The Story Of The Game Genie
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2024
- In the 80s, if you wanted extra lives, the ability to skip levels, to be invincible, or anything that wasn't included in your console's video game... you were out of luck. That all changed in 1990 when Codemasters created the Game Genie, opening the world of console video games to amazing ways to cheat and to an extent, a form of hacking. The Game Genie was important not only for being a groundbreaking device but also for establishing a legal precedent. In this video we'll take a quick look at the Game Genie's various abilities and console versions, how it worked, as well as its fight just to make it to the market.
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My brother and I managed to create some pretty nifty codes for Battletoads when we were kids. We would spend hours typing in random combinations and writing them down in a notepad. If the code did something, we would circle it and write a brief description of the effect. Some of the coolest ones were: psychic punching (hit baddies even when you're nowhere near them. Unfortunately, the snowmen had this power too), glass (everything you hit would shatter like glass), and puke toads (look like a pile of glitchy barf. This one was just for fun). Ah, good times!
+JacobraTheGreat haha that's awesome. You guys had way better luck than I did.
I would say more perseverance than luck. I would say 99.99% didn't do anything lol
Jacobra The Great Man those was the days in gaming. Beating and playing the game was one thing. But the other side was to figure out the codes or to unlock them. Games aren't like that anymore.
Haha, me and my bros did the same for Mortal Kombat 😆 Also, I remember that, of all people, we enlisted the help of my mom to "soup-up" certain Super Mario Bros. 1 codes, which made them stronger. I think it was even in the instruction manual how to do it, but in the NES days, we were too young/impatient 😆
I had game genie for nes but it broke my nes is no more it died
Very nostalgic. I also remember ringing up my parents phone bill by calling the 1-900 numbers that gave you walk throughs on games when you couldn't get past a certain puzzle/stage.
Lets not forget that Game Genie couldn' t only make you jump higher, punch harder, and live forever, but it could also make you jump lower, punch weaker and live shorter
Strangest thing, despite it being a UK invention, The Game Genie wasn't that popular here, The Action Replay from Datel was far more well known here.
+Larry Bundy Jr yeah, it is pretty odd now that you mention it.
I must confess I never even heard of a Game Genie until years later, But I loved the Trainer mode in later models, why look up codes when you can create your own. Took about 3 minutes to create infinite lives/health cheats.
Oh, fun fact: It was renamed the Game Genie as it allowed you to enter three codes (wishes) :D
+Larry Bundy Jr I loved my game genie. There were many NES games I probably wouldn't have finished without it. It was especially helpful when you had a rental that you only had a few days to play. The commercials for it were god awful though. Even as a child I thought they were pretty lame.
Overall, the NES/Famicom wasn't as popular here, Larry, as you already certainly know. I thought it was cool that CodeMasters, a budget software house, could develop and release this cool hardware. My nephew had one for his Nintendo, but I always preferred the Datel Action Replay, as it had the trainer to help you make your own codes. My brother had that for his Sega, I think that was for his Megadrive/Genesis, though.
Datel bought codemasters
That Bill and Ted commercial: holy shit. Great video, man! I love these retrospectives.
Phil The Conquistadork thanks man! That commercial was just... so 90s. I both love and hate it! Lol
You know there's another Bill and Ted in the works? Pretty sure Keanu has signed on as well
xbfalcon83 Yaaassssss!!
he has been signed on and the movie in development for the better part of a decade.. will most likely not happen and then sony will buy the rights and genderswap the movie
well, considering it started production mid last year, I'm still hopeful
Unfortunately growing up has left me with no time to play games the last console I purchased was a PS3 and it barely ever gets used for anything other than Netflix, watching your video was great it reminded me of all the fun times I had plaing Nintendo in my childhood
The last console I bought (new) was the PS2. =(
In my 20's, I was already too busy to play games. I do pick up a retro game every so often. And I did buy the Wii a few years ago (lol) to play random Wii and Gamecube games.
I subscribed just for more old ass commercials. I love it.
