Just talk about the game genie on its own merits, it's far more interesting than AI slop for some of us
Once I got a GameShark which included a VHS on how to create codes with the GameShark (identifying which memory addresses change and how to fix them to a specific value), and admittingly that may have scared me off of the computer science path.
I"d say the internet and creating webpages with javascript probably had a slightly bigger impact on young programmers at the time, by maybe 3 orders of magnitude.
The first Game Genie was released for the NES in 1990.
The very first version of Javascript wasn't until 1995.
Except that those numbers did not commonly appear in Game Genie codes, because Game Genie codes are [trivially] enciphered. See e.g. https://gamehacking.org/library/114 for an explanation — the cipher used was different for each system.
AFAICT this enciphering was done precisely to discourage third-party code creation. Galoob never made any explicit statements about why they did it, but I'd guess† it served as a kind of DRM for codes, so that Galoob could be the only source of them, and thus sell you code books or something.
If you're remembering "a cheat-code device that preceded the GameShark that had literal address:value codes, and became the default input format for cheat codes in NES/SNES/GB emulators", then you're probably thinking of the Game Genie's competitor, the (Pro) Action Replay.
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† There was also possibility of a vague hope on Galoob's part of contracting with games studios to create and publish "licensed" codes — making their device into less of a "cheating device" and more of a kind of post-sales-marketing micro-DLC-publishing channel for games studios.
Think of the type of thing that you see in e.g. Nintendo Switch Online with "special editions" of games that are just the regular game with a code applied. Studios could have been putting out "special editions" after-the-fact by publishing [i.e. working with Galoob to publish] officially-sanctioned codes in gaming magazines.
This never materialized... probably because studios that wanted to do post-sales-marketing micro-DLC, had enough foresight to build it into the game, in the form of pre-written live logic whose only live codepath involves a long and esoteric title-screen button-combo no player would ever guess; or even pre-written dead logic, that can be made live by an executable payload encoded into a password-system password, or a link-cable / e-reader / wi-fi distribution.
Also, making a Nintendo-brand version of these would have been easy money, dunno why Nintendo stockholders were okay with less money.
One of those studios that's always had massive talent, although I'm increasingly concerned about their future as EA tightens their grip on them.
I had the "Power Cartridge" on my C128. Fun times.
freedomben•4h ago
I never got one myself, but a friend did and we had endless fun tweaking different properties of all of our games. It was much more about exploration than it was about "cheating" at games. Game Genie was one of my first experiences of being mindblown at somebody's clever hack and use of technology, and I am grateful to have been able to live through that age.
grepfru_it•4h ago
Of course you could write in your own codes and make your own hacks but a lot of the time you ended up with garbled graphics or an unbootable game. They did keep this developer documentation to a minimum and this was before the internet. Although my local BBS had an ascii document detailing game genie’s internals and how to write your own codes, it was far from the reach of most 10 year olds
The game genie knockoff clone (I forget the name but remember the ads lol) had all of the codes in memory and as such gave you a menu to choose from
freedomben•4h ago
Yes definitely, I meant the booklet as the "menu" (just like many restaurants give you a menu that is like a booklet) and decided to call it that so it would be more relatable, but yes it was just a series of codes, but codes you read off the paper similar to a menu (or maybe better, a dictionary or index?)
I never used the knockoff clone, but now I'm feeling some very, very delayed FOMO :-D
edaemon•4h ago
AtlasBarfed•4h ago
And they didn't obfuscate the hex addresses like the game genie did IIRC.
I hacked my own codes on things like xenogears and vagrant story , good times. Almost as fun as save file hacking
breakbread•4h ago
GameShark!
sigio•4h ago
I also remember it having a serial or parallel port (at least the european Action Replay did), which you could hook upto a PC and with some debugging-software, do things like runtime memory manipulation, breakpoints and other nice debugging tools.
