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At the time, the NES Game Genie might as well just have been made of actual magic because it was a miraculous marvel to those of us who really sucked at video games.
I suspect it could as the extra weight of the unit pushes down on the pins in the NES. But no real damage to anything else. I used game genie alot as a kid and my NES, which I got in 1989 was still working up untill around 2006
This reminds me of the myth that sitting too close to a TV would burn your eyes out. The real reason parents were advised not to let their kids sit too close to their TVs, or for too long, was because a very specific model of CRT television back in yesteryear had defective shielding and was putting out ungodly amounts of x-rays. Edit: Now I realize there’s more to the story.
Pretty much the first ever color TVs made had that problem, as shielding isn't such a concern on black and white TVs due to their lower operating voltage.
That wasn't just one specific model of TV, that was more like most models made before around 1970, before they started measuring and regulating the amount of X-rays they would emit. Back before then, a common tweak TV repair shops might do would be to tweak the high voltage levels up just a little bit to get a brighter picture, but nobody really knew the amount of additional X-rays this would cause. So basically it was a two-fold problem, partly bad design decisions, and partly repair shops ignorantly doing a quick hack when the customer would complain their picture seemed a little dimmer than they'd like.
Yeah, Nintendo was faced with legal action over the locking mechanism for their carts, so they redesigned the carts to not lock into older consoles, and the locking ridge was removed from newer consoles. Starting with the GameBoy Color cartridges on their handhelds did away with the locking feature too.
Pro tips: You can use the SNES Game Genie to play pretty much every game with extended memory, such as SMW2 and SF Alpha 2, on clone consoles that normally wouldn’t play them, and it’s also a bypass to play Super Famicom games on US consoles… Also, on another note, similarly related, the N64 Game Shark would let you play Japanese games on your US consoles… ❤
The Genesis Game Genie also removed the geo-restriction from Japanese and European copies of Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which didn't get an American cartridge release until _2021._
Is there an SNES Game Genie model that has a passthru for the extra pins on games like SMW2? Most Game Genies I have seen look like gruz's, which only has the one main set of contacts.
But how could yoshi’s island work on the gamegenie if the gamegenie lacks those extra pins??? Also for what i do understand is that certain games wouldn’t work with the gamegenie by simply checking the memory location and it it detects any data then it assumes that you’re playing on a copy device and thus will refuses itself to load.
Wow, my mind is blown. I didn't know the Game Genie was so useful outside of cheats. I remember there were adapters in the back of game magazines to play import games but if you had a Game Genie or Game Shark you didn't even need one.
The NES Game genie is what taught my brother to read. He was 3 and he would always ask me to put in his codes for him because he couldn't read. One day I got fed up with him asking and said no. About 30 mins later he comes to our mom with the codebook and goes "Mom Mom, That says Infinite". By the time they tested him in Kindergarten he was reading at a grade 7 level. Now here we are 31 years later and he's a Teacher Librarian and assistant coach of his schools E-Sports team.
Fun fact, as far as the NES goes, if you have an NES that has trouble reading games, a game genie sometimes can make the difference and allow you to use it without replacing the 72 pin connector.
This was my first thought on seeing the video. I don't think it ever crossed my mind to blame the Game Genie for ruining my system, but I had a handful of well-loved games that couldn't make a solid connection without the GG. It was a life saver, even when I wasn't using it!
None of my games worked properly without the Game Genie! I always thought it was the universe's sick joke that the thing that(WE THOUGHT) wrecked our systems in the first place, was the only thing capable of making it work 😅!
I know this works with the SNES one. I have a copy of Actraiser that was damaged and the Game Genie made it playable. Sure you can only use save slot 2, but it worked!
@@hostileX7 That usually means that your cartridge connectors are dirty. Nintendo consoles are really finnicky compared to every other consoles (My Sega consoles eat everything for example, even my completely broken Eternal Champions, which was just the PCB, scratched and dirty) when it comes to dirt on the connectors. The best way to get games going: Rub the connectors down with Isopropanol. Insert the cartridge and pull it back until it's right on the console edge (toward you) And remember: NEVER blow the connectors. While that is a myth that "worked", it actually screws up the pins, as your blowing will just drop a lost of saliva onto them, corroding the pins.
After noticing that level cheats for Battletoads only differed by one letter, I was able to discover the cheat code to get to the final level where you fight the Dark Queen, as it wasn’t listed among the other codes.
Related to this, you could also "swap" certain letters with specific other letters, say, Z for X. So you'd find one of the listed codes for a game but instead of entering X as the manual showed, you'd instead enter in Z. Doing so would sometimes change nothing or yield unintended consequences. I remember doing this on a particular code for Blades of Steel and it ended up giving us infinite fight where even after all of our energy points were gone, it wouldn't drop us back to the game. Good times.
I did the same as a kid, you either change the first or last letter to go to every stage of the game from base password in battletoads. I had it all written down as a kid as I mapped them all out all 13 levels. My lil brothers would use the code is left out to easily beat games. I'd tinker passwords as I'd look at the pattern of the codes in the manual, and see what part remained consistent between the lines. I'd change the parts that was the variable and see what happened. I'd find some fun results like making your character in TMNT 2 so powerful you could one shot almost any enemy, aside from the last two bosses, Shredder and Kraig. They died in 2 hits instead.
If you’re concerned about your game genie messing up your NES, there’s always the blinking light win cartridge connector which eliminates pressing down on the cartridge entirely
The blinking light was caused by the lockout chip. If you have a NES look into disabling it, you will never get that again and it doesn't really do anything but make sure you are playing legal NES carts.
@@exodous02 disabling the 10NES chip only prevents the blinking light however it won’t cause games to boot perfectly every time especially if the cartridge connector is damaged
@exodous02 That is because it doesn't make the proper connection between the cart and the system to read the lock out chips. So even if you do cut the leg still doesn't fix the problem 100% because the pins are a major problem. Those after market 72 pin connectors suck balls. I have gone through 2 of them.
Been using a game Genie for NES for over 25 years & i got that NES out of a truck bed & dumped water out of it. I've had zero problems with the NES & game Genie over the years. Kinda makes me believe if the water & the Game Genie combined haven't killed the NES that there is absolutely no chance a Game Genie could mess up an NES on it's own.
The flap, on the SNES Game Genie, was there to "lock" on to the SNES cartridge. Earlier released titles, like Pilotwings and Super Mario World, had a different design on the front of the cartridge. This was to keep it more secure while inserted in the console. That flap took advantage of this design and later SNES carts removed it completely.
To add on to this, early versions of the console used that notch in the early games to lock the cartridge into the console when the power button was slid up. Apparently, kids and parents would try pulling games out while the unit was on and lots of people ended up broking this lock mechanism, so Nintendo just did away with it in later releases.
@@BrandonHann I remember. The Change Occurred in March 1993. I got SNES for Christmas in 1991. I remember each Cartridge made its first two years having a little Oval Design on its Cross section.
I remember there was a subscription service for updated code books. I don't remember how many I ended up getting but the Gameboy books were especially difficult to keep track of because of their size.
Really? I kept the book in its built-in holder for the gameboy model. I still have it, book intact. Now the NES one, THAT is one I need a code book for.
I bought a Game Action Replay for NES when it was first released years ago. The instruction manual had directions for taking a pair of pliers and removing that metal strip that holds the cart in place. I specifically remember a quote in the manual saying that strip was there to prevent you from using devices like the Game Action Replay. I didn't think twice about it at the time, but it's pretty off the wall in hindsight.
I used to love that compartment with the code book on the back of the Game Gear version; I never knew that the Game Boy version had something like that, since my first Game Boy was a Super Game Boy.
The SNES flap was also a locking mechanism. Some of the cartridges have a slot instead of a slope which prevented the cartridge from being removed while the power was on. The on switch moved a slider forward.
I kinda figured the worst thing that might happen is corrupting your save data on certain games with the wrong code (that or the pins thing I never considered originally) it definitely sounded like a smear campaign by nintendo cus you know how much they *hated* the damn thing. even today I see new codes being discovered all the time to do the craziest stuff, so the GG definitely still has its fans.
YEAAAA, the Game Genie, and various other cheating devices, all have a special place in many people's hearts, so it really doesn't surprise me that they still have a dedicated following.
It's a basic hex editor. Nearly all 8 and 16-bit emulators have game genie functionality built in to the program and all you need to know is the correct codes. I for example have several cheats saved to run when playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors like unlimited lives and bazooka ammo, because the game is long and balls-out hard so I'd rather not torture myself trying to get through it.
My GameShark killed my Diddy Kong Racer save for 64. I think like all the textures disappeared. I had put a lot of time into that save and 12 year-old me was crushed.
Displaced Gamers is a channel about how NES games were coded and sometimes also offers Gamegenie codes to fix some original bugs or wonky coding which is quite cool.
@@iamtheb yeah, I've played start *TO FINISH* (but never actually COMPLETED) Final Fantasy 7 like... *FOUR TIMES* over the years...two times the save data was corrupted by my using a gameshark (playthrough 1 was legit, but I used a multi-memcard and several of its "pages" failed, notably my 80% complete FF7 saves) ... My 2nd and 3rd playthroughs were using a GS to skip the "grindy-grind" parts I'd done on playthrough 1... but the GS and I guess some of the codes I used, corrupted both of those saves... my 4th playthrough I did literally everything except fight Sephiroth... all chars 99, all materia including grinding master sets the hard way XD and I kept backups of that save. I just got... SATISFIED...
