I remember the Game Genie being a life saver on the original NES. Some of those games were so brutal that a Game Genie was nice since you could experiment and figure games out, and then beat them without needing it.
Gradius 3 and Super Ghouls n Ghosts were the two big ones we often used it for... Just because lives and second runs were a pain at times. Also, there was a point where after you beat the games legit, you just wanna have fun and break those games in half.
I remember using it for Zelda 2, and I could not get to the final boss. So, I did something stupid and called the NES hotline for tips. Remember that?! It was like five dollars per minute. Anyway they told me, there is no way to beat the game with a Game Genie.
My brother spent days making up codes for Super Mario Bros 3 with a Game Genie, then come and show me the results. You can't understate how mind blowing that was in the 90's. Great times with these devices
This is an exciting video for me. As a kid I used Game Genie all the time to see the endings of those real hard games I could only rent! It was big news back in the day that Nintendo was not thrilled about it, but I never knew they had Sega's stamp of approval! I love how your videos always have these interesting little facts.
The best Game Genie thing that happened to me is when I was entering in the Infinite Magic code for A Link To The Past, but I accidentally transposed the first few characters of one of the two codes. The results was that I could no longer walk on stairs in the overworld. Sounds bad right? Well not quite, for you see, I could instead walk through anything else vertically. Yes, I accidentally found a walk through walls code and it let me break the game. I could rescue Zelda and take her into dungeons. I discovered that if you save the old man while its raining, the game glitches out unless you fall down a hole first. Then I found out that if you enter the dark world while it's raining, the sprites from the light world after it rains appears where the dark world sprites would normally. Later I found out that the game has a global overworld state that increments after specific events. That's how for example you cannot enter the lumberjack cave until you defeat Aga 1. Doing so increments the global sprite state and also loads in all the dark world enemies. The other fun thing I did was use a game genie code I found on Gamefaqs that messed with your inventory in Lufia 2. I found out that using speed potions would actually toggle between the game's two lists of items. That means I could buy items in shops, use a speed potion, and it transmogrifies it from a weapon to say, a key. Using this code I was able to complete the game without opening a single treasure chest. It also gave me access to a few debug items like the RAN RAN Step which does no damage, but instead softlocks your player into performing every single battle animation in the game.
I never understood why people crap on Ken Griffey Jr's Winning Run. I played the hell out of this game as a kid and enjoyed it (unlike many NES and SNES baseball games).
I love Ken Griffey Jr Presents MLB. Its a great baseball game, the pitching is so good, throw fastball, slowballs, curve inside outside or straight down the middle.... fielding is good , batting is pretty precise. I am so good at that game , I'm hard to beat. I sucked so bad at first, and got so frustrated, had a hard time fielding, but I kept playing with determination to be as good as the friends that always beat me and eventually become a very solid player. I set an unbelievable homerun derby record with 44 humerus. Never came close to that many homeruns before or since . Not even close. The average for about anybody is maybe 15 to 25. I've played it for years since it first came out in 93, and still play it.
My NES game genie got a hell of a lot of work done as a little kid. Generating codes was like decrypting an enigma machine in ww2, but it sure was fun. I never had a SNES genie, but it seems like more game breaking gold. Totally radical dude.
The Clyde cameo was a nice touch❤ I still go back and watch your video about him when depression thinks it’s funny to ruin my day/week/month. Been a little while since we’ve seen the good boy.
The "air moves" one from Street Fighter was my favorite. I combined it with the code that allows every character to wall jump, like Chun Li and Vega. We had some fights of pure madness.
My favorite game genie/shark/action replay codes were the ones that let you access content that was dummied out. In Tales of Destiny PS1 you could add a character named Lilith to your party who was cut very late in development. You could also use them in games like Final Fantasy Tactics to add boss/guest only characters to your party like Alma and Zalbag.
Whoever came up with the Hit a HR with every swing code for Ken Griffey Baseball managed to predict the modern game of Home Run or Strikeout 30 years in advance.
I remember using the internet back in like 1996 to find game genie codes for SNES games and discovering a bunch for FF6. The only one I really liked was one that made random stuff drop after every battle. And boy do I mean random. You could have a fight before you're on the raft with Banon and get an Atma Weapon or Ragnarok or something, or you could just get a useless Tonic from a boss that normally drops some good equipment or an Elixir. It was fun just for shaking up what you might equip or who you might use, though.
