In Melee you can play as the Master Hand without cheats

Directions from the Smash Wiki:

"The player must have a controller in slot 3, or Master Hand cannot be controlled. It is much easier to do if there is only one name entered. Using this controller, place the cursor over the name field on the character selection screen. Now press the A and B buttons at the same time, and the player will come to the name selection. Hold the B button, but release the A button, then go down with the cursor until they are over the "name entry field". Then press the A button at the right time. The game should want to go back to the menu, because the player held the B button, but it should also want go to the name entry screen, because they pressed the A button over "name entry". If performed correctly, instead of going to either of these, the game should go to the stage selection screen (or, in Single Player, straight to the game). After selecting the stage, the player will be playing as Master Hand."

I remember finding this out as a kid. Not that I discovered the glitch itself by accident, but I was just starting to use the internet and Melee was my addiction at the moment, so I looked up the game often and happened to find a video showing this glitch and how to do it. I was so happy when I tried it myself and got it to work, even my brother acted like he was taken off guard by it. Probably because he knew any and everything online was a rumor or hoax, so it was probably odd to see something that was very likely made up or faked, wasn't. I was a gullible kid at the time so I always believed that stuff just to either get sad when I learned it wasn't real, or I was arguing "It is real someone on Youtube did it!" Something about these things were addicting to me so I was constantly searching up random stuff related to the video games I loved.

To briefly go back to the Master Hand Glitch, there's an explanation for why this happens. When you're pressing B and A at the same time to do two different things, it confuses the game. It doesn't know which to do so instead of picking one or crashing, it boots you to the stage select. But you didn't have a character selected. Each character has an ID and the default ID is 0, it is a placeholder for when a character hasn't be selected. But this ID is also used for the Master Hand, so because of that the default ID is used and it just so happens to be the ID for him. It's also interesting to me despite never meant to be playable, he's controllable with the D-Pad. I never seen anything about this and I have no game dev knowledge but I would love to know why he's controllable.

As a kid I was so addicted to all these rumors, cheats and whatnot. As I said I was gullible, but I think that's why they were so fun for me. It was just so fun getting invested, reading pages, and watching videos about it all. Maybe it was also because in a way, a new world opened up for me? I am just now starting to use the internet alone without having to get my brother to do everything for me so that itself is a new thing, but it was a new thing learning and realizing video games are more than just a fun pass time on the TV. It was oddly interesting learning about glitches and the fact games are capable of having problems or mistakes and it was scary learning about games breaking and crashing. I was pretty much learning about basic technology stuff.

I also read a lot about cheats which then lead to me wishing I had a Gameshark or whatever. But I had no clue where to get one, heck the fact it was "cheating" made me think you couldn't buy it anywhere as if it was blackmarket type items where you had to know somebody who knows somebody. Oh yeah, I was sooo addicted to videos of people making skits and bloopers in games too. Which of source I assumed they had the magical Gameshark item I would never get. But at the time I also had zero knowledge of emulation, I didn't know it existed, and never saw it brought up anywhere but it's likely that's what everyone was doing.

By now my title seems click baity but I couldn't think of a good title and I wanted to talk this since I feel like it's a relic of the past. Game development is better and with the help of internet fixes and patches are downloaded shortly after bugs are found. While these things can be game breaking or troublesome, like the Master Hand glitch will often freeze and crash the game, sometimes these bugs can even corrupt game files, such as the MissingNo. glitch from Pokemon Red & Blue, some of them were fun. It's a double edged sword but I kinda miss how buggy older games were, even as an adult I love watching videos where people will rip up a game's code to explain why certain bugs will happen. It's just so fun seeing a whole game be analyzed and explained how it works. I have no desire in game dev despite my huge interest in watching about it. But I don't really see this with newer games. Which I suppose is because of the point I made, games are easily fixable through updates and internet. I guess it's debatable if game dev is better now, it feels like the standards for launching a game are higher now but at the same time. Well you know, AAA companies love rushing out a bugged mess because they know they can patch it later. Really the only recent game I can think of that was buggy but funny is Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. But even then it's just the models being wonky.