+Robert Paulson haha. Yeah, I try to throw those old commercials in whenever I can. I have a video that's a compilation of most of the ones I've used so far. I'll probably be putting one of those compilations together every once in a while.
oh man this video almost made me cry remembering my childhood i remember getting one of these in 1990. great channel
+nocturnalmayhem Thanks for checking the channel out man. I appreciate it
I have two uncles and when I was growing up they were both in to Atari and Nintendo to varying degrees. One uncle would finish everything he bought and I distinctly recall watching him beat Zelda 2 to show me the ending since I was six and would not do so myself until almost 2005. Anyway, the game genie is where they diverged the most. One uncle would play everything he could and legit beat it and my other Uncle would only play games with cheats and game genie stuff. I took after the uncle that beat his games legit but I had so much fun with my other uncle trying these codes out. I'm really loving your channel, dude. I grew up in the midst of everything you're covering (I wanted a 32x so bad when they first came out but then I got a PC and well...) and it has been a REAL joy watching and listening to your videos. This is exactly my type of content through and through. You've got something really special here and you're doing folks our age a great service. We were there to see all this stuff change year after year unto this very point. I miss those days now more than ever and I thought my retro love had hit its zenith around 2005.
Thanks for the video. I'm from Mexico; we didn't have Game Genie :(
Only had the magazines and the TV shows to help us with the games. Keep the good work.
+Dan Bills thanks for taking the time to watch. I can't imagine not having the game genie. Without it I wouldn't have been able too beat a lot of games.
I remember this thing. A friend of mine actually had an NES with the Game Genie. Wonderful stuff.
Had one but it broke
I remember making my own codes and seeing what they did. I would see a pattern in the codes and continue it.
I wish it had done more for "Ghosts n goblins" which was insanely hard.
+Scott Lowell agreed!
Man, I remember the game genie. Those were the days when I actually still had consoles as a kid. I stopped getting them after the PS1 and moved on. I had already been checking out PC games, even playing some on the old Commodores, and while the console industry kept growing and booming, I was playing awesome games on the PC. One of the things the PC allowed for that the consoles didn't was seriously impressive cheat codes, often including "God Mode" natively, without a cheat device.
These days, there really are no cheat devices for consoles. You can potentially edit save files and such, but that's just not the same. If a PC game doesn't have robust cheats, there are also trainers made specifically to edit memory addresses in various games. There are very few games that don't have at least a few good trainers for them. One game of note that still hasn't been quite cracked is "Evoland". It's a really interesting game, but there is just no way to cheat with it. Even with custom-made CheatEngine hacks, it just can't be hacked, especially the health system. I swear, they made something that could have been so simple, super complicated to avoid trainers.
In any case, loved the Game Genie. It spoiled me though!
The Game Genie is useful in other ways: I used to own a copy of _Tiger-Heli_ for the NES, but I noticed that the levels were very repetitive. To see if there was any ultimate goal, such as an end boss, I put in an invincibility code, turned the television set off, and let the game run for several hours. When I turned the TV back on, the game was still running-no boss, no goal, no purpose other than survival duration.
I traded in my _Tiger-Heli_ cartridge for another title shortly thereafter.
The game genie was a lifesaver as a young kid, my brother seemed to breeze through games and I got frustrated. Great video.
The Game Genie is where I got my start in comp sci!!
+Ivy A Nguyen that's awesome!
I live down the road from Codemasters HQ. I went to the same high school. 😂
Different years though.
Greetings from England! 🇬🇧✌️
That Game Genie commercial scared me...
GOLD 1515 That's my daddy you're talking about.
@@bradley_klein which one? Lol
I still remember putting in the code for super jump on Mario 1 and jumping the whole map an learning the hard way what happens when you jump over the flagpole lol
I remember spending hours generating codes for Street Fighter II for the SNES resulting in multiple fireballs and wide uppercuts for Ken and Ryu. Generating genies codes was fun in itself.
So one night I was playing Donkey Kong and was putting in some random codes, I tried out a handful of codes that spelled out words but I ended up with nothing. I then put in APESEX and it made the game faster. Who knew Ape Sex would be the answer to speed up Donkey Kong.
“Stay bigger” “live forever”
I remember Game Genie, it helped me out so much and I wish there was something similar now. It was so clever and amazing how it could affect the games like that.
U get trainers now......mainly for pc
The game genie it was so unique! I used the SEGA génesis versión and I remember what with a specific code with which I can change the architecture of the Sonic 1 levels (I don't remember what it was) and I had passed hours of fun playing the most bizarre levels design that ever can exist for the game.