That fire code for Super Street Fighter 2 is using the effect of Fei Long's Dragon Kick. Trying to kick-olate people was top-tier arcade fun circa 1993.
I had a game guide for SNES games when I was a kid that had a bunch of original Game Genie codes in the back. The one I liked using the most was the always-on hyper beam for Super Metroid. Yes, you got hyper beam from the very start of the game. It was awesome. For some reason, the graphics for the beam were always messed up (it made the beam look like a rainbow waffle fry instead of the solid beam you get fighting Mother Brain) but it worked just the same.
Final Fantasy 6 had a code creators club with a website back in the day. They found some absolutely insane things; I wonder if they're still on the net somewhere. I think some of the codes are printed out in a binder here somewhere, but there were untold numbers of them.
Had so much fun with GG and SF2. Play as bosses, if jacked up versions of them. Double-jumps, wall jumps, air specials... there was so much cool stuff you could do there. Really changed the way the game was played.
I never had a Game Genie as a kid, but some of my friends did and we would randomly try different codes in various games to absolutely break them. It was always pretty amusing. It is funny how different Nintendo and Sega's business philosophy was (and still is). Nintendo seems to always have chosen the litigation route. Though, I can't believe it cost them $15 million for that Game Genie case. Yikes!
My brother and I caused a permanent effect on our Final Fantasy VI (3 US) cart. We weren't using custom codes or anything, just using 5 codes from a list. Somehow the order we entered them caused an ancillary effect of swapping color palettes for party character sprites. Mog changed from white and pink with blue eyes to cream-manilla with turquoise wings and pom, and purple eyes. Terra had blonde hair like from her concept art, Edgar and Sabin swapped palettes, Gogo was inverted. After all these years the battery still works and that save file is still messed up. The other save slots don't have that issue. Makes me wonder if it's actually just some status condition like Shadow's dog Intercepter is actually just a status effect in code terms.
Apparently the Moogles from the opening area are linked to the main characters. Using Game Genie you can replace all of the normal party members with Moogles.
I remember how cool I felt when I discovered a cheat in Riddick Bowe Boxing. When you get to the post fight training, just keep resetting the game until you get the gold gym! :)
I always envied my friends who had a game genie. I had big, bulky code books, and they had a hardware enhancement that didn't require timed button presses. I still remember the moment I got tired of using cheats, though, and I've really never looked back, but it's still fun to crack a game open sometimes and find the tastiest bits in all the chaff and pulp.
Didn't grow up owning a SNES, but my NES won't work unless I have its Game Genie in it. I played it constantly back then. I even found the Code Book not too long ago. Still love that thing.
I can't believe I actually made it into a SNESdrunk video. The Super Nintendo era was a very fundamental part of my childhood, and shaped how I approach gaming today. I love your videos my man, and keep up the quality content!
Game Genie was one of those turning points back in the day. I still remember the early commercials, and I ended up getting the NES and, later, the SNES Game Genies. I still have the NES manual that came with the accessory, but the SNES one wasn't as... erm... durable. I tried to only use them for games I had beaten for additional fun, but there were a few games where I admit I ended up cheating my way through because I either lacked the patience for the game, or it was just a terrible game and I just wanted to see the stages/story/endings, if any. Some of my favorite codes usually did something like make temporary party members permanent (usually replacing a normally permanent character), or changing up a character's stats/weapons/fighting style/etc. General Leo of FF6 comes to mind, though he obviously lacked some things that the other characters got. Infinite money or MP (depending on the game) usually just allowed for insane fun.
You can have Leo around for the ending. The game doesn’t know what to do with him sometimes though, so Kefka will be giving his final speech and Leo will just hover at the bottom of the screen.
great topic for a video, i never knew if the game genie was even sold in my country, but playing around with cheats is always fun as a kid (i did a real mess in gta3 later on)
Final Fantasy 3 (6). There were some codes that let you start with better equipment. I used to use that code that gave you the ragnarok sword. When you normally get it late in the game you have to choose between keeping the sword or turning it into an esper item, which was one of only two ways to learn the ultima spell. With the code I could have both!
Yes that single jump to clear Mario levels! I used a similar code for Mario Bros 3 called Skywalker. You jump and you stay at the top of the map, just off screen as long as you hold the jump button. Then you just hover your way over to the end of the map! Also, I always wondered why the SNES game genie didn't have passthrough connectors for the pins on the edge of the cartridge?
