For those who didn't live through the era, it's hard to understate how much a Game Genie really did make things more fun and interesting. The thing basically gave you a huge menu of settings/tweaks you could make to a game, more common examples being "99 lives" or "Maximum HP" or something like that, but it could also make games more difficult for those who wanted that. It really felt to me like bumpers at a bowling alley, except the bumpers could be moved around to make it easier to get a strike or nearly impossible.
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.
My favorite use of the Game Genie (Well, _Super_ Game Genie) was finding codes that would break a game in a way that made it more challenging--but not impossible--to play. Generally, this meant graphical glitches. But sometimes it meant stuff like changing how the character moved or making power-ups/items do random things.
That article was bizarrely difficult to read. Light on any details, all over the place story narration and the author trying far too hard to tie it to fucking AI today.
Just talk about the game genie on its own merits, it's far more interesting than AI slop for some of us
I agree. It's an interesting side note that it was cited in the Anthropic case, but the way it was used in that case is so weird that it really took away from the whole thing. It just kinda made me angry (again) about LLMs using all the information for free and with no citations instead of happy and nostalgic for the game genie (which still didn't help me make it past level 2 in Ninja Gaiden, dang it!)
Yes, if the ruling allowing the GameGenie is about the freedom to tinker, I see this being an effective defence for building an AI myself from my own books for my own use. But, removing the need to buy the book in the first place is the key problem that the article seems to ignore.
Game Genie was likely the primary contributor of exposing kids to computer science in the 90's/00's, especially with "63" or "FF" appearing in every Infinite Lives cheat code. The "wow" moment for me was a Encounter the Specified Pokemon cheatcode for Pokemon Red where the specified Pokemon was their ID in hexadecimal.
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.
Games used to be fun through their gameplay mechanics and physics, rather than through their progression mechanics (legendary gear, maxed levels). Giving yourself max-stats would ruin most modern games, because the game world stops being interesting without the progression ladder.
Also, making a Nintendo-brand version of these would have been easy money, dunno why Nintendo stockholders were okay with less money.
Codemasters being the company who made the Game Genie AND the best racing games out there is a square I've never been able to circle. It feels a tad unreal for me.
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.
Ah basically like the "Final Cartridge" or "Power Cartridge" for the Commodore 64? Stuff that'd freeze the machine and let you edit memory using hex codes?
I had the "Power Cartridge" on my C128. Fun times.
Honestly that sounds to me as a machine that horrifically voilates Nintendos and other companies' intellectual property and everyone that used this should be ashamed of themselves. Modifying the intent of developers? Horrifying.
Start a game, find a variable you want to lock/alter (eg. money, power, percent health), search the whole process memory for that number, change that number (get hit, spend/earn money), rescan the whole memory again, and repeat until you find the right memory location, and then alter or freeze it.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 32.5 ms ] threadI 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.
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.
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.
/s
"game genie" for linux (with a gui)
Start a game, find a variable you want to lock/alter (eg. money, power, percent health), search the whole process memory for that number, change that number (get hit, spend/earn money), rescan the whole memory again, and repeat until you find the right memory location, and then alter or freeze it.