As you mentioned, the NES Game Genie will bend the pins out of shape, but before you go buying a new pin connector piece, you can just bend the pins back in place yourself using a thin flathead screwdriver or even a knife. I did this to my NES about a year ago and it plays like brand new.
You'd have to be fairly careful with that arrangement, though. Once you've got a long enough stack of cartridges hooked up to the cartridge slot, you'll be drawing too much power from the console and might fry the power supply circuitry. ⚠ To work around that risk you could use a homebrew power injector which breaks-out the VCC lines to the cartridge bus and provides external power for the stack from e.g. a USB power supply. Remember though that data lines back to the console are signalled relative to ground, so this means you have to have the external PSU *and* the console connected to the same GND (0v) and this might pose risks of its own. YMMV and AYOR, but HTH! 😇
Yeah, I think that part of why later games removed the peg lock was to save on plastic like you said, but I think another big reason was because there were probably some North American gamers who complained about not being able to pull the old peg-style cartridges out without using the eject button. The later "peg-less" cartridges can be pulled out of the SNES without the eject button.
people kept breaking their systems by not using the eject button in the middle of the console. so the later release games took the lock notch out of the cartridges.
Dang, its so cool to see your videos doing so well and hitting triple digits now. You've been here for a long time and you've always been a chill dude, so it makes me happy to see.
I love the Game Genie and think no respectable collection is complete without its respective Genie. I have one for the NES, SNES, and Genesis (they're also the same ones I had as a kid). Thank you for the memories, Galoob!!
I used to stack 3 NES Game Genies for certain games and it allowed me to use up to 9 codes.😂 It was necessary to put something under them, like a couple of books, to support them
One of my most treasured possessions is a local Store was giving away a game genie backpack when you bought a NES game genie, I still cart my MTG decks around in the backpack to this day!
the NES game genie ruined the connectors on my NES as a kid. The explanation I got from the repairman was that the Game Genie’s PCB was just a few microns too thick and forced the connectors a little wider, and original games no longer worked unless used with the Game Genie, because they didn’t make contact correctly anymore on the gaping pins. so… yeah, not cool.
@3:30 the "Flap" was to help hold the games in the game genie. Without making a long and drawn out explanation, the older SNES games (FF2/FF4) had a little notch where that notch prong on the inside of the flap would connect to. Compare the notch with the newer games (FF3/FF6) which was no longer a notch, these are the games which the older version of game genie did not work on. Anyhow, if you have questions I can answer them for ya. I owned one of these bad boys as soon as they came out like 30 years ago! haha
One great benefit of the Game Genie for Genesis is that it allowed your imports to work on a 32X. For whatever reason, the Magic Key adapter to play imports doesn't work with the 32X attached, but you can use the Game Genie to achieve the same bypass effect.
That's probably a bug, or possibly because by the time the 32x came out, the Saturn was only a few months a way and just about any sales for the system were worth getting. Also, international trade of such things wasn't as well-developed as it is now.
I've got a few notes on this. For one, the SNES Game Genie didn't have any passthrough for expansion chip pins used in a number of games like Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, or Super Mario RPG. As a result, it's incompatible with almost all games that use expansion chips. I have to recommend getting a Pro Action Replay (preferably the Mark III) for the console instead. The Mark II and III both resolve the expansion chip issue by accepting ALL the pins from those games and passing them through, and the III even allows full circumventing of region locks. It's thorough enough it'll even lie about what video mode the system is using to bypass certain later games that software checked to ensure they weren't being played in the "wrong" region. The NES Game Genie PCB is in fact thicker, though it's hard to tell by eyeballing it. Calipers do the trick. This only really becomes an issue when attempting to use it in the redesigned top loading NES, where it struggles to fit without using a special adapter you could mail in for. Yes, you plugged your adapter into an adapter. I had heard rumors that the Genesis version ALWAYS corrupted any game with save data, but I hadn't experienced that myself. I think perhaps the most popular games on the console are just especially easy to accidentally code in ways that corrupt the save data. Lastly, the Game Genie is, at the end of the day, hex editing the game. It just doesn't look like it because they decided to use a special "encoding system" that converted the hex code into letters that were supposed to resemble "magic words", for that Game Genie branding. I think this was the biggest mistake they made. Hex editing is so much clearer in what you're doing, in many cases, than this disguised cryptograph nonsense. I think that's the one thing they shouldn't have done in the design of these things. Oh, and the SNES expansion chip issue.
There also existed a Famicom version of the Game Genie made by the company whom Codemasters contracted to manufacture them. They're incredibly rare though, and I imagine it would command a pretty penny on eBay should one show up.
By the time I got a NES Game Genie, my 72 pin connector was already messed up. I used to just jam a hot wheels in on top of the game carts to make it work. After I got the Game Genie, I didnt have that problem. One of the plastic tabs on top of the Game Genie broke, and it has just lived inside my NES since.
In MegaMan 2, one of the boss levels of Wily needed you to die because your crusher bombs run out. First you had to destroy walls, then die, recharge your crusher bombs while replaying the level, then destroy the boss cannons. Playing with infinitive health will prevent you finishing this level 😅
I know the level you’re talking about and had tremendous trouble with it as a kid, but you actually don’t have to die! If you destroy the guns in a certain order and use I believe item 3 to scale a wall instead of blowing up one or two of the doors you actually have enough Crash bombs to beat the boss without replenishing
I actually permanently screwed up a saved game in 1998 for the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64. My friend could not beat it, and I had a GameShark, so I beat it for him, by playing through with cheats, but then suddenly all sorts of weird stuff happened like he had 999 apples or he had -1 arrows which would not fire even though you could see the arrow in Links hands, it really kind of broke the game for him. He ended up having to start a new saved file. For my hard work, because it took me like 20 hours to play through with cheats, he gave me 10 Japanese Pokémon cards. This is so whatever but I actually still have them lol
Great video. I happen to have gotten two game genies for the NES. I found out though trying it but you can daisy chain two or possible more together. It load each one separately while giving you 6 code lines.
I've known people who daisy chained up to 6 Game Genies; at that point, it was necessary to use supporting blocks/books to hold up the end of the NES cartridge, but that also gets to the point of being impractical because I can't think of too many games that I'd want to use 18 codes on at the same time.
I may have been born in 2002 but we had the top loader NES for some time. Asked for the game genie for my birthday at some point; it worked obviously but I remember it at some point getting stuck and the black plastic part breaking off because of that.
Interesting video. I never used one myself on any old console myself. Wasn't there one for the N64 as well? I believe remembering advertising in printed magazines in the late 90s.
I had the 64 Game Shark, I liked it because it allowed you to make your own cheats. If I remember right you could get into the GS menu while the game was running. From there you could have it mark everything in memory that had a value. (Like lives or currency) Then you go back to the game and change the value somehow. Then you enter the menu again and update the value to narrow down what part of the memory represents what your looking for. You repeat until you only have one left and set it to what you want or freeze it. Sometimes finding cheats was more fun then the game. I never had a problem with it damaging the games I had, but I'm sure there were games that had anti-cheat or just didn't work well with it. One person in the comments said it bricked one of their games.
I remember getting this for NES, and SNES back in the day. It was pretty awesome, but some of the codes for some games worked better than others. It was great for Super Mario Bros 3. I always used the permanent Hammer Bros costume. I remember even saving money, and ordering the extra books with more codes in it for other games. Took like 6 weeks to get them, but those were the days.
There was an action replay that I bought for the PS1 and it featured a comparative search and you could actually edit or freeze hex addresses. There was a warning with it that you could corrupt your games. From what I read it was taken off the market due to this reason.
I doubt the AR could have done _permanent_ corruption to any games on the PS1 given the latter were pressed CD-ROMs and could not have been updated/re-written, but what was probably experienced was damage to game _operation_ caused by abnormal data in save files created when the AR was being used. 😇 tl,dr; The AR would be perfectly safe to use on a PS1 with any game, but you should remove all routinely used memory cards from the console and - If you do want to save AR modified games - Use a *dedicated and clearly labelled* memory card for that purpose. 👍
i know the ones you're talking about, it actually was marketed toward people that like making cheats from scratch, and they used the tomb raider III climb any wall code as an example lol
That explains why my cousin's NES never really worked whenever I was there to play it. There was a Game Genie left in it for years and it was never removed whenever I was there.
I just noticed that the Super Nintendo one doesn't have the extra pins for expansion hardware, like the Super FX or SA-1. It won't work with those games sadly
2:24-Thanks for the advice. Just one problem. Where were you in 1995? We did this to our Nintendo with the same exact game genie we bought at the flea-market and then the console totally stopped working.
4:18 the only thing that sucked about that toggle switch on the SNES version was it was very easy to accidently reset the game when using it. The SNES game genie had a very loose connection to the console, so after a little wear-n-tear even the slightest nudge could cause the pins to disconnect.
In hindsight, galoob could have made the GG with a long cable with the pin connector lying flat on whatever the console is sitting on. This way the cartridge isn't flopping around and f'cking up the connectors on either end. Maybe 6 to 12 inches to allow the cartridge to lie flat beside the console (like a cassette tape shaped adapter for CD players)
Similar to a HES dongle (the company HES made bootleg NES carts with a dongle for an original cart so that the lockout chip from the original cart can be used, they look pretty cool, pretty much like what you described)
@@freedustin it takes a minute amount of technical understanding to do that though... to say nothing of how easy it is to slip and damage one of the connectors. but even repairing a damaged connector is easier than REPLACING THE ENTIRE COMPONENT... desoldering and then seating and soldering the new one in, having to control spillage of solder while desoldering/soldering on... how many connections did the NES cartridges use? 24? 30?