I remember using game genie to bypass to level 8 in little nemos dream master just to hear that awesome nightmare land theme music. Now you can hear it all over youtube and I can relive my childhood on emulators!
I've been playing SimCity since I was a single digit kid and had no idea there was a $1 dollar code. I knew about the budget screen trick but not an actually Game Genie cheat. Welp I guess I know how I am spending my work from home day now 😂 Love the videos so much, can't wait to see the Pro Action Replay!
I remember that commercial. I thought it was pretty annoying back then too. Remember advertisers, kids aren't stupid! Me and my brothers would make up codes all the time, it was so much fun. I don't remember any of them, but I do remember fixing a couple from the booklet that would normally crash the game.
Me and my cousin growing up had a blast using Game Game codes with SF2 Turbo it pretty much made it like the home version of the Rainbow edition SF2 arcade game.
My favorite Game Genie codes were for infinite lives in Contra III. It’s how I originally learned the game. Would have a friend over every weekend and one of our rituals for the night would be to play through Contra III and see how few times we’d die. Then we’d play through Turtles in Time.
On PS1, there was a GameShark code for Final Fantasy Tactics that changed the character in a certain slot of your roster. The last two digits of the code were a modifier that denoted which character would appear. The book I had showed a list of the different characters and the respective modifier for the code. Well, I messed around with it, putting random numbers/letters in the modifier slots and got some insane results like having the final boss on my team. It's crazy to see how each entity in the game is programmed the same (that's just how the battle system works) in that they have fully functioning commands and ability lists. Fun times. Edit: Oh yeah, most of the ones I tried though ended up just being garbled pixels that crashed the game lol
Game Genie also saw a revival on PS3, though as a save editor rather than an outright cheat device. The people who revived it now have one for PS4 known as Save Wizard. Still a save editor, though.
It is worth mentioning that the SNES version of the Game Genie has a switch on the front so that you can turn off all the codes while you are playing. I think they did this to allow you to use some of the codes that would otherwise crash the game, or maybe so you can turn off things like every hit a home run when the other team is at bat.
I've never had a GG for the SNES...only for the NES...although I wish theses devices would come back...or at least cheat codes....now you gotta buy the same cheats or unlockables!
When I was a kid (this was a few months after Super Metroid came out and my parent's bought me it), I had beaten the game without using the Genie and had my big saved file on the cartridge, as well as my mother's saved game, and figured I'd start messing around with the Game Genie since I beat Super Metroid. There was one particular code that the book warned in bold letters that it MUST be typed in correctly, and I used it a few times, no problems (it was like a infinite life code). THEN one time I must have type that code in wrong, and I all of a sudden got an FBI warning screen telling me how copying videos games will get you this and that kind of fine and jail time, and the screen completely froze my snes. Started the game up again, and the FBI warning had wiped out all of my saved games lol. The mistyped code literally made the game think I was trying to copy it, and Ninentdo clearly had safeguards to detect that on their games, and would give you a punishment of erasing your data.
That happened to me with DKC but I don't own a game genie. It just randomly happened. It game me an illegal operation screen. All I did was turn it on. Both the cartridge and console are offical products so I don't know what happened. I was super mad my save file got deleted.
If you're interested in some other game genie codes, there's a TH-cam channel called "Displaced Gamers", the guy has a series where he looks into old NES games that were messed up in some way and usually provides a game genie code to fix the error. He did one on NES TMNT and fixed hit boxes and attack speed delays, really interesting stuff!
My older brother's friend gave me his SNES Game Genie when I was in elementary school and I wore that thing out. I still have the code book and a photo album full of old GamePro clippings with tons of other codes.
As much as i abused the game genie cheat my way thru games in the 8 and 16 bit era, i loved the pro action replay even more for the psx era. It let me recruit all the normally unplayable and guest characters in my party for final fantasy tactics, and if I'm not mistaken if you had one for the sega Saturn you could play import games without modding the consoles. I bought dragon force 2 from a local import shop and i think that's in part how i got it to play.
