Game Genie is a line of video game cheat cartridges originally designed by Codemasters, sold by Camerica and Galoob. The first device in the series was released in 1990[1] for the Nintendo Entertainment System, with subsequent devices released for the Super NES, Game Boy, Genesis, and Game Gear. All Game Genie devices temporarily modify game data, allowing the player to do things unintended by developers such as, depending on the game, cheating, manipulating various aspects of games, and accessing unused assets and functions. Five million units of the original Game Genie products were sold worldwide,[2] and most video game console emulators feature Game Genie code support. Emulators that have Game Genie support also allow a near-unlimited number of codes to be entered whereas the actual products have an upper and lower limit, between three and six codes.[3]
GAME GENIE NES
Because the Game Genie patches the program code of a game, the codes are sometimes referred to as patch codes.[5] These codes can have a variety of effects. Most published codes give the player some form of invulnerability, infinite ammunition, level skipping, or other modifications that allow the player to be more powerful than intended by the developers. In other cases, codes can make the game more difficult or even unlock game features that developers had scrapped and rendered unreachable in normal play.
The Game Genie was packaged with a booklet of codes that could be used across various games. However, this booklet became outdated as Galoob developed new codes and new games were released. In response to this, Galoob created a paid subscription service where subscribers would receive new code booklets quarterly.[6] In addition, Galoob also ran advertisements in certain gaming publications, such as GamePro, that featured codes for newer games.
To create new codes, it is possible to enter random codes into a Game Genie. This evolutionary approach is equivalent to using random POKE operations. Usually, entering random codes will result in no noticeable change in the game or freezing the game and possibly corrupting save data, but a useful difference may appear in the game if this process is repeated many times. Once a useful code is discovered, making slight modifications to this code has a much higher probability of producing additional useful codes. With ROM files, emulators, and compilers for these games and systems, it has become possible to reverse engineer games to find specific ROM data to modify. This information can be directly converted into Game Genie codes.
The NES Game Genie attaches to the end of the NES cartridge, causing the cartridge to protrude from the console when fully inserted, making the depression impossible. Therefore, the Game Genie was designed in such a way that it did not need to be depressed in order to start the game. This design put even more stress on the LIF socket than standard game insertion, bending pins and eventually causing units to be unplayable without the Game Genie present.[8]
The Super NES edition is incompatible with certain games, such as Star Fox[11] and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars,[12] as these games use pins that went unused in most games. It also has problems with the SNS-101, as only two codes can be used at a time. There are three known versions of the SNES Game Genie (v1, v1.1, v2).[13] When comparing the PCBs of v1 and v2, v2 has much fewer components.[14] All three versions look exactly the same on the outside, but when v1.1 is booted up, it will have dashes present before any code is entered. The only way to tell v1 and v2 apart is by opening the case and checking the PCB.
The Game Boy edition similarly has a slot for cartridges while itself needing to be inserted into the console's game slot. It has two face buttons for toggling codes on/off or to return to the code input screen. This edition also houses a compartment to contain a very small code booklet in the back.
On the Genesis/Mega Drive, the Game Genie can function as a country converter cartridge since most of these games are only "locked" to their respective regions by the shape of the cartridges and/or a set of a few bytes in the header of the ROM. Some games do not work with the Genesis Game Genie. The unit is also not compatible with Sega 32X cartridges (see "legal issues" below).
A substantially more powerful device was developed by Codemasters for the Super NES, with many improvements including the ability for users to find their own cheat codes, to selectively activate cheats during gameplay using the game controller, to switch games into a slow-motion mode, as well as automatically save and restore the high-scores from games into battery-backed memory on the Game Genie device itself. A fully working prototype of the device was completed, but was not brought to market due to changes in market conditions. One prototype is known to remain in existence, in the possession of Richard Aplin, one of its original creators.[20]
Nintendo published the first official version of Tetris for Nintendo Entertainment System.Unlike Tengen's version, this game has no 2-player mode, which was later implemented in Tetris & Dr. Mario.