Don’t know if this affected the design, but Codemasters knew either they or Galoob would likely be submitting the NES Game Genie as an exhibit in court, a court that probably wasn’t all that familiar with video game consoles yet. The more the Game Genie looked like an inoffensive bit of plastic slipped between two pieces of official Nintendo hardware, and the less it looked like some sort of hardwire car-thief Frankenstein job hijacking the console for its own ends, the better.
There are only two issue with the Game Genies; one is that the Game Boy Game Genie units will not properly fit into a Super Game Boy / 2 without bending the pins, putting stress physically onto the pins potentially damaging both the Game Genies and the consoles. There was an adapter called, appropriately enough, the Game Genie to Super Game Boy adapter that was only avaliable via mail order. The second problem was with the NES top-loader systems that may permentantly cause the Game Genie to become stuck inside the console. Agian, this was resolved by way of an "official" adapter via mail order.
It's crazy to see the OG Gameboy one, I had a Game Shark for my GBC and it was so much more compact. Did a U-Shape around the back to plug in your game.
Man I sure miss my gameboy and Super Nintendo. All my video game stuff went missing that I had when I was a kid. Just bought a Nintendo the other day so now I’m going to slowly build my collection back. Thanks for the great video. I’m 40 and to be honest I’ve never heard of a game genie until I watched your video 😮😂 thanks again 🎉
1:55 springy pins is not a design flaw. It is an engineering advancement that forces connections even in worn pins. Without the springy pins, if the connectors wear down they will eventually stop making a connection. With springy pins, the connection is made even with excessive wear.
Here's a fun thing: After losing the lawsuit with Galoob, the NES-101 (the top loader) was designed in such a way that the regular Game Genie would not fit into the cartridge port. Rather than make a revised Game Genie, Galoob instead released an "adapter" (which was literally just a passthrough with a shell) to solve the problem.
The passthrough adapter did have to change the angle of the cartridge edge that would insert into the console, since the top loader requires cartridges to go straight in, and the Game Genie's design had to mount that board at an angle so that it could interface with the front loader's ZIF connector without clicking the game down.
Wow, I thought this was going to be a very short video, but you really went all the way. Nice analysis! P.S. I didn't know that Game Genies were made by Codemasters (or maybe I forgot about that fact). Very interesting!
The gameboy Game Genie also came with sticks for popular games that you could stick on the cart that had the most common codes. My copy of Tetris still has one it actually.
1:10 i love how we call connections male or female based on whether its like a penis or a vagina. Who was the first person to come up with that naming convention? Essentially the NES is a female, and our cartidges are male.
Fun fact, you can use 4 + NES game genies in series to get 3 codes each ;) (I cant remember every game but some games can't get power if you use too many I swear I have a memory of use using 6 on a game lol) (we used a tupperwear cup to hold up the end on the game tower)
The flap on the snes gj was to help lock the old style cartridges in place. Later they changed the cartridge. So that's why there's two different looking carts on the snes.
Me and 2 of my friends used the Game Genie extensively, back in the days. We had a collection of magazines with codes, as well as photocopied lists exchanged with other friends, and a notebook. We used it on 3 different NES dozens of times. Never had any issue and never saw any degradation, wear or damage.
The flap on the SNES version was designed to lock into the first generation carts where there was a slot that the SNES would lock into when the power switch was turned on preventing accidental pulling the game out while it was on. This design was changed on newer carts where that flap was useless.
this is awesome, can you make an explanation video about how the cheat discs/trainers worked on CD based systems like the PS1? i remember owning a code CD which basically worked like a game genie, you'd start with the code CD, picked the cheats for the specific game, pressed launch game and switched the discs. but i wonder how the console knew about the cheats when switching discs like it kept them in the ram?
With the SNES Genie, that flapping was to hold the snes cartridge in place. When you slide the power toggle up a lock pin would hold the cartridge in place. That flap acts just like that holding the cartridge to the genie.
I had used my Game Genie on a friend of a friend’s Adventure of Link. The Game Genie appeared to have corrupted the cartridge by causing all the heart and magic containers to never appear in any save ever again. I tried and tried to see if it would fix itself, but it never did. I gave the cartridge back to my friend and never talked to the owner again because I was so embarrassed that I broke his game. I still have no idea what happened.
The NES game genie does fit way tighter in the pin connectors which makes a worn out system with loose pin connectors prone to a flashing screen will work every time with the game genie.Its a quick fix if you don't want to change the pin connectors and if you don't want to use it just skip the code screen.
Closed video at 3:55 because he didn't use the flap properly. The cartridges made at the snes gg's release window were different and the flap would Pop into the game cartridge thus securing it. The game cartridge design was eventually changed to a smooth design to dissuaded cheaters as the non-secure holding of tge cartridge would cause the gameplay to glitch and frequently freeze altogether if a little shaking was introduced to the environment.........
The bit about the Game Genie patching MEMORY is wrong. The GG actually works by pass-through modification of ROM access, not RAM. It's more like patching tiny bits of game code or assets rather than memory values. It was the Pro Action Replay (and later GameShark) devices that worked by modifying RAM. Very different beasts.
What I'd like to know is if it'll work on a Japanese console via a 72-60 pin converter. For those who don't know Famicom the Japanese NES uses 60 Pin cartridges where as US NES has 72 pins. I'm guessing it'll most likely not work since its basically linking 3 carts together, 4 if you use the Top Loader adapter. One fun thing to mention about Game Genie, it was also another means of playing import games on Genesis and to an extent SNES. I know with some Genesis games it would require a code to bypass the region lock.
Fun times with the OG Gameboy Game Genie. My friend and I were trying out random codes and seeing what happened and he magically made a code for Killer Instinct that skipped straight to the last boss. Feels crazy cheat codes are DLC now.
As far as in-between cartridges go, never had any trouble with a game genie. Trying a non-Sonic game with Sonic and Knuckles, which is supposed to spit you into one of the bajillion possible blue sphere stages those with Sonic 1 had access to all of was extremely inconsistent to say the least, to the point that I originally thought you could only use a Sonic game with S&K. But, as I was the only kid in my family with any interest in Sonic thanks to loving the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon when I was like 4 into kindergarten (I think it had a pretty consistent airing schedule so my parents would put it on for me. I managed to catch an episode of the Mario 3 cartoon one day, a game me and my whole family played and loved, but without my parents around to witness it and me not thinking to bring it up I sadly missed out on the Mario cartoons that would have been well into rerun territory by then anyway as a kid) and after expressing genuine interest in seeing another kid play Sonic Chaos on his game gear alongside the other younger kids crowded around the waiting area while my older brother was in Tae Kwon Do, my parents got me a Game Gear which was my only way of playing any Sonic games until my brother got S&K for Christmas, with our only experience locking on another Sonic game being the time we rented Sonic 3. But, as bored kids do, I kept trying to plug our few Genesis games into it (we mostly had SNES games, and got the Genesis later on, well past the time of having Sonic 1 or 2 as a pack in) and eventually, after many tries, I got the No Way screen and a blue spheres stage using Mohammad Ali Boxing. When showing my brothers it must have taken over a dozen tries to reproduce it, and I thought it was a secret feature that perhaps only worked with that one game and maybe select others we didn't have, as I couldn't get it to work with the other 2 genesis games we had at the time. I was an adult before I learned that it was not some obscure secret, and was work with any Genesis game, on the first try no less. Next up was the Gameboy Mega Memory Card, which was supposed to allow you to copy save data from all of your gameboy games to it, and then write them back onto the cartridge at a later date. The packaging advertised it as being especially good for Pokemon, as while the different versions could be worked around by trading with neighborhood kids, a big point of contention for my parents, and I'm sure many more parents with multiple kids eager to get in on the craze, was the single save slot per cartridge (which, in retrospect, had to store far more data than the average Gameboy game) as opposed to the more common three that was kind of the standard. I tried it with my Gameboy Camera (another gameboy game that stored far more than the average Gameboy game and probably the worst possible gameboy game in the system library to test that device with knowing what I know now) and had my data irrecoverably wiped for my trouble, leaving me heartbroken and unwilling to test what I assumed to be a dangerous, defective product on anything else afterwards. Besides, when we got Pokemon Stadium we had a reliable way of backing up our 'mons, allowing me and my brothers to reset our saves without fear and give ourselves a limited time, usually a couple of hours, to start from a fresh file then battle it out on the N64 at the end. Last of all was the N64 Game Shark I got from a pawn shop. Like our copy of Sonic and Knuckles, this used Game Shark often took a lot of attempts taking the game out and plugging it back in before it would successfully recognize a cartridge. Eventually, I wanted to try it on my copy of Super Smash Bros. This time, it seemed like no matter how many times we tried, though, the Game Shark wouldn't work for that game, and when I tried the game on its own without it, it wouldn't work either when it had never given us trouble before. It was a loss we felt deeply, and like with the gameboy mega memory card we never trusted that secondhand dodgy game shark again. Thankfully, although we were late to the next generation as my dad had little money, so even our N64 took a year of layaway and most of our games came from secondhand sources such as yard sales, as well as me and my younger brother usually getting one new game for Christmas, my mom also knew I was a huge Metroid fan as we both loved Super Metroid and had remembered how excited I was to get hold of Metroid 2, and later when I was living with my dad when I excitedly shared the news that I had finally found the NES original thatvhad always been my holy grail of our weekend yard sale trips (and no, starting with Super in no way made the first game any less fun. I had quite the stock of NES games we'd gotten for pennies on the dollar from past yard sales that I regularly played. I went in knowing it was going to be a product of its time and I will die on the hill that it has aged far better than most give it credit for. It's less of a case of being inferior to later games as much as it just plays differently in certain aspects, a bit janky but still very good, just a different kind of good. People write it off as a relic, a rough prototype for what would eventually be refined into excellence, but although there is certainly jank present it is still an excellent game I enjoy to this day.) so when the series made its grand return I got a GBA with Fusion from my mom for Christmas, followed by the unexpected gift of a Gamecube with Prime on my birthday, and like anyone else with a GameCube I later got that other game that everyone with the system got: Super Smash Bros. Melee, and while I am still sad about what happened to my copy of Smash 64, I doubt I would have gone through the trouble of hooking up the N64 to play that after getting that most legendary of sequels, unless I was already going to play the evergreen Star Fox 64 anyway and wanted to revisit a couple of the nostalgic stages, or to try that method people found of playing as Master Hand with no potentially cartridge-frying dodgy game shark required.