I loved being able to turn SNES Street Fighter 2 into the Rainbow Edition style hacky gameplay we could also play down at the local corner store at the time. So damn cool doing air specials and modifying other aspects at home. Crashing roulette was just part of the game when you messed with the Genie 😅
One of the best things for me using the Game Genie on the SNES was the switch so that you could shut off the codes if you backed yourself into a corner. If you had invincibility on but the game was one that had a forced-loss fight, you could bypass the Game Genie for that fight and then turn it back on once the story progressed. ---- Also, I remember Nintendo being so pissed at losing the Game Genie lawsuit that they made sure you could not play Super Mario RPG with the existing Game Genie, which required there to be a Game Genie 2 for the SNES that worked around Nintendo's shenanigans.
Dude!! SWEET!! Haha, I love that Game Genie ad. I was more of an Action Replay man myself. I had one for the Commodore 64 when it was first released. Of course, in the case of the Action Replay for the C64 it also had the ability to save the entire game at any point, to either a cassette or indeed disk drive. Making it an almost legitimate game pirating device. When I ordered my first one via an ad in Zzap! 64 magazine, I received a letter by return post that requested I sign an enclosed form stating that I wouldn't be using the device to pirate software. Then the device was dispatched once they received my signed form. Quite a lot of faffing. Worth it though for what was a total game breaker back then in times of proper hard games.
Ryu jumping around like a grasshopper while setting those he kicks on fire sounds like a particularly deranged season of Kamen Rider, and I am super-here for it.
For Street Fighter I like to use the special moves in the air with the unlimited Zangief grab range. It’s super broken and he can beat anyone at any difficulty level.
Game Genie was the only reason I was able to see later stages as a kid in Battle Toads. I was probably going to game over 90% of the time on the Turbo Tunnel. I couldn't have imagined there would be something even harder in the game than that, but I found the snake level.
That Mega Man X code is literally how I played the game for the first time! I got the game for Christmas along with a new "High Frequency" controller that had turbo and slow-mo. The problem was slow-mo was just a turbo switch for the start button...I couldn't understand why the menu kept popping up, I thought my new game was broken out of the box! I was so upset I even called my mom at work hah. Took me a bit to realize it was that slow-mo switch I had flipped before even starting the game. I got ZAMN and Paperboy 2 that Christmas too...awesome memories!
I remember one of the things I did the most was get a walk-through-walls code for FF4 and sequence break the game, getting characters I wasn't supposed to get out of order, and sometimes just crashing the game. Was hilarious when I was a kid to be sure, for a game I played through countless times.
As kids we used the Action Replay Cart allll the time it was fantastic 😁 Dad said if we bought the Action Roplay cart we were not allowed other birthday gifts so it was the one time all of us got together to get that gift😋 Having a cheat cart was just the done thing everyone had a Game Genie for the Nintendo NES it was on sale at the time for £10 Please keep going with these cheat code videos
Some notes regarding the Nintendo/Galoob lawsuit. You're mostly correct, but it is a bit more complicated than most people think. For one, it was actually Galoob and Codemasters who initiated the lawsuit. I mean, it's evident from the lawsuit's title, "Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc." that it was Galoob who acted first. The suit was a preventative measure against Nintendo, who was known for making a hostile marketplace for unlicensed software. The suit was to seek a declaratory judgment and file and injunction against Nintendo to prevent them from interfering with sales of the Game Genie. Only after this did Nintendo countersue, and everything else you said about Nintendo's side of the suit was true. What I also found interesting is that Sega was *not* as welcoming of the Game Genie as everyone assumes. It was only after Galoob issued a threat to Sega to issue a similar suit as the Nintendo one that Sega decided to play nice with the Game Genie. The Sega Genesis Game Genie had a nasty feature seldom talked about, which was that it prevented games with battery back-ups from saving progress.
yeah I have lots of memories of building in simcity and then leaving the game alone for a hour while I did yard work or something and coming back and building. Now I have my phone or a book while I wait
The best game genie code I found changed all the fatalities in MK2. One of Baraka’s left the opponent doing the “clutching their groin in pain” animation, FOR 30 SECONDS, as blood would nonsensically explode everywhere and the game would eventually crash.
As a kid I always looked down on people who owned a Game Genie, I saw it as a crutch for people who sucked at games, I never really thought about them from the perspective of just experimenting and game breaking. Flash forward 5-10 years and one of the most fun times I have ever had playing video games was a few sessions of the first Drive game on Playstation 1, a Game Shark or Action Replay (don't recall exactly, wasn't mine), and a sheet full of codes. Manipulating the way the cars worked and the games physics then driving around would have my friends and I laughing uncontrollably at how the game would break in the most interesting ways. Good times!
