The Problem: Although they won't admit it, some of the most beloved baseball players are juicing up. How else can you explain their rapid increase in home runs, big muscles and head size. No matter how many laws they pass against it, baseball players know that steroids is a sure fire way of getting the upper hand on the competition. And let's not forget that baseball is a highly competitive game, where the top players are raking in millions of dollars every year. The question isn't why these baseball players are juicing up, the question is why wouldn't they? Sadly many people believe that this cheating is ruining the game. Perhaps we can use a cheat device to make everybody happy.

Code Summary: Balances everybody's stats. In other words, every player, no matter how good or bad, will have the same stats. The game averages out all of the players to find the stat, allowing you to always have a fair chance ... no matter what team you're up against.

Likely Outcome: You might think that balancing everybody's stats may sound like a good idea, but let's not forget that this is doing it by an average. That means that if there's a terrible player and a world class all-star player, then the average is going to be this guy who's right in the middle, neither good nor bad. But if I know anything about baseball it's that there are many, many more terrible players than there are great all-star players. At most there are only a handful of truly amazing players, yet I can name you dozens of players who are just an inning away from being shipped back to the minor league. So balancing these two disparate groups will only make everybody (no matter how good or bad) a mediocre player. That means that when Barry Bonds steps up to the plate he's never going to hit a home run and Ichiro will never steal another base. That means that we'll be lucky to ever see a triple, and you can kiss your grand slams goodbye. Sure it will be a more balanced game, but nobody is going to watch because nothing exciting happens. In other words, baseball will suddenly turn into soccer.

The Problem: In case you haven't noticed, gas is starting to get extremely expensive. Scratch that, gas has been expensive for a good year or more. But these days it seems to be getting worse, especially now that it's creeping up around the $5 mark. This rapid increase has started to affect the way people live, especially when it comes to retail sales and the amount of vacations people are going on. High gas prices are also affecting the price of food, which is starting to hurt the lower class and parts of the middle class. Gas prices suck, and people around the country want some relief. So what can we do? Perhaps we should turn to the Game Genie for help.

Code Summary: This code gives you infinite fuel. In other words, the oil companies have found a drilling site that yields an unlimited amount of fossil fuels. This means that you won't have to worry about running out of gas, which should lower gas prices and solve some of this nation's problems.

Likely Outcome: The next time you fill up your Hummer you'll never have to worry about the world running out of gas. You'll be guilt-free. You'll know that with unlimited fuel you can just keep on going back to the gas station, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of miles you end up driving. So what's wrong with that scenario? The obvious concern is that with unlimited fuel people will have no reason not to buy the large gas-guzzling SUVs. After all, who cares is they guzzle gas if we never have to worry about running out of gas? But no matter if we have unlimited fuel or not, SUVs do a lot of polluting, which is also hurting this planet we are living on. And that's not even the worst part. Just because we have an unlimited resource, that doesn't mean that the oil companies are going to put it all out on the market. They have a bottom line to think about, so chances are gas prices will largely stay the same. Talk about a useless code.

The Problem: There are a lot of beautiful places to go in the world, but you may want to scratch Darfur off your vacation plans. For the past few years Darfur has been embroiled in a civil war that has taken hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, not to mention turned Sudan's President, Omar al-Bashir, into a wanted man. Charged with three counts of genocide, five crimes against humanity and two murders, things are not looking good for President al-Bashir. But more specifically, things don't look good for the people of Darfur, who are being boxed in with little food, water or medical attention. They live in fear and simply wait to die. The worst part is that nobody seems to be able to do anything about it, so this world problem will continue on our watch.

Code Summary: This code allows you to warp all the way to the end. In other words, instead of starting at the beginning of the game you can warp all the way to the end. This means that you won't have to go through all of those other levels or pay your dues, you'll be able to just warp to the end and live happily ever after. The real world application would be to allow the prisoners of Darfur to warp past the bad stuff (the killing, raping, torture, lack of food, slavery and hopelessness) and get to the part where everything is good and you are safe.

Likely Outcome: I don't think I need to tell you that warp zones are dangerous, just look at what happened to professors Jeff Goldblum and Vincent Price in The Fly. But we're not just talking about warping from one place to another, this is taking it to the whole new level as you teleport all the way to the very end. Past the bosses, past the bonus stages and past all of the early levels that make it look like so much fun. In other words, we're not just transporting, we're transporting into the future. Suddenly this warp zone feels more like Back to the Future than Star Trek. Obviously we don't want this kind of technology making its way into the wrong hands. Imagine an entire generation of already lazy slackers who realize that they don't have to sit through boring college lectures and intern at a local paper company. Suddenly this lazy fool is using the code and bypassing a lot of important life lessons. Sure he can go from nothing to everything in a matter of seconds, but at what cost? We're going to have an entire generation of kids who have learned nothing because they jumped through a warp hole and gained everything without any work. And let's not forget that not everybody has a happy ending. Do you really want to chance it to jump through the warp zone and realize that you actually died three weeks later after a helicopter landed on you? Life (just like games) should not be about the game over cinema, it should be about the journey getting there. I guess we're going to have to find another way to save the people of Darfur.

The Problem: Right now millions of people are living day in and day out without any kind of health insurance. These are the people who don't dare get sick, break a bone or need to rush to the emergency room for any reason. It's to the point now where both John McCain and Barack Obama have outlined their own unique healthcare solutions. Oddly enough the United States is one of the few countries that has not subscribed to some sort of universal healthcare, which has lawmakers on both sides of the aisle up in arms. Will the next President be able to resolve this problem? If not then maybe this Game Genie code could help.

Code Summary: This code gives you infinite health. In other words, if you enter this code your health will never decrease. That means that you'll be able outlast any illness, never break a bone and never have to worry about cancer. In fact, having infinite health means that you'll never have to go and see the doctor ever again, thus resolving the need for health care in the first place.

Likely Outcome: We've already talked about the troubles with never being able to take any damage, but if nobody gets sick then nobody dies. How long is it going to take before we go from six billion people to sixty billion? If nobody dies and we are still creating new life, then that frightening scenario isn't far off into the future. It's bad enough sharing this world with six billion people, can you imagine the overcrowding, pollution and general unease that will be associated with hordes of old people who will not (and cannot) die. I would almost take zombies over this future, if only because I don't want to imagine what it's like to have to take care of a 4,000 year old brain dead fool who can't eat or drink without help. We're going to be a world of health care workers. This code sucks.