Thanks for bringing back that memories, and long live to the game genie!
Love the genie too. The GameShark/Action Replay is the technically better product, but I grew up with the game genie so it'll always be my favorite.
Wrestling With Gaming me too. My friend had the action replay, but I always was happy with my game genie
I never knew I wanted to learn about the Game Genie until I was sitting here watching a video of it. Way to go lol.
+horrorghoul lol thanks 😀
How does this channel only have 10k subs? This is very good production value, wake up ppl!
+Torchmanz Thanks!
I still remember all those commercials running on tv..... aaah the memories.
I thought this was Heavy Metal Jesus! 🤣🤣🤣
+hatednyc haha
You look like my cousin Eric. And he kind of looks like me. So, you kind of, sort of look like me.
+Radio Rob haha
+Lassi Kinnunen 😂
I clicked on it thinking it was that Jesus guy, then I was like oh wow he's been working out.
Dear Gamie Genie,
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE HELP!
Goddamn. Game Genie and Game Shark we're an amazing part of my gaming life.
Live your channel man. Brings back a lot of memories
Thanks man, I appreciate it.
My best finds were for Super Tecmo Bowl. Changed codes to change the length of the quarters to just about anything, including infinite. But the best was a code that made defenders miss every diving tackle attempt. They would dive at a 90 degree angle to your position every single time. LOL It was hilarious!
"Go for it dudester"
Me: *died of embarasment from growing up in the 90's*
+madscientistshusta haha! I like to think I knew it wasn't cool even back then. I also like to lie to myself.
back in the zx spectrum days we had a multiface, u pressed a red button and hacked the code by typing in poke codes. ah the good old days.
Quickly becoming one of my favorite gaming history channel. Notification squad is definitely on for your channel. GREAT FUCKING STUFF brother!
+Steve Bosell Thanks a lot man! I'm mastering part 3 of the Rare series right now and it's been quite a pain in the case to edit. Reading this comment probably saved my monitor from meeting a window. Lol
I have a feeling your monitor and your window would not got along too well
another great retrospective. that bill and ted commercial was hideous!
Thanks! Yeah, that Bill & Ted's game genie commercial was so exquisitely bad and 90s. I mean, I loved it.. and I hated it. But I loved it. I think you know what I mean. I thought about putting it at the beginning of the video since I know not everyone watches to the end but I thought it best to leave it towards the end as a reward/punishment for making it all the way through. Thanks again man. Are any of those cats on your channel yours? I think it said Ruby was your cousins. Just curious, I've got three myself. I'm pretty sure two of them think they own me though.
yes Roti and Moon are mine. Ruby is my Aunts. i love animals :)
Same here. Roti is an awesome cat name. I always liked cats from afar but never saw myself as a cat owner. Then Starbuck, my first cat, showed up as a malnourished kitten on my doorstep 4 years ago. She's the cat on my chair in my youtube avatar. Now she's my buddy and I can't imagine her or my other two cats in my life.
Okay, I know im commenting too much- last one, your Cat's name is Starbuck!? A+ name....which startbuck though?
plz be the katie sackhoff one...young me watched battlestar for almost that alone...her and the old man..."whadda ya hear Starbuck?" ...never gets old
How does John Petrucci find the time to make a video about the game genie?
+BlackDogsMatter in between solos.
Petrucci!!!!
... nice comeback too!
Heehhehhee! 😂😂😂
+Ezio Auditore da Firenze in between guitar solos!
But well John is clearly some sort of god, so it's not impossible for him to do many things... even at the same time. ;D
I had a Pro Action Replay for the Sega Genesis back in the day.. it wasn't as well known the game genie but was far superior as it let you make your own codes rather than having to rely on printed code books. In the pre internet age that was a god send. It was also great into to hacking in general for a kid. .
In addition to codes, I ALWAYS thought of Game Genie as a tool that helps the games start up more consistently etc... I have a working NES system with about 20 games and the genie. I dont play it MUCH, but when I do, I use the genie not for codes, but to make sure I can actually play, still have to blow etc... but...
