Every week, the Lycos 50 shows how popular video games and computer games are with online searchers. But what are gamers looking for online?
One answer seems to be video game cheats. Last week, for example, just the single word cheats was searched for more times than the Backstreet Boys, Martin Luther King, Jr., or the phrase used cars.
Thousands of websites are devoted to cheat codes for video games, different code words or button sequences that can be used to do a million things. There are cheat codes to give more firepower in war games, more money in financial games, and bigger heads in sports games. I'm not quite sure what the purpose of big heads is, but for those who want big heads, the cheat codes exist.
Here are the top twenty games for which Lycos users sought cheats last week:
1) Diablo II
2) Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
3) The Sims
4) Pokemon Gold/Silver
5) Driver 2
6) Red Alert 2
7) Counter Strike
8) The World Is Not Enough
9) Majora's Mask
10) Baldur's Gate 2
11) Rollercoaster Tycoon
12) Neopets
13) Age of Empires 2
14) Starcraft
15) WWF Smackdown 2
16) Project IGI
17) Midtown Madness 2
18) Final Fantasy IX
19) WWF No Mercy
20) Hitman: Codename 47
The list is a bit different from how games appear on the Lycos 50. For one thing, we've separated different games from the same series, so each version of Final Fantasy is separated (Pokemon Gold/Silver is a bit of a special case, since the games go together). Still, it is odd that the newest Final Fantasy chapter is so low on the list.
There seem to be more people looking for computer game cheats than for video game cheats. When we rated the top toys of 2000 back in November, computer games held only 5 of the 12 slots on the top games list. On this list, computer games hold 7 of the top 12 slots.
This is might be due to the fact that it is much easier to hide a complex alphabetical cheat code in a computer game (thanks to the keyboard). Or, perhaps computer gamers are just bigger cheats.
Funny, with all this talk about cheating we haven't even mentioned Temptation Island, but I have a sneaking suspicion we'll take care of that tomorrow with a new Lycos 50...
