cannon ship hardpoint is more powerful than the more expensive Plasma; and you can hold the left mouse button to skip the intro sequence.

Falsely claimed secret alien cheat

According to reader-submitted tips in Amiga magazines back in the day, a secret extra-hard alien exists in K240. By attempting to load a save game from K240 Disk 2 and clicking the left mouse button to proceed, a save game named “Babylon 5” will be found in save game slot 1. This tip was submitted by one Andrew Stoke of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne to Amiga Power #46 (Feb 1995), and later resubmitted by another reader to CU Amiga (Sep 1995).

Unfortunately, this “secret alien” tip is completely false.

There are no save games on disk 2. It’s impossible to save to disk 2, because it has only 15KB free, whereas K240 save games are about 150KB each. There is no additional alien file, no code in the game relating to a secret seventh alien, and no text reading “Babylon 5” on any of the disks. The cheat does not actually function as described in any version, not even in any known pirate or modified versions. There is also not enough space on disk 1 or 3 for one save game file.

The “secret alien” tip must either be a deliberate hoax, or the originator was simply mistaken for some reason. Some theories which may partially explain the latter scenario:

1. At least one distributed version of K240 has a deleted partial save game file k240.1 on disk 2 which someone may have recovered. If you attempt to save to disk 2, the game will write the first 15KB or so before running out of space and deleting the partial file. Ejecting the disk while writing, or recovering the deleted file somehow, would result in a partial save file that can be loaded successfully to begin a new game. Testing suggests that loading such a partial save will begin a new game with the default enemy, which may lend some credibility to this theory. Additionally, the content of the partial save file can influence the game to a limited extent. However, it’s not a deliberately hidden secret enemy as the cheat says, but rather a bug caused by loading a partial save game file.
2. Someone deleted the HD installer from Disk 3 to make room for a single save game. They then saved at the start of a game or before game to test it, and it worked. Someone else then borrowed that disk or a copy of it, and played a round of the game, during which the game requested Disk 3 to play the voice files. With Disk 3 still inserted, the player then attempted to load a game, and was surprised to find that it worked. They forgot that they had inserted Disk 3, and mistakenly assumed that the save was on Disk 2.
3. The string k240_2:k240.1 appears in the game executable, which may lead a casual analyst to assume there must be a secret save game on disk 2. However, this string is used to load games from a hard disk install, where k240_2: will be assigned to the hard disk install rather than physical disk 2. Someone who discovered the cheat strings in the game code may have also noticed this string and made an incorrect deduction.
4. Disk 2 has a file called “idfile” which is not copied on a HD install, and its presence is used by the game to determine whether to load save games from DF0: or the hard disk. If you performed a manual HD install by copying the files and setting up assigns in user-startup (entirely possible as the HD installer was on disk 3 and may have gone unnoticed by some), the game will still try to load saves from DF0:, which may somehow have confused a player into thinking his save is loading from somewhere else.

Missile glitches

CU Amiga (Jan 1996) printed a cheat that you can simply command any alien colony to fire its own missiles at itself. CU Amiga (Jun 1996) reports a related glitch that if you mash the “fire missile” button quickly enough after firing all your missiles of one type, you can glitch out the missile display and effectively give yourself unlimited missiles. The German magazine Amiga Games (Feb 1996) also both of these, on pages 86 and 95 of that issue.

Both of these glitches are true, but only for the CU Amiga demo version of the game. The full version of the game fixes both of these bugs. You can’t fire missiles from an asteroid where you have no CPU, and the unlimited missile glitch no longer works.

Historic note on cheat codes

A text string in the CU Amiga coverdisk demo of K240 refers to cheat codes as “help codes”, which may suggest that the Help key was originally used to trigger the cheat codes in development. However, the codes themselves appear to have been removed from the demo.

The earliest source I can find which published the cheat codes was Games Master #21 (Sep 1994) which listed all but the Bjork cheat. There are a few errors, like misidentifying Widget as the sound test.

Stephen Birmingham’s cheats disk Back Door v2.81, dated 3 September 1994, includes only four of the cheat codes: Loadsadosh, Widget, Iceman, and Skyscraper. He notes that there are others which he has not received yet. A lot of sources repeat only these four codes, for some reason, even though the original source must have had access to all twelve. I speculate that there was some Amiga magazine in 1994 that only printed four of the codes for space limitations.

Amiga Power #47 (Mar 1995) listed six of the cheats: Skyscraper, Loadsadosh, Telescope, Iceman, ICBM, and “Leming” (sic). Amiga Computing US Edition #4 (Nov 1995) repeats the same codes. Notably missing are NASA, Widget, Panel, and the sound test cheats.

The cheats disk BackDoor v6.66, dated 5 April 1995, printed all twelve cheats. The disk credits Rachel White of publisher Gremlin Interactive for supplying the cheats for K240. BackDoor v6.66 notably fails to include the requirement to hit return before each cheat, even though v2.81 previously mentioned it.

Amiga Format #94 (Feb 1997) printed only Loadsadosh, Widget, Iceman, and Skyscraper. The same set were reprinted in CU Amiga (May 1998).