One of the rumours I remember hearing about was that certain codes could break your game or console. I'm pretty sure that the most that might happen out of that would be save corruption or causing a crash if you were writing values to places you shouldn't.
My brother and I took our NES apart in the late 90s and refurbished it. We fixed all the pens and cleaned all of the contacts. It actually went to my cousins for a couple of years and somehow we ended up getting it back.
The flap on the SNES cartridge was for original SNES carts from 1991 to early 1993. The bottoms of the front were solid, and SNES consoles had a locking bar that locked the cartridge in place while the console was on so you couldn't pop it out. Sometime in 1993, Nintendo said to hell with it and, not only discontinued the locking bar in the console, but also indented the cartridges so that, even if you had an original console, it couldn't lock the cartridge in place. It's an easy way to tell on early SNES games if you have an original release or a later version.
So the flap on the super Nintendo one was designed for the original cartridges that had the locking style of cartridge not the one that you have in the video so when you put the game in there and then put the game genie in there the flab is supposed to make sure that secure not get pulled out while you're playing
i'm still own all 5 game genies. it's really fun to see crazy codes when you're playing with them, i haven't had any issue with them in years. some tip i can give you to use this devices is try to not input too many cheats at once or the game could crash, just test one by one first and then keep adding the next line of cheat codes. because of Nintendo sued Galoob and lost, was one of the reasons why nintendo made a new revision of the NES : the 101 model or ''top loader'', you can't use game genie in this model of NES but galoob released an adapter to able to use it but that accesory is considered ''rare?'' i guess?. anyway, thank you for this video.
I still have my game genie for gameboy from the summer of 93 with the booklet still in there. Sadly the galoob logo and button labels have completely faded away but the unit still works. I thought having the booklet stored in the unit was awesome but sadly as newer games came out I didn’t know the codes for half my games lol. By the time Pokemon Red/Blue came out I was able to use the game genie to get Mew. Some of the kids at school would approach me to unlock Mew for them on their file. Great memories!
2:41 The toughness of the connection between game genie and NES cart was likely manufacturing cost saving, and not a necessity. it's pretty evident by the fact Game Genie comes with a giant black pull tab you are supposed to use to help remove the entire assembly from the deck. You even demonstrated it in the video despite the top being off.
Don't replace the NES connector. I opened and bent mine back just fine. I also got rid of the region lockout. I don't even have to push the cartridge down any more.
I love that you had Battletoads footage showing when you talked about how difficult the games were. Game Genie was the only reason I ever got anywhere in that game.
The original NES Game Genie has the system-facing connector mounted at an angle. That was necessary to be able to engage both the top and bottom of the 72-pin ZIF connector on the system without clicking the game down. That is also the reason that the original Game Genie won't fit into a top loader NES. The adapter that was made to work with the top loader just converts the angled connector to one that can go straight in. The NES Game Genie is the only one that can be daisy chained, and give you 3 codes per Game Genie unit (although doing this likely puts stress on the angled connectors of any of the downstream Game Genies).
NES game Genie was literal magic for my little self back in the 80s I had so much fun messing around in games I already owned. I also had the SNES version. However the only game I really used it for was Street Figher World warrior to make it play more like Street Figher Hyper Fighting in the Arcades. Street Figher II Turbo came out and the Genie was no longer needed. I don’t recall using it much for other games. I believe my parents stopped getting the game genie code books.
3:20 The "flap" on the SNES Game Genie actually locked the cartridges into place if you had the older type of cartridge, which had a pill-shaped groove that the SNES would slide a tab into, locking it in place and keeping you from pulling it out of the system while the power was on. This was eventually phased out for the newer type of cartridge, which had a flat and open surface underneath where the lock would normally be. This unfortunately rendered both the game genie's flap and the SNES' locking mechanism useless, except as a means of helping the games contact the pins. Presumably, these locking mechanisms cost a lot of plastic when making cartridge bodies, and were primarily an anti-piracy feature. Once it was no longer effective as an anti-piracy feature, these sorts of cartridges stopped being manufactured to save plastic.
When I was a kid on my first deck the spring broke for the ejector in my NES . Beside using a second cartridge to hold the game down to start , the game genie came in clutch . As well as being able to use it for games with no cover and only the cart itself . I was only a kid and didnt know how to replace case or the spring.
Just wanted to say thank you for watching my videos! Your support is absolutely amazing and inspires me to create better videos. You guys are awesome, much more to come! :)
quick question. do i need the nes black cartridge holder thingamabob?
Thank you for making them :)
Yeah, I love making Game Genie codes!
Just stay true to your format and you will go far. 🤘
You welcome! It's a great pleasure! 😅😅😅
My mom bought it for me and I was in love with it. Then it disappeared and she said she didn’t want to promote cheating. I’m still devastated at 43
that's the most 90's mom thing I've ever heard
This was last week
Are you from a Christian family? 🤣
-buys product specifically made for cheating
-claims she doesn’t want to promote cheating
parent logic at its finest
@@clodolcmidnights837ah yes “logic”
At the time, the NES Game Genie might as well just have been made of actual magic because it was a miraculous marvel to those of us who really sucked at video games.
And for people who tried to play games from the Nintendo Hard phase
In our defence, video games back then were really hard. Not like the 30 hour interactive movies we have today.
I had the NES, Super NES, Genesis and GameBoy Game Genies. They really helps me there.
Truer words were never spoken.
I suspect it could as the extra weight of the unit pushes down on the pins in the NES. But no real damage to anything else. I used game genie alot as a kid and my NES, which I got in 1989 was still working up untill around 2006
This reminds me of the myth that sitting too close to a TV would burn your eyes out. The real reason parents were advised not to let their kids sit too close to their TVs, or for too long, was because a very specific model of CRT television back in yesteryear had defective shielding and was putting out ungodly amounts of x-rays.
Edit: Now I realize there’s more to the story.
Pretty much the first ever color TVs made had that problem, as shielding isn't such a concern on black and white TVs due to their lower operating voltage.
That wasn't just one specific model of TV, that was more like most models made before around 1970, before they started measuring and regulating the amount of X-rays they would emit.
Back before then, a common tweak TV repair shops might do would be to tweak the high voltage levels up just a little bit to get a brighter picture, but nobody really knew the amount of additional X-rays this would cause.
So basically it was a two-fold problem, partly bad design decisions, and partly repair shops ignorantly doing a quick hack when the customer would complain their picture seemed a little dimmer than they'd like.
Oh, my grandma was also saying that and also added that there is lead in the TV. Like I'm gonna get poisoned by it just by being too close...
@@jirikajzar3247 You weren't licking the glass or the circuit board? That's the only way lead could be a concern.
@@soundspark I know (as someone who works with electronics and collects CRTs). I'm however curious how did she came into thinking that...
The Flap on the SNES Game Genie is actually meant to lock into the cartridges where original shell carts usually engage with the power button lock.
thank God someone said this. Nintendo changed the lock design after awhile, but yea
Yeah, Nintendo was faced with legal action over the locking mechanism for their carts, so they redesigned the carts to not lock into older consoles, and the locking ridge was removed from newer consoles. Starting with the GameBoy Color cartridges on their handhelds did away with the locking feature too.
I came here to say the same thing. The lock got discontinued, but you can see the notch on the game genie that locked it into the SNES as well.
200th like
@@MASTEROFEVIL 1st like
Pro tips: You can use the SNES Game Genie to play pretty much every game with extended memory, such as SMW2 and SF Alpha 2, on clone consoles that normally wouldn’t play them, and it’s also a bypass to play Super Famicom games on US consoles…
Also, on another note, similarly related, the N64 Game Shark would let you play Japanese games on your US consoles… ❤
The Genesis Game Genie also removed the geo-restriction from Japanese and European copies of Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which didn't get an American cartridge release until _2021._
Is there an SNES Game Genie model that has a passthru for the extra pins on games like SMW2? Most Game Genies I have seen look like gruz's, which only has the one main set of contacts.