My personal best use of game genie was using it on street fighter 2 to win with each character on the hardest setting basically I could do each character’s special moves with just pressing one button this worked best with fireballs and characters that shot fireballs like ryu ken guile etc. and you would shoot them so fast the computer controlled characters wouldn’t have enough time to block them I was able to get the ending for each character this way cuz I wasn’t good enough to beat this game on the harder settings
Pffff i have an Action Replay! I still have a messed up Save Game from Zelda and i remember it was neat (but useless) to get with Yoshi into the Castles. I still use some codes nowadays with some Games that are just not fun without, unlimited continues/lives et cetera on unfair games are just a blessing.
I made a lot of SNES codes. These codes are a little more complicated than people might imagine. For an infinite life code you are not changing the lives value in RAM you are actually editing the code of the ROM that would remove lives. This is much more similar to cracking due to that. The easiest way these days to create codes is to get an emulator with a debugger and look for some guides to get you started. The main limiting factor of the game genie was the number of codes otherwise you could have just made your own game with it. This also led to codes being wrote in a space saving way. You also will need to learn some assembly to write codes.
I had a game genie for my game boy and it allowed me to port all 151 Kanto Pokemon into one game. It's a nice quality of life feature especially for those days when trading was a pain in the backside.
PART 1: th-cam.com/video/K7ISXTb1jPE/w-d-xo.html
PART 3: th-cam.com/video/UafJHPLbJac/w-d-xo.html
I remember the Game Genie being a life saver on the original NES. Some of those games were so brutal that a Game Genie was nice since you could experiment and figure games out, and then beat them without needing it.
Gradius 3 and Super Ghouls n Ghosts were the two big ones we often used it for... Just because lives and second runs were a pain at times.
Also, there was a point where after you beat the games legit, you just wanna have fun and break those games in half.
I remember using it for Zelda 2, and I could not get to the final boss. So, I did something stupid and called the NES hotline for tips. Remember that?! It was like five dollars per minute. Anyway they told me, there is no way to beat the game with a Game Genie.
Much of Battletoads was unplayable without it
@@isaackarr6576 That was a game of pure memorization for me. Very cool, but bite-through-the-controller hard.
@@kingleech16 Yup a swing at sprite's off the screen while spelunking kinda gameplay
Those radical 90s Bill and Ted stoner archetypes are just perfect lol. What a time to be alive.
Overacting at its finest!!
G N A R L Y!
@@djpegao RADICAL!
Yeah, they're so good at copying Bill and Ted that I just want to call them Gill and Fred or something.
Brought a smile to my face through and through
My brother spent days making up codes for Super Mario Bros 3 with a Game Genie, then come and show me the results. You can't understate how mind blowing that was in the 90's. Great times with these devices
What was the code used for
This is an exciting video for me. As a kid I used Game Genie all the time to see the endings of those real hard games I could only rent! It was big news back in the day that Nintendo was not thrilled about it, but I never knew they had Sega's stamp of approval! I love how your videos always have these interesting little facts.
The SNES SFII play as the bosses code was a very big deal back then. It was featured in gaming magazines.
Yes SF2 Boss code was huge I remember it well.
Lol Champion / Turbo edition with bosses was an anticlimax with the boss balancing
The best Game Genie thing that happened to me is when I was entering in the Infinite Magic code for A Link To The Past, but I accidentally transposed the first few characters of one of the two codes. The results was that I could no longer walk on stairs in the overworld. Sounds bad right? Well not quite, for you see, I could instead walk through anything else vertically. Yes, I accidentally found a walk through walls code and it let me break the game. I could rescue Zelda and take her into dungeons. I discovered that if you save the old man while its raining, the game glitches out unless you fall down a hole first. Then I found out that if you enter the dark world while it's raining, the sprites from the light world after it rains appears where the dark world sprites would normally. Later I found out that the game has a global overworld state that increments after specific events. That's how for example you cannot enter the lumberjack cave until you defeat Aga 1. Doing so increments the global sprite state and also loads in all the dark world enemies.
The other fun thing I did was use a game genie code I found on Gamefaqs that messed with your inventory in Lufia 2. I found out that using speed potions would actually toggle between the game's two lists of items. That means I could buy items in shops, use a speed potion, and it transmogrifies it from a weapon to say, a key. Using this code I was able to complete the game without opening a single treasure chest. It also gave me access to a few debug items like the RAN RAN Step which does no damage, but instead softlocks your player into performing every single battle animation in the game.