Despite the title's popularity, its DAS mechanics were not well-understood until player Kitaru analyzed its internal memory values. The game keeps a hidden count of how many frames the left or right button has been held down for. This is called the "DAS counter." After holding down left or right for 16 frames, the piece moves left or right by one column, and the DAS counter resets. Only, it doesn't actually reset all the way back to 0. It instead resets it to 10. After 6 more frames, it will reach 16, the piece will move another column, and the counter will reset back to 10. After the left or right button is released, and left or right is pressed again, the counter will reset all the way back to zero. In effect, pressing and holding down the left button will first move the piece 1 column, then after 16 frames it moves another column, then it will move a column every 6 frames.
Tetris and other puzzle games published by Nintendo Console: Tetris (NES, Nintendo) Tetris 2 Tetris & Dr. Mario 3D Tetris The New Tetris Tetris 99Handheld: Tetris (Game Boy) Tetris Blast Tetris DX Pokémon Tetris Tetris DS Tetris AxisTopics: Nintendo Rotation System Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
Things get especially interesting when looking at the history of physical cheat devices that interface with game-playing hardware. Game Genie was not the first; Datel produced Action Replay cartridges for the C64 and other computers as early as 1985. There were also the Multiface peripherals for various computers, by British company Romantic Robot. These allowed not just cheats but also backing up games. Plus, there were other lesser-known plug-in devices. By the time Game Genie (initially) launched in 1990 the concept of cheat devices was already well established. Unlike Game Genie, however, none incurred the wrath of Nintendo, with a $15 million lawsuit ensuing.
To fully document the Game Genie saga, we interviewed four key people: Ted Carron, Graham Rigby, Jonathan Menzies, and Richard Aplin. To tell the full, amazing story of this unassuming device, we've also supplemented their answers with quotations from other sources, including input from the siblings who founded Codemasters, the company behind the Game Genie: brothers David and Richard, and father Jim Darling. For good measure, we've also included quotes from Andrew Graham, creator of Codemasters' Micro Machines game.
Aplin then pointed us in the direction of colleagues. "People significantly involved in the NES one were David, Richard, and Jim Darling, the Codemasters family. David started a small mobile games shop, Kwalee, and obviously knows the early days, litigation, Nintendo stuff, and might be happy to talk, now so much water is under the bridge; Ted Carron was part of the early team and still in Leamington Spa, he married a Darling; Graham Rigby now lives in Australia and did a lot of code-finding; Jon Menzies wrote a lot of software at Codemasters; Andrew Graham wrote the NES ROM software for Game Genie as well as other stuff, some NES games, lock chip work and so on. He also flew to Taiwan to work on production/debugging of the ASIC for the NES Genie."
David, the elder of the Darling brothers and Codemasters co-founder, is the key person to describe Game Genie's conception. It all started with the launch of Nintendo's grey NES console in America, which initially didn't garner much interest. "We went to the CES show in Chicago," David told us a few years back. "The industry used to go every six months, in Chicago and Las Vegas. There was this little Japanese company, Nintendo, which had this funny little console. Generally, people weren't excited about it. So we thought, that's interesting, but we ignored it. By the next show, six months later, Nintendo was everywhere. It took off across America. Even at petrol stations, they were selling Nintendo games. So we thought: this is the machine we have to be involved with."
A 1993 Super Play interview with David confirms it was at the later Vegas show where they made their decision, "I went with Richard and a guy here called Ted Carron to one of the Las Vegas Computer Entertainment Shows, where we realised just how big Nintendo was over there. When we came back we were thinking 'right, we've got to somehow get into this'." Of course, to develop for the NES required an expensive license from Nintendo and, in that same Super Play interview, David reveals the Japanese giant wasn't interested. "To be honest, when we went to CES, we tried to talk to Nintendo about doing games for them, but they gave us the cold shoulder because we hadn't booked an appointment. After that, we just saw doing it without them as a challenge." 2ff7e9595c
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