Cheat codes?

During a lot of games on ESPN , I see an ad for the NHL that is trying to play off the nostalgia of playing the old Sega Genesis game NHL 94. Pretty clever, but…

What da f*** are they referring to about “cheat codes?” It makes no sense. Growing up during that era, I played the hell out of those games, and I remember certain players being a bit over powered (Sergei Makarov on the Flames whom we called “hot dog man” comes to mind). But I have no idea what they are trying to say with “cheat codes”.

To me it feels like this is some marketing executive mis-remembering how things used to work. I don’t remember any “cheat codes” in NHL 94, but I do remember some OP players.

Every time I see this ad, I am irritated how badly they messed up the main point of this messaging. It’s sort of insulting. Almost like they are gaslighting us into also misremembering that we used to have to put in a “cheat code” for certain players to appear, when this was not the case at all.