[HN Gopher] The Story of the Game Genie, a Cheat Device Nintendo...
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       The Story of the Game Genie, a Cheat Device Nintendo Tried (and
       Failed) to Kill
        
       Author : adrian_mrd
       Score  : 26 points
       Date   : 2021-12-27 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nintendolife.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nintendolife.com)
        
       | grendelt wrote:
       | That page layout is puke. The number of ads is really distracting
       | when trying to read on mobile.
       | 
       | Paragraph Ad Paragraph Ad Paragraph Ad
        
         | creativenolo wrote:
         | All good using Brave.
        
       | mensetmanusman wrote:
       | So many good memories of this device.
       | 
       | I remember playing Final Fantasy 2 with the Genie making our
       | character invulnerable and reaching a boss in the dwarf fortress
       | whose life points were somehow coupled to ours.
       | 
       | It took us kids a while (over two hours of battling) to figure
       | out we had to turn off the genie on this battle to finally end
       | it!
        
       | dandotway wrote:
       | Interesting legal tidbits:                 They even had Shigeru
       | Miyamoto in court - he came to San Francisco.       They were
       | saying that because the player was plugging in the
       | interface and making Mario jump higher, the player was making a
       | derivative work, and we were helping him infringe copyright. In
       | the       end, the judge said it was not permanently changed when
       | you       unplugged it, and for a derivative work to exist it has
       | to be       permanent.              [...] Some of the team's
       | tactics were quite interesting,       highlighting the hypocrisy
       | of Nintendo, as Menzies explains. "I       helped with the
       | lawsuit by creating non-Game Genie codes that could       be
       | entered into an official Nintendo game's own password system and
       | would crash it, cause graphical corruption, weird behaviour, and
       | so       on. Basically all of the things that Nintendo's lawsuit
       | accused       Game Genie of doing, so we could say to the judge
       | 'look, this isn't       anything to do with us, Nintendo's games
       | do this on their own, it's       just how video games work'."
        
       | hermes8329 wrote:
       | The original was awesome but the first external mods to the PS1
       | also has some nifty stuff to hack around with just an lpt1 port
       | away
        
       | tweetle_beetle wrote:
       | Funny to read this at this time of year. I remember my sibling
       | and I pouring over the absurdly small book for the Game Boy
       | version, pictured in one of the photos, one Christmas. It seemed
       | magical that every game we ever came across was in there. Little
       | did we know that someone had been grinding out game after game.
       | There was a kick from knowing that you were somehow modifying the
       | game in real time, even though I was too young to know about
       | hacking culture.
        
       | adamrmcd wrote:
       | I remember the first time I learned about the Game Genie.
       | 
       | I was 12 when I walked into our local game store late one night
       | and saw Super Mario Bros 3 being played on the big screen, except
       | Mario had 99 lives, jumped higher than the screen, and looked
       | like a beetle throwing hammers. WTF!
       | 
       | I asked the guy playing how he did it, and he replied with one
       | word, "genie". I was so floored by what I was seeing, I didn't
       | even think to ask any follow up questions.
       | 
       | I spent the next three months searching every corner of that game
       | for the Genie, like he was a super secret character built-in. I
       | only stopped after finding the Game Genie for sale at that same
       | store :D
        
       | 41209 wrote:
       | One of the coolest tricks during gaming's golden age!
       | 
       | I even remember Nintendo power running an article telling people
       | NOT to buy these.
        
         | SippinLean wrote:
         | I remember when new games would get released, Galoob would put
         | fliers with the GG codes on them for you to take home with the
         | game!
         | 
         | https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/game_ge...
        
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       (page generated 2021-12-27 23:02 UTC)