If you want to still save games and cheat, use a trainer.

Cheat codes turned into hacking consoles or PC games for the thrill of doing that which used to be much easier. Cheat Codes were for the diehard, the experimenters and the disinterested (in the normal course of a computer game). Why not spice up your life and add some cheat codes to a game, it made the game take on a new perspective, this element of superhuman/ superevil abilities always made like more interesting within the video game!

In a world where leisure has become a more and more important industry, the concept of playfulness has been all but lost.
Vinyl records used to sometimes have little messages scratched into the unused grooves at the centre, just for fun – can’t do that with cassettes, cds or downloaded tracks.
Cereal packets used to sometimes contain little free presents, now it’s all fibre and fat free milk….

I used Game Genie codes on RPGs for gold. I love RPGs, but I hate wandering around killing things for hours so I can upgrade my equipment.

I would never play GTA if not for the cheats. Never finished any quest, just went rampage or did cool stuff while flying. I used to spend hours and hours just running away from the military using a motorcyle or some hovercraft thing (this one was in San Andreas, Vice City had a better soundtrack though).
Good times.

I had GameGenies and GameSharks back in the day. I love gaming, but there are so many games out there, and I’m not terribly good at them anymore it seems. I don’t have the time to play them all, so I’ll use cheats/trainers/etc. to essentially speed the game along so I can enjoy the story without having to redo areas, wasting precious time that could be used for another game. I get hung up on getting 100%, leaving no stones unturned, so that takes up a lot of time too.

I really like using emulators for all the old NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. games I never finished because I can create cheats (memory hacks) and speed up the emulator (effectively fast-forwarding through mandatory and painfully slow cut-scenes, etc.), allowing me to finish the stories but not take up time where I could be finally finishing another game I also never got around to doing.

I’ve noticed on a lot of newer RPGs (e.g. Oblivion, Skyrim) you come across way more items than you can hold, then you’re “burdened” and if you didn’t think movement speed was slow before, it sure as hell is now. I’ll use a code/trainer to get rid of carry limit once I get annoyed by it.

I love destructible environments too. Hexen II was one I first noticed it in. The level is not complete if there’s something that can be destroyed remains standing! In the original NWN, I made some crazy-strong barbarian who didn’t need to pick locks, he’d just bash down doors.