But how could yoshi’s island work on the gamegenie if the gamegenie lacks those extra pins???
Also for what i do understand is that certain games wouldn’t work with the gamegenie by simply checking the memory location and it it detects any data then it assumes that you’re playing on a copy device and thus will refuses itself to load.
Wow, my mind is blown. I didn't know the Game Genie was so useful outside of cheats. I remember there were adapters in the back of game magazines to play import games but if you had a Game Genie or Game Shark you didn't even need one.
Wait, how does that work
The NES Game genie is what taught my brother to read. He was 3 and he would always ask me to put in his codes for him because he couldn't read. One day I got fed up with him asking and said no. About 30 mins later he comes to our mom with the codebook and goes "Mom Mom, That says Infinite". By the time they tested him in Kindergarten he was reading at a grade 7 level.
Now here we are 31 years later and he's a Teacher Librarian and assistant coach of his schools E-Sports team.
Bro was unlocking trophy's long before it was a thing
Faxx my bro got tired of putting GTA codes in for me too 😂😂 😑 but I could read tho since 5
You gave your bro the Konami Code to Life
You're brother belongs to Anonymous now 😂
And then eeeeveryyyyybooooooodyyyyyy clapped
Fun fact, as far as the NES goes, if you have an NES that has trouble reading games, a game genie sometimes can make the difference and allow you to use it without replacing the 72 pin connector.
This was my first thought on seeing the video. I don't think it ever crossed my mind to blame the Game Genie for ruining my system, but I had a handful of well-loved games that couldn't make a solid connection without the GG. It was a life saver, even when I wasn't using it!
None of my games worked properly without the Game Genie! I always thought it was the universe's sick joke that the thing that(WE THOUGHT) wrecked our systems in the first place, was the only thing capable of making it work 😅!
I know this works with the SNES one. I have a copy of Actraiser that was damaged and the Game Genie made it playable. Sure you can only use save slot 2, but it worked!
@@hostileX7 That usually means that your cartridge connectors are dirty. Nintendo consoles are really finnicky compared to every other consoles (My Sega consoles eat everything for example, even my completely broken Eternal Champions, which was just the PCB, scratched and dirty) when it comes to dirt on the connectors.
The best way to get games going: Rub the connectors down with Isopropanol. Insert the cartridge and pull it back until it's right on the console edge (toward you)
And remember: NEVER blow the connectors. While that is a myth that "worked", it actually screws up the pins, as your blowing will just drop a lost of saliva onto them, corroding the pins.
I think the reason was because of How jank it went into the system. And as a Result, Just stuck closer to the Pins than the normal games.
After noticing that level cheats for Battletoads only differed by one letter, I was able to discover the cheat code to get to the final level where you fight the Dark Queen, as it wasn’t listed among the other codes.
Related to this, you could also "swap" certain letters with specific other letters, say, Z for X. So you'd find one of the listed codes for a game but instead of entering X as the manual showed, you'd instead enter in Z. Doing so would sometimes change nothing or yield unintended consequences. I remember doing this on a particular code for Blades of Steel and it ended up giving us infinite fight where even after all of our energy points were gone, it wouldn't drop us back to the game.
Good times.
I did the same as a kid, you either change the first or last letter to go to every stage of the game from base password in battletoads. I had it all written down as a kid as I mapped them all out all 13 levels. My lil brothers would use the code is left out to easily beat games. I'd tinker passwords as I'd look at the pattern of the codes in the manual, and see what part remained consistent between the lines. I'd change the parts that was the variable and see what happened. I'd find some fun results like making your character in TMNT 2 so powerful you could one shot almost any enemy, aside from the last two bosses, Shredder and Kraig. They died in 2 hits instead.
I swear that game was unbeatable without a game genie
@@fatalfngrz6831 I think I passed the second level once when I was a kid. Now I have homebrew and can save whenever I want.
If you’re concerned about your game genie messing up your NES, there’s always the blinking light win cartridge connector which eliminates pressing down on the cartridge entirely
Good luck getting a blinky light win. They are sold out and haven't been able to get one for years.
The game genie bypasses the lockout chip anyway, you could always clip the leg on the chip
The blinking light was caused by the lockout chip. If you have a NES look into disabling it, you will never get that again and it doesn't really do anything but make sure you are playing legal NES carts.
@@exodous02 disabling the 10NES chip only prevents the blinking light however it won’t cause games to boot perfectly every time especially if the cartridge connector is damaged
@exodous02
That is because it doesn't make the proper connection between the cart and the system to read the lock out chips. So even if you do cut the leg still doesn't fix the problem 100% because the pins are a major problem. Those after market 72 pin connectors suck balls. I have gone through 2 of them.
Been using a game Genie for NES for over 25 years & i got that NES out of a truck bed & dumped water out of it. I've had zero problems with the NES & game Genie over the years. Kinda makes me believe if the water & the Game Genie combined haven't killed the NES that there is absolutely no chance a Game Genie could mess up an NES on it's own.
Ah... the days when products were built to last... Good times.
Once found a genesis in garbage can and it worked fine
The flap, on the SNES Game Genie, was there to "lock" on to the SNES cartridge.
Earlier released titles, like Pilotwings and Super Mario World, had a different design on the front of the cartridge. This was to keep it more secure while inserted in the console.
That flap took advantage of this design and later SNES carts removed it completely.
To add on to this, early versions of the console used that notch in the early games to lock the cartridge into the console when the power button was slid up. Apparently, kids and parents would try pulling games out while the unit was on and lots of people ended up broking this lock mechanism, so Nintendo just did away with it in later releases.
@@BrandonHann Which begs the question, WHY were they trying to remove the game with the unit on? thats just dumb.
1991-1993 Cartridges had this little Oval in the Cross section. 1993-1997 Cartridges had the Rectangle.
@@BrandonHann I remember. The Change Occurred in March 1993. I got SNES for Christmas in 1991. I remember each Cartridge made its first two years having a little Oval Design on its Cross section.
@@lyianx
Because kids are careless and destructive.
I remember there was a subscription service for updated code books. I don't remember how many I ended up getting but the Gameboy books were especially difficult to keep track of because of their size.
I got a few extra books, but they were really thin. At some point gamign magazines would include codes so they covered it.
Really? I kept the book in its built-in holder for the gameboy model. I still have it, book intact. Now the NES one, THAT is one I need a code book for.
I bought a Game Action Replay for NES when it was first released years ago. The instruction manual had directions for taking a pair of pliers and removing that metal strip that holds the cart in place. I specifically remember a quote in the manual saying that strip was there to prevent you from using devices like the Game Action Replay.
I didn't think twice about it at the time, but it's pretty off the wall in hindsight.
I wonder if that's where Apple got their ideas?... 🙃
I used to love that compartment with the code book on the back of the Game Gear version; I never knew that the Game Boy version had something like that, since my first Game Boy was a Super Game Boy.
SGB was one of their best ideas, wish it had been better integrated and executed.
With a bit of modification you could actually run the Game Genie with a Super Gameboy and it would work just fine
@@abigails4088 Like the WiiU was for the Switch, the Super Gameboy was sort of a precursor to the Gameboy Color
The SNES flap was also a locking mechanism. Some of the cartridges have a slot instead of a slope which prevented the cartridge from being removed while the power was on. The on switch moved a slider forward.
I kinda figured the worst thing that might happen is corrupting your save data on certain games with the wrong code (that or the pins thing I never considered originally) it definitely sounded like a smear campaign by nintendo cus you know how much they *hated* the damn thing. even today I see new codes being discovered all the time to do the craziest stuff, so the GG definitely still has its fans.
YEAAAA, the Game Genie, and various other cheating devices, all have a special place in many people's hearts, so it really doesn't surprise me that they still have a dedicated following.
It's a basic hex editor. Nearly all 8 and 16-bit emulators have game genie functionality built in to the program and all you need to know is the correct codes. I for example have several cheats saved to run when playing Zombies Ate My Neighbors like unlimited lives and bazooka ammo, because the game is long and balls-out hard so I'd rather not torture myself trying to get through it.
My GameShark killed my Diddy Kong Racer save for 64. I think like all the textures disappeared. I had put a lot of time into that save and 12 year-old me was crushed.
Displaced Gamers is a channel about how NES games were coded and sometimes also offers Gamegenie codes to fix some original bugs or wonky coding which is quite cool.
@@iamtheb yeah, I've played start *TO FINISH* (but never actually COMPLETED) Final Fantasy 7 like... *FOUR TIMES* over the years...two times the save data was corrupted by my using a gameshark (playthrough 1 was legit, but I used a multi-memcard and several of its "pages" failed, notably my 80% complete FF7 saves) ... My 2nd and 3rd playthroughs were using a GS to skip the "grindy-grind" parts I'd done on playthrough 1... but the GS and I guess some of the codes I used, corrupted both of those saves... my 4th playthrough I did literally everything except fight Sephiroth... all chars 99, all materia including grinding master sets the hard way XD and I kept backups of that save. I just got... SATISFIED...
4:02 I see what you did there.
Took me a couple rewinds to see what you meant. 😂😂😂😂
As you mentioned, the NES Game Genie will bend the pins out of shape, but before you go buying a new pin connector piece, you can just bend the pins back in place yourself using a thin flathead screwdriver or even a knife. I did this to my NES about a year ago and it plays like brand new.
Yes, that's the only one I can see actually damaging the hardware. The other ones have negligible impact on the systems themself.