I have always been fascinated by these cheat devices. Especially the Pro Action Replay MK3 for the SNES; I spent weekends finding my own cheats and messing with Megaman X in all sorts of ways. I'm glad that I still have that MK3 but nowadays I use it mostly as a passthrough to play US SNES games on my PAL switchless modded SNES.
Playing as the bosses in Street Fighter 2 was the same highlight of my game genie days. That, and specials in mid-air and everyone has wall jump.
Fascinating as always. I remember that Bill and Ted rip off commercial so vividly it's sad. i also liked how you included the clip from the WCW action figure commercial. i had a few of those as well. Great work all around.
+Stevinfinite thanks man. I was just trying to do what no video dude had ever done before. But yeah, once i found that wcw commercial it was going in the video faster than writers distance themselves Hulk Hogan's Thunder In Paradise.
The best thing about the Game Genie was the freedom to experiment. It was pretty awesome back in the day.
Stil got one for my gameboy with code book in back :D
I remember renting a game genie from block buster it truly was awesome.
I loved the plug in mod chip I had for my original ps1. It acted as a game genie, allowed the use of burned copies of any game and it allowed me to play foreign market games on us model systems. It was always interesting trying to figure out the controls for Japanese games when you can't read the information manual.
They had the permanent solder in versions to but I preferred to never do something like that in a non reversable way if I could avoid. Also I think later games started to be able to detect if a system had one of those chips and would then refuse to play.
Galoob was a pretty funny name for a company. Sounds like some kinda Italian diss from a Scorsese movie.
"Yer a galoob!"
"What's a galoob?"
"You! You are a galoob!"
Oh hell yeah bro, I just found your channel and it has tons of awesome content.
Thanks man! I appreciate it!
Woo! John Petrucci is covering games now.
+MrGencyExit64 lol
Damn you really took me back to my childhood...thanks
This channel should be called bench pressing with gaming
Was wondering what happened to Danzing
+Mad Cap lol. I ran out of that Mother money.
I still have my game genie for my Sega Mega Drive (the Australian version of the Sega Genesis) which I bought in about 1990. It was a lot of pocket money back then but I am still happy I got it today.
i discovered a code for snes legend of zelda that i could walk through any wall, but only up and down. i always got the strongest master sword before i even beat the first three pendant castles.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but why would Nintendo have a beef with the Game Genie to begin with? If people were buying the games why would they care whether or not people were using cheat codes? Its not like anyone was stealing games from them.
+Michael Proctor Just Nintendo being Nintendo. They've always been extremely protective of their brand. Or at least what they perceive to be damaging to it. I probably played more games because of the game genie if anything!
Nintendo just doesn't like when you capitalize of there product and they don't receive any Mario coins from it
Best thing I could thing of is that it could be seen as an opertunity cost, which would people rather have a game genie that could double the games someone has, or buy a single game.
I see Mac's been adding mass again, can't wait for the new season of It's Always Sunny!
+apeddle ha ha ha! I gotta add mass for the next wrestling match!
CULTIVATING MASS
I always thought those things worked through on-the-fly hex editing, similar to how Cheat Engine and so-called "trainers" work.
I remember using a friend's game genie on my SNES 'Final Fight' game New Year's Eve 1993. Beat the final boss then-nothing. Black screen. Whether it was the genie or the booze from raiding the liquor cabinet I don't know. I do remember us laughing hysterically trying to enter codes because his Super Advantage had the turbo buttons on-try doing that plastered.
I had the SNES Game Genie. I had tuns of fun with this thing. I messed around with the existing codes to come up with my own cheats or down right altered the game entirely. I still own the note book I had written pages of codes for games.
OH man the game genie was my savior. There were so many games I couldn't stand until I got this device, it suddenly made unplayable games playable. Even to this day I use "trainers" for PC games which I know angers a lot of people. But you know what? I still find a game just as much fun when cheating as opposed to playing fair (referring to single player games only, I don't even try to cheat online or multiplayer, that's BS). I hate ridiculously hard games, all they do is stress me out...so if I can find a way to enjoy a game without the stress then that works for me...
Don't get me wrong, I really look up to people who enjoy a challenge and can play a difficult game with enjoyment...I wish I was the same, to be honest. But my brain isn't wired in such a way, unfortunately...I get mad just as much now as I did as a kid and that's pathetic and embarrassing...so if I can't cheat and it's insanely hard, I stay away from it.
