The Truth About Game Genie Hardware...
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2023
- In this video we’re taking a look at every Game Genie model ever released to find out if they are bad for your retro hardware!
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Thank you to JohnnyBaretoes for allowing me to use some Game Gear clips.
Check out his Game Genie Game Gear demo here:
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#nintendo #nes #gamegenie #supermario #retrogaming #retrogames #famicom #snes #sega #genesis #gameboy #gamegear - เกม
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! 😅😅😅
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.
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.
It's too keep your head out of the way 😂
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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...
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
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.
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?!
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
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.
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.
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!
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
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!!
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. 👍
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.
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 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.
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
omg it's great to see ya upload again Gruz. Hopefully you've been doing well. I remember hearing about these gadgets amongst friends as a kid/teen. But back then I never saw them in action back in the day due to the popularity. I was the odd one out without one but they sound like a neat gadget though. I can't wait for future uploads to comeback again. :)
The little code books are so cute! So glad to have a new Gruz video!
I didnt know about the code on and off switches! You did a great job showing these off in a compact fashion. Good stuff! 😊
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 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
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.
This is so awesome man thank you.. like the things we could only talk about and wonder as kids now some (you) have the knowledge to actually dive into it and solve those near forgotten mysteries that are so worth solving
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.
Your videos keep getting better and better. Keep it up!
So good to see you're finally gaining the traction you deserve, gruz!
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.
Dude this was so much fun to watch! I had a gameshark for the GBC and that was so much fun back in the day. I love this channel!
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.
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 🤷
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!
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.
Have you ever considered looking at the Action Replay as well? The pro models had trainers on them, so you could literally hack into the games and create your own codes!
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!
Loved and subscribed!
My dad bought me the game genie for the NES to help with those punishing 8 bit games and gave me a whole new experience on the same old console.
I remember reading in EGM that Star Fox was not compatible with the Game Genie because Star Fox cartridges had extra wide contact boards that weren't replicated on Game Genies.
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
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.
Good video! I have the NES Game Genie and the Sega Genesis and Game Gear ones too! They are handy to have.
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 🎉
On the SNES, I remember having issues when if I tried turning the switch on or off, it could accidentally crash the game because sometimes it wobbled when touching it, probably breaking a pin connection. I learned to stuff something in with it to prevent the wobble when it was inserted.
Awesome video about game genie! I saw one here in Texas at a Half Price Books store once, and we own an OG NES system, and I still regret NOT buying that Game Genie to this day.... 😢
I had the game genie for the original gameboy. I loved creating and testing my own codes.
I wish I could find my code book with my codes written down. I had a code for making Link impervious to damage, and able to walk on water.
That game genie and my original gameboy kept me busy while receiving my chemo, and entertained me during hospital stays.
3:13 now wonder, how does it look like with "Sonic and Knuckles" and "Sonic 3" cartridges
I have such fond memories of my NES Game Genie. Used it to finish so many games as a kid, I never would have been able to otherwise.
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?
I never had a Game Genie, but I did get GameSharks for the Game Boy and PS1.
That was part of my learning about the hexadecimal numeral system, opened up a lot of interesting stuff while playing Final Fantasy and Pokémon, and even made me some money as I ended up selling Mews at an early Pokémon tournament.
I've got a game genie for my 1989 Sega Genesis 12 years ago...
love it
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.
I almost have every game genie model myself in my collection, including the very rare game genie adapter for the NES II (just by itself sadly, complete boxed is nearly impossible to find today) in my collection. I don't have a game gear model yet. As far as my experience goes, only the game boy model seemed to give slight issues to my game pak's though. Always love your game genie content Gruz, cheers.
man I used that original NES one so many times as a kid. it was so cool being able to skywalk in Mario 3 or beat Willow when I was kid. cool video man!
I wonder of the damage warning is caused not by editing the ram, but by the extra un-accounted for power draw on the system, especially switching it on and off when the console is running. That would be my guess. Love these things. I wanted the action replay for my amiga so badly!
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.
Another great video… thanks Gruz
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.
Great job on the video. You kept it interesting and informative throughout the video. I used to love using the game genie back in the day. Made a lot of games that were just impossible for me and I just wanted to give up on new life and worth playing. Liked and subscribed :-)
Honestly I always used the game genie for the NES, even when I didn't use the codes because I never seemed to have issues getting the nes to work properly when it was attached.
Fez mentioned it already, but the first releases on the SNES had a notch in the front, and all of those games had codes when the Game Genie was released for the SNES. The interface latched into the notch when the cart was inserted; this definitely would keep the game cart from being easily pulled out of the GG.
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Addendum: I've never heard of or seen evidence that GG/GS/AR/CB does any more damage to consoles than usual wear and tear does.
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That isn't to say that it's not implausible...
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Oh, and you really shouldn't use the NES Game Genie in the top-loader model. Yes, for the same reason as the unlicensed games from Camerica.
The NES Game Genie was a godsend for me. The 72 pin connector on my childhood NES was already really loose and unreliable by the time I got the Game Genie, but I found that the Game Genie would always make a good connection to it. Even when I had no intention of using any Game Genie codes, I would still use the Game Genie as a pass through adapter just because it made my NES function so much more reliably.
Not pushing down the cartridge would've probably had the same effect, but the real fix would be to remove the 72-pin adapter and either bend the pins back or drop it into boiling water, which makes them springy again.
