Video Game Urban Legends: Duke Nukem 3D’s Secret Cheat Code

You know, I like conspiracy theories, mysteries, and secrets. They’re fascinating.

I bought the new NAG magazine recently, and saw that GameTrailers have come out with a new series that explores these urban myths, and seeks to prove them fact or fiction by testing them out. It’s called Pop Fiction, and it’s quite thorough, and I actually want to see more of it. The show’s inspiration obviously comes from The MythBusters, when I look at the format.

The one about whether Reptile was in every original and perhaps every Mortal Kombat game in existence was one that captivated me, seeing as he’s likely one of my favourite characters in the franchise, next to the other ninjas like Scorpion, and my childhood idol – Sub-Zero. He was cool.

I also came across something interesting on Digg the other day, and it was a list of the Most Widely Believed Video Game Urban Legends. It’s like urban legends and so on, but relating to video games obviously.

There were only a few that I actually had heard about. And only a few of those were games I’d actually played.

Anyhow, on this list, I added a comment which explained one of the most memorable urban legends in video games, from my childhood. It went as follows (edited a bit):

When I was young and still in school, a friend (now ex-friend and bitter enemy) told me of a secret cheat in Duke Nukem 3D. He’d heard of it through a friend of his who claimed to have made it work. This cheat was known as DNLIPSTICK.

Practically all cheats entered in Duke Nukem 3D began with “DN”, which no doubt stands for “Duke Nukem”.

What the cheat allowed you to do was this:

When you’re in the Red Light District [E1L2] area’s strip club, and you enter the cheat correctly, Duke will allegedly be able to screw one of the strippers there, who so eagerly bare their assets when handed cash. Why not go all the way with the “cashman”?

In the past I tried and tried to make this cheat to work, but to no avail. My friend told me to try entering the code in different ways, and in different combinations, with some in capital letters and others not. But with no console back then, it made it difficult to see how you were typing it. It’s hard enough to just type a cheat normally and activate it.

So my opinion of this urban legend, if I have to be thorough about it is that it’s very likely fiction. Duke Nukem 3D was controversial enough back in the day without this sort of “interactivity” going on in it. This code is also not mentioned anywhere on lists of codes for the game, and due to my personal past experience with trying to get it to work, it doesn’t.

Plus, I’ve also talked to a bunch of forumites over at Duke4.net, and even though one might have heard of a similar rumour, they hadn’t seen or heard of DNLIPSTICK – the cheat code which is associated with it. Hell, if you google “Duke Nukem 3D DNLIPSTICK”, you’ll only get a few hits on a page – and they’re all from me, including this one.

The one reply pointed me to his website where I saw this and shook my head:

“To get the naked girl ending you have to beat the game 10 times in a row on the hardest setting while only using kick and you also have to not kill any lizards. If you do this you will get a movie with the lady from the strip club on level 2 show off her whole body and **** duke nukem!”

This guy also heard it from a friend at school. Go figure. They lie.

And to top it off I even contacted George Broussard of 3D Realms via Formspring. He said he’d never even heard of it. Okay, so he didn’t respond, but that’s life, huh?

Myth Busted.

Video Game Urban Legends: Duke Nukem 3D’s Secret Cheat Code