HOW DO YOU TURN THIS ON

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings · PC · 1999 · Cheat Code

HOW DO YOU TURN THIS ON (typed into the in-game chat)

Effect: Spawns a Shelby Cobra sports car — an absurdly fast unit that one-shots almost anything on the map.

Ensemble Studios hid a modern sports car inside its medieval strategy game, summoned by typing the mock-frustrated phrase "HOW DO YOU TURN THIS ON" into the chat box. The resulting Cobra tears across castle sieges at highway speed and kills nearly any unit in a single pass, an anachronism so ridiculous it became one of PC gaming’s most beloved cheats. The joke had a predecessor: the original 1997 Age of Empires answered the code "BIGDADDY" with Winsett’s Z, a black car mounting a rocket launcher. Both cars turned the cheats into a rite of passage — the phrase itself later escaped the game entirely to become an internet catchphrase for baffled confusion.

Key Facts:

The 1997 original used "BIGDADDY" to spawn a rocket-launching car called Winsett’s Z
The Cobra is fast enough to outrun and one-hit nearly every unit in the game
The phrase became a standalone internet meme for expressing confusion

HOW DO YOU TURN THIS ON

Sources & further reading