Unsuspecting PlayStation game was hiding a big secret for 23 years

This unsuspecting PlayStation 1 game was hiding a big secret for 23 years.

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Alien Resurrection released in 2000 for the PlayStation 1 and was generally received as a competent first-person shooter. On the surface, there wasn't anything truly groundbreaking or remarkable about the sci-fi FPS, but the final game actually contained something it shouldn't have ever shipped with: an exploit that allows gamers to play burned PSX game backups.

For over 2 decades now, Alien Resurrection has been hiding a PlayStation 1 boot exploit which offers a nifty trick for playing pirated/burned games. Alien Resurrection's boot exploit is only accessible via a special cheats menu. The secret was revealed by original game developer Martin Piper, who broke his silence by informing YouTuber Modern Vintage Gamer about the feature.

"If you have a copy of the original Alien Resurrection, then all you need is the correct cheat code, and it will then wait for a disc swap and boot into any new disc," Piper told MVG.

The exploit basically acts as a CD-ROM boot disc that can boot up burned PlayStation 1 games.

In case you have a copy of Alien Resurrection laying around, here's the cheat code:

• D-Pad L, D-Pad Up, D-Pad R, D-Pad Down, D-Pad R, D-Pad Up, D-Pad L, Square, Triangle, Square, Triangle, L1

Typically, these kinds of exploits, bugs, and cheats are expected to be spotted and squashed as part of PlayStation's quality assurance certification process, but this one obviously slipped through the cracks and released in a finalized commercial build of the game.