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.
I definitely made up my own codes for Street Fighter and was changing the color of Ken and Ryu's outfit & fireballs.
I had an action replay in the day. What an amazing add-on it was.
I gotta sub, refreshing vid !
1:26 Ah, you’re taking me back! I love it!
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I was big on cheat devices back in the day. First I used was the Game Genie for Gameboy, then eventually got a Gameshark for my PS1 and Gameboy Color. PS2 I made the switch to Codebreaker (I always found that Codebreaker had more codes than Gameshark). I've gotten back into cheat devices a bit with older consoles now, bought a Gameshark for my N64, Codebreakers for my PS1 and PS2 and my Wii is Homebrewed and you can download codes right there on the console. It was a simpler time...but they're so much fun to use when you just want to mess around.
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.
As for the lip on the Snes Game Genie, if you ever owned a Japanese Super Famicom game, you'd notice the design of the cartilage is a little different, there is a dip in the front of most Japanese carts where the lip of the game genie could snap lock into, increasing the grip you mentioned earlier, making sure that if the deck got slight pushed it didn't freeze the game because the game became loosened or whatever. This also allowed you to play Japanese imports on your US Snes without having to buy an adapter.
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.
I still remember using my gba gameshark ALL THE TIME. The only thing I ever really used it for was Pokemon but still. I would get those gameshark code books from the book fair at school. Those were fun times.
I only ever had a NES Game Genie when I was very little.. And until I got much older was the only way I ever beat Mario 2...
One design flaw I found though was the black plastic strap thing, I wasn't a kid that was rough on my stuff yet that still managed to break off on one side and needed to be glued back on..
My friend had a game genie or the other one in the early 90's and we altered many games, buck rogers of EA for example. Cause of adding a 7 and 8th character permanent and pretty much changing every battle encounter to what we wanted, just to see the variant of enemies group that existed, many you'd never see in the game.
So somehow the saves started overlapping and this was permanent, even with new saves. Giving experience to other game characters of the other save, even after the save was gone. A crash likely caused it for doing weird codes?
I loved playing with the game genie. I found out that you can actually stack up to 3 of them. You have to deal with those flaps though. Leave the flap on the first one that goes into the nes. So you can pull them all out. And you have to prop up the whole stack. But you can get 9 codes that way.
Please tell me you still have that rigged up. Id love to see a video showing proof of concept.
@@MLBlue30 unfortunately no this was back in the 90s when no one was collecting retro games much yet so NES games and stuff were cheap. So we could get a hold of 3 game genies for a few dollars each and not feel bad about breaking them. But I remember we had 3 of them glued together. One still had the pull tab so they wouldn't get stuck in the nes. And you had to prop it up with something. It stuck out so far that the weight would cause it to loose connection. So it could be dicey and go to the blank screen of death sometimes. But for the most part it worked. And it would do some interesting glitches when a bunch of the codes didn't play well together. In fact I think we had like 5 game genies laying around, but it wouldn't work with more than 3 stacked together.
I remember trying to make my own codes with random letters. Found one for Fester’s Quest that made the enemies invisible. Fun times.
Dont flash carts typically come with code altering capabilities and allow you to enable more codes at a single time as well as save the codes so you dont have to type them in?
Yeah, multicarts do have built in cheat functions.
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.
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 flap you are talking about @ 3:40 is to lock on to the SNES cartridge!!
With the SNES Game Genie, the flap with the tab was necessary as certain cartridges had an oval cut out instead of the rectangular "ramp".
I loved game genie and code sharks. Editing the code values to get crazy outcomes. I remember breaking sonic by making each ring worth 99. It just started putting glitch graphics in the score and made the end take a while to count.
From seeing this and tying-it in with my knowledge of computer architecture, I would so *love* to have a go at using a number of these in series to fundamentally change a game (e.g: Modify sprites, manipulate code). Were there any restrictions (Either in practice, or imposed on the device) on the memory addresses that a Game Genie could change, or did it have _Cart(e) Blanche_ to patch _anything_ in the consoles memory space? 🧑🔧
Granted I'm not into the retro gaming scene and there is stuff-all hope of me ever having the money, space or will to do this on a real console...But I am *definitely* going to be having a closer look at some ROM files in a hex editor and seeing if I can apply Game Genie codes to them using that approach! 😁
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.
I always found these cheat devices really interesting, even if they could be kinda jank and wipe your save data.
I had a Gameshark for my N64, and a few times when I'd use it to cheat, something would go really wrong, causing my game to crash; when I'd reset, the game would still work fine, minus a save file, but the game shark would never work for that particular game ever again. I really wish I knew what was going on in the code for something so catastrophic like that to happen.
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.
Regarding the problem of cartridge contacts what's the view on contact treatments like Stabilant. I know its very divisive but it cleared up a nasty problem with LCD connectors on a control panel and it had a side effect of lubricating the pins so the insertion force reduced significantly. On the downside it can cause tiny pin-to-pin leakages which shouldn't affect digital applications but can cause issues in sensitive analogue circuits.
My original NES only works with Game Genie inserted lol. I have one NES console that isn't Game Genie corrupted which I use for Everdrive and pirated cartridges (and any game that doesn't work with Game Genie). A good thing about having a Game Genie corrupted NES is that you almost never get the blinking light reset cycle, it gets a pretty tight and good connection with the Game Genie.