The game genie for NES is actually stackable. I only had 2 of them, but it was fun to be able to put in 6 codes instead of just 3.
i was curious what would happen if you put a mega stack of game genies and one game into an nes
Same with the SNES and Genesis
@@brian93724 You could start re-writing the game code!
@@marscaleb what
You'd have to be fairly careful with that arrangement, though. Once you've got a long enough stack of cartridges hooked up to the cartridge slot, you'll be drawing too much power from the console and might fry the power supply circuitry. ⚠
To work around that risk you could use a homebrew power injector which breaks-out the VCC lines to the cartridge bus and provides external power for the stack from e.g. a USB power supply. Remember though that data lines back to the console are signalled relative to ground, so this means you have to have the external PSU *and* the console connected to the same GND (0v) and this might pose risks of its own.
YMMV and AYOR, but HTH! 😇
The snes flap was to lock in the game which has a notch for the genies peg. Later games removed that peg lock to save on plastic cost most likely.
Yeah, I think that part of why later games removed the peg lock was to save on plastic like you said, but I think another big reason was because there were probably some North American gamers who complained about not being able to pull the old peg-style cartridges out without using the eject button. The later "peg-less" cartridges can be pulled out of the SNES without the eject button.
people kept breaking their systems by not using the eject button in the middle of the console.
so the later release games took the lock notch out of the cartridges.
@@teranokitty Yeah, I remember yelling at younger kids to not pull the cartridge out while the system was still running because of that! >.
@@teranokitty the eject button launching your games was the best part though, why would anyone just yank them out?!
Dang, its so cool to see your videos doing so well and hitting triple digits now. You've been here for a long time and you've always been a chill dude, so it makes me happy to see.
I love the Game Genie and think no respectable collection is complete without its respective Genie. I have one for the NES, SNES, and Genesis (they're also the same ones I had as a kid). Thank you for the memories, Galoob!!
I used to stack 3 NES Game Genies for certain games and it allowed me to use up to 9 codes.😂 It was necessary to put something under them, like a couple of books, to support them
One of my most treasured possessions is a local
Store was giving away a game genie backpack when you bought a NES game genie, I still cart my MTG decks around in the backpack to this day!
the NES game genie ruined the connectors on my NES as a kid. The explanation I got from the repairman was that the Game Genie’s PCB was just a few microns too thick and forced the connectors a little wider, and original games no longer worked unless used with the Game Genie, because they didn’t make contact correctly anymore on the gaping pins. so… yeah, not cool.
The little code books are so cute! So glad to have a new Gruz video!
@3:30 the "Flap" was to help hold the games in the game genie. Without making a long and drawn out explanation, the older SNES games (FF2/FF4) had a little notch where that notch prong on the inside of the flap would connect to. Compare the notch with the newer games (FF3/FF6) which was no longer a notch, these are the games which the older version of game genie did not work on. Anyhow, if you have questions I can answer them for ya. I owned one of these bad boys as soon as they came out like 30 years ago! haha
One great benefit of the Game Genie for Genesis is that it allowed your imports to work on a 32X. For whatever reason, the Magic Key adapter to play imports doesn't work with the 32X attached, but you can use the Game Genie to achieve the same bypass effect.
That's probably a bug, or possibly because by the time the 32x came out, the Saturn was only a few months a way and just about any sales for the system were worth getting. Also, international trade of such things wasn't as well-developed as it is now.
I've got a few notes on this. For one, the SNES Game Genie didn't have any passthrough for expansion chip pins used in a number of games like Star Fox, Yoshi's Island, or Super Mario RPG. As a result, it's incompatible with almost all games that use expansion chips. I have to recommend getting a Pro Action Replay (preferably the Mark III) for the console instead. The Mark II and III both resolve the expansion chip issue by accepting ALL the pins from those games and passing them through, and the III even allows full circumventing of region locks. It's thorough enough it'll even lie about what video mode the system is using to bypass certain later games that software checked to ensure they weren't being played in the "wrong" region.
The NES Game Genie PCB is in fact thicker, though it's hard to tell by eyeballing it. Calipers do the trick. This only really becomes an issue when attempting to use it in the redesigned top loading NES, where it struggles to fit without using a special adapter you could mail in for. Yes, you plugged your adapter into an adapter.
I had heard rumors that the Genesis version ALWAYS corrupted any game with save data, but I hadn't experienced that myself. I think perhaps the most popular games on the console are just especially easy to accidentally code in ways that corrupt the save data.
Lastly, the Game Genie is, at the end of the day, hex editing the game. It just doesn't look like it because they decided to use a special "encoding system" that converted the hex code into letters that were supposed to resemble "magic words", for that Game Genie branding. I think this was the biggest mistake they made. Hex editing is so much clearer in what you're doing, in many cases, than this disguised cryptograph nonsense. I think that's the one thing they shouldn't have done in the design of these things. Oh, and the SNES expansion chip issue.
There also existed a Famicom version of the Game Genie made by the company whom Codemasters contracted to manufacture them. They're incredibly rare though, and I imagine it would command a pretty penny on eBay should one show up.
Had most of these and never had a problem at all. Learned hex decimal making my own codes. Good times with my bros.
The flap you are talking about @ 3:40 is to lock on to the SNES cartridge!!
By the time I got a NES Game Genie, my 72 pin connector was already messed up. I used to just jam a hot wheels in on top of the game carts to make it work. After I got the Game Genie, I didnt have that problem. One of the plastic tabs on top of the Game Genie broke, and it has just lived inside my NES since.
In MegaMan 2, one of the boss levels of Wily needed you to die because your crusher bombs run out. First you had to destroy walls, then die, recharge your crusher bombs while replaying the level, then destroy the boss cannons. Playing with infinitive health will prevent you finishing this level 😅
I know the level you’re talking about and had tremendous trouble with it as a kid, but you actually don’t have to die! If you destroy the guns in a certain order and use I believe item 3 to scale a wall instead of blowing up one or two of the doors you actually have enough Crash bombs to beat the boss without replenishing
that's not a soft-lock, that's you being unable to beat a boss with the mega buster lol
I actually permanently screwed up a saved game in 1998 for the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on Nintendo 64.
My friend could not beat it, and I had a GameShark, so I beat it for him, by playing through with cheats, but then suddenly all sorts of weird stuff happened like he had 999 apples or he had -1 arrows which would not fire even though you could see the arrow in Links hands, it really kind of broke the game for him. He ended up having to start a new saved file. For my hard work, because it took me like 20 hours to play through with cheats, he gave me 10 Japanese Pokémon cards.
This is so whatever but I actually still have them lol
Great video. I happen to have gotten two game genies for the NES. I found out though trying it but you can daisy chain two or possible more together. It load each one separately while giving you 6 code lines.
I've known people who daisy chained up to 6 Game Genies; at that point, it was necessary to use supporting blocks/books to hold up the end of the NES cartridge, but that also gets to the point of being impractical because I can't think of too many games that I'd want to use 18 codes on at the same time.
@@mrh829 What if wAn't 2 (to) mmake mario Very mes mix i fyou know what i;m syaing
I remember trying to make my own codes with random letters. Found one for Fester’s Quest that made the enemies invisible. Fun times.
I may have been born in 2002 but we had the top loader NES for some time. Asked for the game genie for my birthday at some point; it worked obviously but I remember it at some point getting stuck and the black plastic part breaking off because of that.
I definitely made up my own codes for Street Fighter and was changing the color of Ken and Ryu's outfit & fireballs.
Interesting video. I never used one myself on any old console myself. Wasn't there one for the N64 as well? I believe remembering advertising in printed magazines in the late 90s.
I believe there was a Game Shark for N64 that looked a lot like a Game Genie.
That might be what I remembered.
I had the 64 Game Shark, I liked it because it allowed you to make your own cheats. If I remember right you could get into the GS menu while the game was running. From there you could have it mark everything in memory that had a value. (Like lives or currency) Then you go back to the game and change the value somehow. Then you enter the menu again and update the value to narrow down what part of the memory represents what your looking for. You repeat until you only have one left and set it to what you want or freeze it. Sometimes finding cheats was more fun then the game.
I never had a problem with it damaging the games I had, but I'm sure there were games that had anti-cheat or just didn't work well with it. One person in the comments said it bricked one of their games.
I remember getting this for NES, and SNES back in the day. It was pretty awesome, but some of the codes for some games worked better than others. It was great for Super Mario Bros 3. I always used the permanent Hammer Bros costume. I remember even saving money, and ordering the extra books with more codes in it for other games. Took like 6 weeks to get them, but those were the days.
There was an action replay that I bought for the PS1 and it featured a comparative search and you could actually edit or freeze hex addresses. There was a warning with it that you could corrupt your games. From what I read it was taken off the market due to this reason.
I doubt the AR could have done _permanent_ corruption to any games on the PS1 given the latter were pressed CD-ROMs and could not have been updated/re-written, but what was probably experienced was damage to game _operation_ caused by abnormal data in save files created when the AR was being used. 😇
tl,dr; The AR would be perfectly safe to use on a PS1 with any game, but you should remove all routinely used memory cards from the console and - If you do want to save AR modified games - Use a *dedicated and clearly labelled* memory card for that purpose. 👍
i know the ones you're talking about, it actually was marketed toward people that like making cheats from scratch, and they used the tomb raider III climb any wall code as an example lol
That explains why my cousin's NES never really worked whenever I was there to play it. There was a Game Genie left in it for years and it was never removed whenever I was there.