I think you could even run your own (small) binaries by sending them to the cartridge/addon, but this was ~20+ years ago, so the details lack me.
thinkingtoilet•4h ago
My favorite one I ever randomly got was on one of the Mega Man games. The bullets had no momentum but still worked. You could "place" a bullet and the enemy would walk into it and die.
parpfish•3h ago
Brian_K_White•3h ago
graywh•2h ago
the really fun part was exploring building your own codes and how/why they worked or didn't
vikingerik•1h ago
I'd read enough library books about computers to understand binary and hexadecimal. So from the existing codes in the Genie book (like 5 lives / 99 lives / etc), I figured out how those values were coming from some of the letters defining binary/hex values. So I could extrapolate to more codes for different values. And from there I realized the other letters must specify the memory location, so I could bump that too and change some different stats that weren't in the book. I particularly had fun with Final Fantasy 1, where I figured out how to set inventory values and even tried out-of-range values and got items that didn't exist.
What I didn't know until years later was the difference between 6-letter (3 byte) and 8-letter (4-byte) codes. The additional byte in the longer code specifies a value such that the override takes place only if the memory location already equals that value. The purpose is to handle bankswitching (memory mappers), to have the code active only when the correct memory bank is. In practice, what this meant was that randomly trying 8-letter codes almost never did anything (1/256 that you happen to hit the right value) and so I only tried the shorter ones, and found a few weird effects from them.
dole•3h ago
harimau777•2h ago
In some cases they could be used to get things that were in the game "legitimately" but which you might not have access to. E.g. getting Mew in Pokemon Blue/Red or Surfing Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow.
Sometimes the codes would break in interesting ways. For example, an invincibility code might cause problems if it was on during a battle that you are scripted to lose. Or the "invincibility" code might actually work by instantly healing you; so you might find out that you are vulnerable if an enemy is strong enough to take all of your health with a single hit.
Like the parent post said, there was a lot of experimentation even when everything was working "correctly".
echelon•38m ago
Super Mario Bros 3 (NES + Game Genie) equipping Hammer Suit / Invincibility:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/FUVOM3rxZ5U
Super Mario World (SNES + Game Genie) causing weird memory distortion glitches, enabling swimming anywhere, and other more useful things:
https://youtu.be/o7_eFcpwq24?si=_io5oSzpRxdvuEMp&t=164
Super Mario RPG (SNES + Game Genie) enabling the hidden developer debug menu:
https://youtu.be/bH-uh9BnIfU?si=0L7qviRp5T-Nokjs&t=402
Pokemon Red (Game Boy SP + Game Genie) unlocking the unobtainable Mew (which Nintendo only gave away at rare in-person tournament events) at game start:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yzqTRbixnak
Zelda Link's Awakening (Game Boy + Game Genie) changing the value of "1" rupee to "255" rupees for effectively infinite currency (the creator isn't aware of the significance of "255"):
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dRFqU_Dz3M8
Super Mario 64 (N64 + Gameshark) adding Dorrie the Plesiosaur to Lethal Lava Land:
https://youtu.be/DVBMdwn8Kc0?si=cUZ5ioG1GEvY0l-H&t=84
Super Mario 64 (N64 + Gameshark) showing off the Gameshark menu and a bunch of Mario character animation swaps:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AptK2MbqLXQ
Banjo-Kazooie (N64 + Gameshark) replacing the main characters with the Rareware logo and adding an "infinite jump by pressing A" hack, which adds displacement or velocity with a button press (yes, this is totally absurd):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF6pwm00vtY
Zelda Ocarina of Time (N64 + Gameshark) spawning a hidden developer-only enemy, the Starfox Arwing, which shoots lasers at Link:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KOQUhm1cNu8
Smash Bros 64 (N64 Emulator) spawning Master Hand (final boss) as a playable character in a standard stage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1i9TRLifaw
Zelda Majora's Mask (N64 + Gameshark) spawning special items, equipping the wrong items, using the wrong weapons, manually adjusting the clock, etc.:
https://youtu.be/ae2q9CjqXsc?si=IPB7XcPFWZyzpbh3
Quick Game Genie hardware overview:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/WzHokvjdvDc
Lammy•38m ago
0115D8CF is one of those sequences that is permanently burned into my brain to the same level as FCKGW
bityard•35m ago