There's actually a Famicom version of the Game Genie, released in South America and other territories by Realtec. Needless to say, information about it is scarce and said units appear to be extremely rare.
Kinda pointless since the Famicom was never market there. South America got the NES similar to Europe.
I seen this in my recommendations and I have to say this was way better than I thought it was going to be :) good job
Thanks, I appreciate it!
Not bad, you almost have my subscription. Some of the information on your saturn video had some incorrect pictures ascociated with the named people , but the facts where pretty darn close. Good job on this and the saturn video.
+caliktil thanks
wow I remember the game genie, good times.
Strange that Game Genie was made by Codemasters, a UK company, yet I had never even heard of Game Genie at the time, let alone see it, it wasn't until many years later that, on the internet, I learned of its existence. Action Replay was originally the most popular cheating device in the UK, I still vividly remember the magazine adverts for it, showing some robot man who looked half like a Terminator endoskeleton, the other half clad in spiked armour. I could never afford an Action Replay for my Mega Drive (was something like £60?), but years later I got the Xplorer cheat cart for the PSX (originally advertised as the "X-Terminator", most likely renamed due to lawsuit worries, was then later renamed again as "Xploder"). I think the original Xplorer (Pro, FX) line of cheat carts for the PSX were the last of the actual cheat carts before they turned into that memory card + CD combo crap. I also had an Equalizer cheat cart (Datel's lower end version of the Action Replay) for the N64, it was terrible and would corrupt itself all too often, I had to take it back for replacements several times, but when it did work, I had some really cool codes for Goldeneye so I could play full single player levels in multiplayer. My favourite level was always facility, so I was able to go all the way to the end of the level to the big gas chamber and camp out, killing my mates whenever they entered, great times!
My Game Genie story- Street Fighter II was only available for SNES and only the regular version. Hyper turbo champion edition or whatever was out in the arcades and you could use the bosses, but not on the SNES version since it was vanilla. My brother's older brother gets a frantic call one night and someone had found the boss code. Well ,the "boss code" made the game look like a glitched pile of crap, but it worked. We played all night. i still remember one of the warnings was "Dont use Sagat's uppercut" and when we tried it it froze the game.
+blah dude! I totally remember that! I think whenever you played as the bosses they had a really weird color palette. I think the code only worked in vs mode too. Good times.
Wrestlers and Pop culture nerds. This is AWESOME!!! I wonder if there were closet nerds in the 80s wrestling era.
I always wondered what maniac came up with the idea for the Game Genie? It really gave us ways to play much more than the original game, and use all type of tricks to alter and debug a game. I also think it gave people who may not have the best health or may have another disability to be able to beat a game. Personally, that's why I would use it, I am disabled and it helped me do things I couldn't normally do on a console growing up. Nowadays, of course we have savestates on emulators, and most pc games (not online games on servers of course) have infintie savestates to make your way through a game without replaying it 1000 times. I had the game genie for sega genesis and gameboy, i never had any issues using the game boy pocket but I think I had a smaller version that was made later, than the one shown here. I later had the Nintendo 64 Gameshark and of course eventually got action replay for Saturn, GBA, DS, and plenty of other consoles.
I love 90's videogames commercials!
Subscribed because you look like Al Snow.
jezzbull WHAT DOES EVERYBODY WAAANT?!!
+BEERSCO 138 ha ha 😂
Lolol
I used to rent the Game Genie till my pops finally bought me one
Hyperkin did revived the Game Genie for Nintendo DS, 3DS, and PS3 for a short while and had planned for a PS4 and Switch version but both never see released.
Dude... loved that thing! Made my mom take me in her station wagon and get it for me at like age 10. ALL the cool kids wanted to come over to my house... next best thing was adding her stereo to the mix and making fake surround sound.
I loved my Game Genies too...still have them.
I forgot about the bill and ted commercial.
Your t-shirt is cool, haven't seen one of those batteries in forever.
+Carl Zimmerman Thanks. I haven't either. I suspect they're selling more shirts than batteries these days. From what I remember their batteries died pretty quickly.