I just noticed that the Super Nintendo one doesn't have the extra pins for expansion hardware, like the Super FX or SA-1. It won't work with those games sadly
2:24-Thanks for the advice. Just one problem. Where were you in 1995? We did this to our Nintendo with the same exact game genie we bought at the flea-market and then the console totally stopped working.
So good to see you're finally gaining the traction you deserve, gruz!
4:18 the only thing that sucked about that toggle switch on the SNES version was it was very easy to accidently reset the game when using it. The SNES game genie had a very loose connection to the console, so after a little wear-n-tear even the slightest nudge could cause the pins to disconnect.
In hindsight, galoob could have made the GG with a long cable with the pin connector lying flat on whatever the console is sitting on. This way the cartridge isn't flopping around and f'cking up the connectors on either end.
Maybe 6 to 12 inches to allow the cartridge to lie flat beside the console (like a cassette tape shaped adapter for CD players)
Similar to a HES dongle (the company HES made bootleg NES carts with a dongle for an original cart so that the lockout chip from the original cart can be used, they look pretty cool, pretty much like what you described)
You can literally just bend the pins back tho...no need for replacement unless something else happened.
@@freedustin it takes a minute amount of technical understanding to do that though... to say nothing of how easy it is to slip and damage one of the connectors.
but even repairing a damaged connector is easier than REPLACING THE ENTIRE COMPONENT... desoldering and then seating and soldering the new one in, having to control spillage of solder while desoldering/soldering on... how many connections did the NES cartridges use? 24? 30?
Don’t know if this affected the design, but Codemasters knew either they or Galoob would likely be submitting the NES Game Genie as an exhibit in court, a court that probably wasn’t all that familiar with video game consoles yet. The more the Game Genie looked like an inoffensive bit of plastic slipped between two pieces of official Nintendo hardware, and the less it looked like some sort of hardwire car-thief Frankenstein job hijacking the console for its own ends, the better.
@@MegaZeta that's a good point
There are only two issue with the Game Genies; one is that the Game Boy Game Genie units will not properly fit into a Super Game Boy / 2 without bending the pins, putting stress physically onto the pins potentially damaging both the Game Genies and the consoles. There was an adapter called, appropriately enough, the Game Genie to Super Game Boy adapter that was only avaliable via mail order. The second problem was with the NES top-loader systems that may permentantly cause the Game Genie to become stuck inside the console. Agian, this was resolved by way of an "official" adapter via mail order.
It's crazy to see the OG Gameboy one, I had a Game Shark for my GBC and it was so much more compact. Did a U-Shape around the back to plug in your game.
I know this isn't the epic voice guy channel, but I'd love to hear you go "INCONCEIVABLE" because your voice sounds very reminiscent of that actor.
3:13 now wonder, how does it look like with "Sonic and Knuckles" and "Sonic 3" cartridges
it would look normal
T O W E R
I remember playing excite bike with this back in the day jumping off the screen.
Man I sure miss my gameboy and Super Nintendo. All my video game stuff went missing that I had when I was a kid. Just bought a Nintendo the other day so now I’m going to slowly build my collection back. Thanks for the great video. I’m 40 and to be honest I’ve never heard of a game genie until I watched your video 😮😂 thanks again 🎉
Do yourself a favor and get the GameBoy Light if you get another. The backlight is great, and can be turned off when it's not needed.
1:55 springy pins is not a design flaw. It is an engineering advancement that forces connections even in worn pins. Without the springy pins, if the connectors wear down they will eventually stop making a connection. With springy pins, the connection is made even with excessive wear.
Here's a fun thing: After losing the lawsuit with Galoob, the NES-101 (the top loader) was designed in such a way that the regular Game Genie would not fit into the cartridge port.
Rather than make a revised Game Genie, Galoob instead released an "adapter" (which was literally just a passthrough with a shell) to solve the problem.
The passthrough adapter did have to change the angle of the cartridge edge that would insert into the console, since the top loader requires cartridges to go straight in, and the Game Genie's design had to mount that board at an angle so that it could interface with the front loader's ZIF connector without clicking the game down.
@@mrh829 Huh, that explains why the stack of carts always sat at a slight angle.
i had the action replay for my gamecube and a gameshark for the GBA lol loved them a lot
Genesis Game Genie + Sonic and Knuckles + Sonic 3 = Skyscraper
LOL I have all three and have done that. 😆
Bump it ever so slightly and your game resets :/
For extra credit, have the whole tower inserted into a Genesis with the 32X attached. 🙂
@@Traumaqueenamy I loved that Sonic and Knuckles gimmick, also worked with Sonic 2 I believe, you could play as Knuckles.
What happens if you hook a game genie into another game genie and then a game? Two sets of coding could possibly be used 🤷
Mine helped my NES cartridge tray wear out more quickly when I was a kid.
My dad fixed it and he was my hero
Wow, I thought this was going to be a very short video, but you really went all the way. Nice analysis!
P.S. I didn't know that Game Genies were made by Codemasters (or maybe I forgot about that fact). Very interesting!
The gameboy Game Genie also came with sticks for popular games that you could stick on the cart that had the most common codes. My copy of Tetris still has one it actually.
1:10 i love how we call connections male or female based on whether its like a penis or a vagina. Who was the first person to come up with that naming convention? Essentially the NES is a female, and our cartidges are male.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Fun fact, you can use 4 + NES game genies in series to get 3 codes each ;) (I cant remember every game but some games can't get power if you use too many I swear I have a memory of use using 6 on a game lol) (we used a tupperwear cup to hold up the end on the game tower)
0:05 no
Thanks! Game Genie was the best possible Christmas gift I received in 1991. I only saw the endings to so many of my games because of it.
plz dont say what you said at 01:16 as that is very transphobic =] thanks
🤡🤡🤡🤡
@@THE_CARBON found the 7 year old using mommy's computer :3
@@halogamer8600 They typed it quick cause she wants it back
Oh be quit I don’t see anything wrong with females plus that just proves that you don’t like women
@@halogamer8600 dude shut up you’re actually pretty sexist for getting mad at him, saying she
The flap on the snes gj was to help lock the old style cartridges in place. Later they changed the cartridge. So that's why there's two different looking carts on the snes.
Good video! I have the NES Game Genie and the Sega Genesis and Game Gear ones too! They are handy to have.
Me and 2 of my friends used the Game Genie extensively, back in the days. We had a collection of magazines with codes, as well as photocopied lists exchanged with other friends, and a notebook. We used it on 3 different NES dozens of times. Never had any issue and never saw any degradation, wear or damage.
The flap on the SNES version was designed to lock into the first generation carts where there was a slot that the SNES would lock into when the power switch was turned on preventing accidental pulling the game out while it was on. This design was changed on newer carts where that flap was useless.
this is awesome, can you make an explanation video about how the cheat discs/trainers worked on CD based systems like the PS1? i remember owning a code CD which basically worked like a game genie, you'd start with the code CD, picked the cheats for the specific game, pressed launch game and switched the discs. but i wonder how the console knew about the cheats when switching discs like it kept them in the ram?
With the SNES Genie, that flapping was to hold the snes cartridge in place. When you slide the power toggle up a lock pin would hold the cartridge in place. That flap acts just like that holding the cartridge to the genie.
I had used my Game Genie on a friend of a friend’s Adventure of Link. The Game Genie appeared to have corrupted the cartridge by causing all the heart and magic containers to never appear in any save ever again.
I tried and tried to see if it would fix itself, but it never did. I gave the cartridge back to my friend and never talked to the owner again because I was so embarrassed that I broke his game.
I still have no idea what happened.
The NES game genie does fit way tighter in the pin connectors which makes a worn out system with loose pin connectors prone to a flashing screen will work every time with the game genie.Its a quick fix if you don't want to change the pin connectors and if you don't want to use it just skip the code screen.
Closed video at 3:55 because he didn't use the flap properly. The cartridges made at the snes gg's release window were different and the flap would Pop into the game cartridge thus securing it. The game cartridge design was eventually changed to a smooth design to dissuaded cheaters as the non-secure holding of tge cartridge would cause the gameplay to glitch and frequently freeze altogether if a little shaking was introduced to the environment.........
The bit about the Game Genie patching MEMORY is wrong. The GG actually works by pass-through modification of ROM access, not RAM. It's more like patching tiny bits of game code or assets rather than memory values. It was the Pro Action Replay (and later GameShark) devices that worked by modifying RAM. Very different beasts.
What I'd like to know is if it'll work on a Japanese console via a 72-60 pin converter. For those who don't know Famicom the Japanese NES uses 60 Pin cartridges where as US NES has 72 pins.
I'm guessing it'll most likely not work since its basically linking 3 carts together, 4 if you use the Top Loader adapter.
One fun thing to mention about Game Genie, it was also another means of playing import games on Genesis and to an extent SNES. I know with some Genesis games it would require a code to bypass the region lock.
Fun times with the OG Gameboy Game Genie. My friend and I were trying out random codes and seeing what happened and he magically made a code for Killer Instinct that skipped straight to the last boss.
Feels crazy cheat codes are DLC now.
