Hi. My name is Walter and I am 12. I play games on the family computer in the den, which I share with my mom (she does e-mail and the checkbook) and my sister (she does nothing important).

There are a LOT of cheat code pages on the Internet. The problem is that half of the codes on them don't work. Somebody's friend's cousin heard about it, and somebody put it on a page, and then everybody copied it. I got tired of typing in codes that didn't do anything. So I made the Vault.

The Vault has one rule: I only put a code in here if I typed it in myself and it worked. Every code has a green check √ and the date I tested it. If I tried a code and it didn't work, it goes on the Busted List at the bottom of this page, so you don't waste your time.

HOW TO PUT IN A CHEAT

StarCraft, Warcraft II and Age of Empires: while you're playing, press Enter. A line comes up at the bottom for typing a message. Type the code exactly, with the spaces, and press Enter again.

SimCity 3000: hold down Ctrl, Alt and Shift all at the same time and press C. A box pops up. Type the code in the box and press Enter. You have to hold all three keys or it won't work. This took me a while.

Type carefully. If you spell it wrong, nothing happens, and you might think the code is busted when it's really your typing. (That happened to me with Warcraft II. See the Busted List.)

WALTER'S RULES

1. Cheating in online games is LAME. Cheats are for playing against the computer, by yourself, when you're stuck or you just want to build something huge. If you're playing against real people, play for real. (In StarCraft the codes don't even work on Battle.net, which is good.)

2. Try it for real first. Beat a mission the regular way at least once before you cheat on it. It's more fun that way. I didn't always follow this rule. I'm following it now.

3. No codes for M games. My mom checks this page, and also the games aren't allowed in our house, so I couldn't test them anyway. Please don't e-mail me codes for them. She reads my e-mail too.