Oh ya,I had one as a kid. had a lot of fun finding my own codes. I didnt have a lot of friends lol
Still have mine, with the codebook and she still works fine. Best xmas present my older brother and I received in 1990! I wanted the super NES version but never did get around to buying it. One of my classmates let me borrow his and was able to finally beat final fight as well as topple my brother's records in F-Zero.....he was pissed.
I have a Game Genie for the PS3 and now they have changed the name to Save Wizard and it's for the PS4 !
I remembered I discovered by accident the code for battletoads to get immediately to the dark queen!!
This code didn't exist in the book.
I remember that thanks to this thing my friend and I beat many games we couldn’t beat before due to their extreme difficulty. Specially for the NES.
That commercial,was badass
I used game shark and Pelion for awesome replay value back in the day on PS and PS2
I had one when they came out. For a few systems actually, it kicked major ass at the time. They used to sell cheat magazines at the super market as well, That is a forgotten time.
+Joshua Yeah, I remember looking for codes in magazines like Gamepro and EGM. Now everything's on the internet, which is nice and convenient but it takes away some of the fun out of it.
Wrestling With Gaming yeah EGM was my Fav, they had another magazine that was strictly cheats they were harder to find but they had like everything. I would grab one and then head to blockbuster with my parents lol.
+Joshua lol good times
Never had the GameGenie, my first cheat device was the GameShark which I bought for a very idiotic reason-- in elementary school someone told me if you play WWF Warzone with a Gameshark you could actually leave the arena and fight backstage xD
no mention of GAMESHARK!?
+Vnix I know, I know. I really should've mentioned game shark and action replay. This was like my 3rd or 4th video and frankly, even though it covered the game genie pretty well, there are things I should've touched on. For example, I didn't provide info on code masters output after the game genie or on other devices like the game shark. I assure you, my more recent videos are far more comprehensive. This genie video gets shared on Twitter or Reddit every once in a while and catches a bunch of attention and while I'm grateful for the views and subs, I do wish it was more comprehensive. If you're into Nintendo stuff I'd recommend checking out my super fx video, superman 64, or power glove video. Those are my most recent Nintendo centric videos. I think you'll find those much better. Thanks for taking the time to watch this though and commenting. I really do appreciate the feedback. It was feedback like this that made me realize I needed to go deeper in my videos. Have a good one!
And Code Breaker
Vnix i still have my gameshark for n64
Spawny eyed wazzock I'm thinking about selling mine for 300 for everything over 30 games
Vnix GameShark SHIT on GameGenie!!!
Game Genie was like GOLD when I was a kid!!!!!!!
This was THE DAY!
The game boy version was similar to the game gear one in that it too had a space for the code booklet and came with stickers with codes to put on your games.
I just realized this guy looks like Al Snow.
Yoooooo, that eveready battery shirt though..
Great video! What a time trip! My only criticism would be that I wish you went into detail why Game Genie went out of business. The first time I ever heard of them was in 1997 but I couldn't find them anywhere unfortunately. I'd kind of like to hear that story some time. Any way, great job!
+I Want To Believe thanks! Yeah with these early videos I unfortunately didn't really follow up with what happened afterward. Something I corrected later on. I believe the main thing with the game genie is that the change to disc media made it more difficult to come up with cheating mechanisms. Plus they had actual competition from things like the game shark later on.
+Wrestling With Gaming Good to know! I'll be sure to check out your other stuff. Thanks for listening to my feedback man
+I Want To Believe of course man. I'm always open to feedback.
When I saw the thumbnail for this pop up in my feed, I thought it was a new metal jesus video.
When I was a kid I did use cheats to "Cheat" in games I couldn't play but now I spend the time to figure out how to actually work and finish the game. Today I use Cheats or Trainers for shear fun. Nothing like zipping across the level by jumping and destroying everything or constantly letting off grenades to wipe out your enemies for a short blast of fun.
I was more of an action replay guy but good stuff
Game genie on PS4, XBOX ONE, Switch, iPhone! Get yours today!
+Stormo Ninja haha!
Wrestling With Gaming Here's a code from game genie for GTA V
Infinite health- GWB893
Hey, the story of me! Subscribed.
Hey! I shared your documentary playlist to a small group that I'm a member of in FB. You deserve more subscribers!
+George Watanabe Thanks so much man! That was really kind of you. Really appreciate it.