As far as in-between cartridges go, never had any trouble with a game genie. Trying a non-Sonic game with Sonic and Knuckles, which is supposed to spit you into one of the bajillion possible blue sphere stages those with Sonic 1 had access to all of was extremely inconsistent to say the least, to the point that I originally thought you could only use a Sonic game with S&K. But, as I was the only kid in my family with any interest in Sonic thanks to loving the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon when I was like 4 into kindergarten (I think it had a pretty consistent airing schedule so my parents would put it on for me. I managed to catch an episode of the Mario 3 cartoon one day, a game me and my whole family played and loved, but without my parents around to witness it and me not thinking to bring it up I sadly missed out on the Mario cartoons that would have been well into rerun territory by then anyway as a kid) and after expressing genuine interest in seeing another kid play Sonic Chaos on his game gear alongside the other younger kids crowded around the waiting area while my older brother was in Tae Kwon Do, my parents got me a Game Gear which was my only way of playing any Sonic games until my brother got S&K for Christmas, with our only experience locking on another Sonic game being the time we rented Sonic 3. But, as bored kids do, I kept trying to plug our few Genesis games into it (we mostly had SNES games, and got the Genesis later on, well past the time of having Sonic 1 or 2 as a pack in) and eventually, after many tries, I got the No Way screen and a blue spheres stage using Mohammad Ali Boxing. When showing my brothers it must have taken over a dozen tries to reproduce it, and I thought it was a secret feature that perhaps only worked with that one game and maybe select others we didn't have, as I couldn't get it to work with the other 2 genesis games we had at the time. I was an adult before I learned that it was not some obscure secret, and was work with any Genesis game, on the first try no less.
Next up was the Gameboy Mega Memory Card, which was supposed to allow you to copy save data from all of your gameboy games to it, and then write them back onto the cartridge at a later date. The packaging advertised it as being especially good for Pokemon, as while the different versions could be worked around by trading with neighborhood kids, a big point of contention for my parents, and I'm sure many more parents with multiple kids eager to get in on the craze, was the single save slot per cartridge (which, in retrospect, had to store far more data than the average Gameboy game) as opposed to the more common three that was kind of the standard. I tried it with my Gameboy Camera (another gameboy game that stored far more than the average Gameboy game and probably the worst possible gameboy game in the system library to test that device with knowing what I know now) and had my data irrecoverably wiped for my trouble, leaving me heartbroken and unwilling to test what I assumed to be a dangerous, defective product on anything else afterwards. Besides, when we got Pokemon Stadium we had a reliable way of backing up our 'mons, allowing me and my brothers to reset our saves without fear and give ourselves a limited time, usually a couple of hours, to start from a fresh file then battle it out on the N64 at the end.
Last of all was the N64 Game Shark I got from a pawn shop. Like our copy of Sonic and Knuckles, this used Game Shark often took a lot of attempts taking the game out and plugging it back in before it would successfully recognize a cartridge. Eventually, I wanted to try it on my copy of Super Smash Bros. This time, it seemed like no matter how many times we tried, though, the Game Shark wouldn't work for that game, and when I tried the game on its own without it, it wouldn't work either when it had never given us trouble before. It was a loss we felt deeply, and like with the gameboy mega memory card we never trusted that secondhand dodgy game shark again. Thankfully, although we were late to the next generation as my dad had little money, so even our N64 took a year of layaway and most of our games came from secondhand sources such as yard sales, as well as me and my younger brother usually getting one new game for Christmas, my mom also knew I was a huge Metroid fan as we both loved Super Metroid and had remembered how excited I was to get hold of Metroid 2, and later when I was living with my dad when I excitedly shared the news that I had finally found the NES original thatvhad always been my holy grail of our weekend yard sale trips (and no, starting with Super in no way made the first game any less fun. I had quite the stock of NES games we'd gotten for pennies on the dollar from past yard sales that I regularly played. I went in knowing it was going to be a product of its time and I will die on the hill that it has aged far better than most give it credit for. It's less of a case of being inferior to later games as much as it just plays differently in certain aspects, a bit janky but still very good, just a different kind of good. People write it off as a relic, a rough prototype for what would eventually be refined into excellence, but although there is certainly jank present it is still an excellent game I enjoy to this day.) so when the series made its grand return I got a GBA with Fusion from my mom for Christmas, followed by the unexpected gift of a Gamecube with Prime on my birthday, and like anyone else with a GameCube I later got that other game that everyone with the system got: Super Smash Bros. Melee, and while I am still sad about what happened to my copy of Smash 64, I doubt I would have gone through the trouble of hooking up the N64 to play that after getting that most legendary of sequels, unless I was already going to play the evergreen Star Fox 64 anyway and wanted to revisit a couple of the nostalgic stages, or to try that method people found of playing as Master Hand with no potentially cartridge-frying dodgy game shark required.
One of the rumours I remember hearing about was that certain codes could break your game or console. I'm pretty sure that the most that might happen out of that would be save corruption or causing a crash if you were writing values to places you shouldn't.
My brother and I took our NES apart in the late 90s and refurbished it.
We fixed all the pens and cleaned all of the contacts.
It actually went to my cousins for a couple of years and somehow we ended up getting it back.
The flap on the SNES cartridge was for original SNES carts from 1991 to early 1993. The bottoms of the front were solid, and SNES consoles had a locking bar that locked the cartridge in place while the console was on so you couldn't pop it out. Sometime in 1993, Nintendo said to hell with it and, not only discontinued the locking bar in the console, but also indented the cartridges so that, even if you had an original console, it couldn't lock the cartridge in place.
It's an easy way to tell on early SNES games if you have an original release or a later version.
So the flap on the super Nintendo one was designed for the original cartridges that had the locking style of cartridge not the one that you have in the video so when you put the game in there and then put the game genie in there the flab is supposed to make sure that secure not get pulled out while you're playing
i'm still own all 5 game genies. it's really fun to see crazy codes when you're playing with them, i haven't had any issue with them in years. some tip i can give you to use this devices is try to not input too many cheats at once or the game could crash, just test one by one first and then keep adding the next line of cheat codes. because of Nintendo sued Galoob and lost, was one of the reasons why nintendo made a new revision of the NES : the 101 model or ''top loader'', you can't use game genie in this model of NES but galoob released an adapter to able to use it but that accesory is considered ''rare?'' i guess?. anyway, thank you for this video.
I still have my game genie for gameboy from the summer of 93 with the booklet still in there. Sadly the galoob logo and button labels have completely faded away but the unit still works. I thought having the booklet stored in the unit was awesome but sadly as newer games came out I didn’t know the codes for half my games lol. By the time Pokemon Red/Blue came out I was able to use the game genie to get Mew. Some of the kids at school would approach me to unlock Mew for them on their file. Great memories!
I didnt know about the code on and off switches! You did a great job showing these off in a compact fashion. Good stuff! 😊
I had the SNES, Genesis, and GameBoy Game Genies. So many memories of screwing around with codes.
2:41
The toughness of the connection between game genie and NES cart was likely manufacturing cost saving, and not a necessity. it's pretty evident by the fact Game Genie comes with a giant black pull tab you are supposed to use to help remove the entire assembly from the deck. You even demonstrated it in the video despite the top being off.
Don't replace the NES connector. I opened and bent mine back just fine. I also got rid of the region lockout. I don't even have to push the cartridge down any more.
I love that you had Battletoads footage showing when you talked about how difficult the games were. Game Genie was the only reason I ever got anywhere in that game.
The original NES Game Genie has the system-facing connector mounted at an angle. That was necessary to be able to engage both the top and bottom of the 72-pin ZIF connector on the system without clicking the game down. That is also the reason that the original Game Genie won't fit into a top loader NES. The adapter that was made to work with the top loader just converts the angled connector to one that can go straight in. The NES Game Genie is the only one that can be daisy chained, and give you 3 codes per Game Genie unit (although doing this likely puts stress on the angled connectors of any of the downstream Game Genies).
That little book with the gameboy brought back good memories
They won't hurt official hardware. But I've had an NES game genie destroy the 72 pin connector on a RetroN3 system back in the day.
NES game Genie was literal magic for my little self back in the 80s I had so much fun messing around in games I already owned. I also had the SNES version. However the only game I really used it for was Street Figher World warrior to make it play more like Street Figher Hyper Fighting in the Arcades. Street Figher II Turbo came out and the Genie was no longer needed. I don’t recall using it much for other games. I believe my parents stopped getting the game genie code books.
I remember finding a pattern within the code book for NES Battletoads and discovered the code for the final battle💪
3:20 The "flap" on the SNES Game Genie actually locked the cartridges into place if you had the older type of cartridge, which had a pill-shaped groove that the SNES would slide a tab into, locking it in place and keeping you from pulling it out of the system while the power was on. This was eventually phased out for the newer type of cartridge, which had a flat and open surface underneath where the lock would normally be. This unfortunately rendered both the game genie's flap and the SNES' locking mechanism useless, except as a means of helping the games contact the pins.
Presumably, these locking mechanisms cost a lot of plastic when making cartridge bodies, and were primarily an anti-piracy feature. Once it was no longer effective as an anti-piracy feature, these sorts of cartridges stopped being manufactured to save plastic.
Still got my GG for GB. Book too!! I even have some of the stickers that you plaster onto the back of the game for quick reference.
Had various models of these, never experienced any of these issues.. but the nes pin bending is duly noted.
When I was a kid on my first deck the spring broke for the ejector in my NES . Beside using a second cartridge to hold the game down to start , the game genie came in clutch . As well as being able to use it for games with no cover and only the cart itself . I was only a kid and didnt know how to replace case or the spring.