I’m also nostalgic for the era where cheats were easter eggs that enhanced the single-player experience.
Like, as a kid I was interested in Warcraft/Starcraft, but I’m horrible at RTS gameplay. Cheats gave me an out so that I could enjoy the story.
Historically, cheats were essentially debug tools that the developer could use to, say, thoroughly play through a level with unlimited lives. But around the 90s/00s you started to see this shift away from using a complicated code of buttons to activate (Konami Code, IDDQD) to a simple to remember phrase (“PowerOverwhelming,”“GiveUsATank,” “GunsGunsGuns”).
That shift makes me think that the cheats were for the players to enjoy. Otherwise they wouldn’t have fun names to activate them.