The Sims · PC · 2000 · Cheat Code
Effect: Adds 1,000 Simoleons to the active household’s funds; chaining ";!" repetitions multiplies the payout.
Will Wright’s original life simulator shipped without any tidy money button, which made the household economy genuinely punishing — sims who could not afford food or bills spiralled fast. Players discovered they could open a hidden console and type "rosebud" for a thousand Simoleons, then learned that appending "rosebud;!;!;!" and holding the sequence would stack payouts a thousand at a time. The word is a nod to Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, a film about a man consumed by wealth — a fittingly ironic label for a cheat that trivialises a game built around scarcity. When The Sims 2 arrived in 2004 it replaced the trickle with "motherlode", a flat 50,000-Simoleon injection that became the franchise’s signature code, but veterans still reach for "rosebud" first out of muscle memory.