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603

Yeah, it was cool. I remember having one of these and tinkering with games in its built in hex-editor.

Archive: https://archive.today/LRSuQ

From the post:

>Today in Tedium: July 1990, a full 35 years ago, was supposed to be the coming-out party for one of the best accessories ever created for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It made games easier, sure, but it also made them more interesting. It presented a new way of thinking about the games that you brought home. But Nintendo didn’t like it—and the company sued. That device eventually emerged, and despite the legal battle, it became a defining part of what made the NES great. I am of course talking about the Game Genie, whose legacy looms large today. Today’s Tedium ponders why the Game Genie proved such a defining piece of video game history. — Ernie @ Tedium

Yeah, it was cool. I remember having one of these and tinkering with games in its built in hex-editor. Archive: https://archive.today/LRSuQ From the post: >>Today in Tedium: July 1990, a full 35 years ago, was supposed to be the coming-out party for one of the best accessories ever created for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It made games easier, sure, but it also made them more interesting. It presented a new way of thinking about the games that you brought home. But Nintendo didn’t like it—and the company sued. That device eventually emerged, and despite the legal battle, it became a defining part of what made the NES great. I am of course talking about the Game Genie, whose legacy looms large today. Today’s Tedium ponders why the Game Genie proved such a defining piece of video game history. — Ernie @ Tedium

(post is archived)

[–] • 1 pt

Did you just enter codes randomly or did you have some way to read addresses and find possible memory locations before ROMs and emulation made their way to PCs?

[–] • 0 pt

You could enter codes from a code book and sometimes magazines published new codes. However, you could also do some "live editing" where you could watch for a value to change based on something (lose a life, value changes) then you could try to drill down to that piece where it changed and modify it to do things like give yourself unlimited lives.

Most kids would probably have hated it but I always thought it was kind of cool that you could "make your own cheats".

[–] • 1 pt

I knew about the code books (subscribed and had them all delivered as soon as they were printed) and whatever ones could be found in magazines at the time.

Making my own codes: the suggested way was to write down codes that you randomly generated, enter them, play the game and look for things that had changed. How were you monitoring the memory address or whatever you were doing to be able find a code?

[–] • 0 pt

I am probably mixing up versions of the hardware. They made these for the Sega later on too and I had one of those too. You could hit a key combo to bring up a menu while the game was running then you could search for specific values then "tag" them to watch for changes. At least that's how I remember it working.

I still used the one with the NES but right now I can't remember if it could do the same thing or if that was just the sega one later on.

[–] • 1 pt (edited )

For PC games in modern times, Cheat Engine software is now widely used for altering bytes in memory of games at runtime.

Cheat tables for games are easily used, but most gamers are retarded and need the task brought down to a single button press or their brains overload. Instead of a cheat table, they will only use a "trainer".

The basis of every single "trainer" is a Cheat Engine table of cheat options that alters runtime memory to produce an effect in the game. This table of cheat options is then packaged as an executable with specified hotkeys to enable/disable cheat options.

Many game "trainers" are sold for money, but in most cases, the group/seller of the trainer didn't even create the table at the heart of the trainer - someone else did and shared it freely for others to use. All the seller did was steal it, slap their name and graphics all over the trainer executable window and include some stupid and annoying music, then sell "their" trainer through various outlets. Many of these trainers also contain viruses and bitcoin miners packaged into the executable.

While "trainers" and cheat tables are primarily used to make games easier, as Game Genie did, it is also used by some to offer cheat options that can also make games harder:

  • make enemies have stronger attacks
  • have more enemies
  • have player abilities do less damage
  • needing more items to craft gear
  • more skill points to learn abilities
  • more currency needed to purchase items from in-game traders
  • etc.

It is also being used to customize games to:

  • disable annoying or piercing sound effects
  • lock a type of weather/time of day as being active in games with day and weather cycles
  • unlock content present in the game that you bought that the greedy producer had artificially locked off unless an additional fee is paid
  • and even to fix errors and bugs present in modern "games" as they are most often released broken and never fixed
[–] • 1 pt

That takes me back. I don't think I have heard of a "game hack" called a "trainer" for a long time.

I would say that is fairly accurate though.

[–] • 0 pt

I do miss good trainers with phenomenal art and demoscene music from big name artists.