That Sim City music gets me every time. Nostalgia overload.
I'm actually impressed that the SNES was capable of such a realistic looking baseball game! The coders must've pulled miracles!
I never understood why people crap on Ken Griffey Jr's Winning Run. I played the hell out of this game as a kid and enjoyed it (unlike many NES and SNES baseball games).
its just a 2d texture with sprites running around it.
@@videostash413 if donkey kong wasnt all pre-rendered textures it would have been more impressive :)
It was the bits dude
I love Ken Griffey Jr Presents MLB. Its a great baseball game, the pitching is so good, throw fastball, slowballs, curve inside outside or straight down the middle.... fielding is good , batting is pretty precise. I am so good at that game , I'm hard to beat. I sucked so bad at first, and got so frustrated, had a hard time fielding, but I kept playing with determination to be as good as the friends that always beat me and eventually become a very solid player. I set an unbelievable homerun derby record with 44 humerus. Never came close to that many homeruns before or since . Not even close. The average for about anybody is maybe 15 to 25. I've played it for years since it first came out in 93, and still play it.
My NES game genie got a hell of a lot of work done as a little kid.
Generating codes was like decrypting an enigma machine in ww2, but it sure was fun.
I never had a SNES genie, but it seems like more game breaking gold.
Totally radical dude.
The Clyde cameo was a nice touch❤ I still go back and watch your video about him when depression thinks it’s funny to ruin my day/week/month. Been a little while since we’ve seen the good boy.
The "air moves" one from Street Fighter was my favorite. I combined it with the code that allows every character to wall jump, like Chun Li and Vega. We had some fights of pure madness.
My favorite game genie/shark/action replay codes were the ones that let you access content that was dummied out. In Tales of Destiny PS1 you could add a character named Lilith to your party who was cut very late in development. You could also use them in games like Final Fantasy Tactics to add boss/guest only characters to your party like Alma and Zalbag.
GameShark sponsored by John Tenta lol
I had a memory card editor for FFT. I remember making Jay and Silent Bob, as well as adding Sephiroth (using Marquis’ Elmdore’s sprite.
Whoever came up with the Hit a HR with every swing code for Ken Griffey Baseball managed to predict the modern game of Home Run or Strikeout 30 years in advance.
Ah, my Tuesday morning equivalent to strong coffee. Have a great rest of your day, SNESDrunk.
I remember using the internet back in like 1996 to find game genie codes for SNES games and discovering a bunch for FF6. The only one I really liked was one that made random stuff drop after every battle. And boy do I mean random. You could have a fight before you're on the raft with Banon and get an Atma Weapon or Ragnarok or something, or you could just get a useless Tonic from a boss that normally drops some good equipment or an Elixir. It was fun just for shaking up what you might equip or who you might use, though.
That fire code for Super Street Fighter 2 is using the effect of Fei Long's Dragon Kick. Trying to kick-olate people was top-tier arcade fun circa 1993.
Jago's slow fireball in KI was one of my favorite moves. Leads to so many combos.
Also I love your otto impression.
I had a game guide for SNES games when I was a kid that had a bunch of original Game Genie codes in the back. The one I liked using the most was the always-on hyper beam for Super Metroid.
Yes, you got hyper beam from the very start of the game. It was awesome. For some reason, the graphics for the beam were always messed up (it made the beam look like a rainbow waffle fry instead of the solid beam you get fighting Mother Brain) but it worked just the same.
This is one of the reasons I like Super Metroid randomized. You have a chance to get plasma beam really early.
C4A4-6767 is embedded in my memory forever.
Allows special moves to be performed in the air for Street Fighter 2 on SNES.
Use this code and do Guile's air throw
Right After you hear the grunt for the throw do a midair sonic boom for a surprise.🙂
Final Fantasy 6 had a code creators club with a website back in the day. They found some absolutely insane things; I wonder if they're still on the net somewhere. I think some of the codes are printed out in a binder here somewhere, but there were untold numbers of them.
I definitely have some
These are cool, and I'm surprised there hasn't been more talk in retro gaming circles about Game Genie and Action Replay codes. Thanks, Mr. Drunk!
Had so much fun with GG and SF2. Play as bosses, if jacked up versions of them. Double-jumps, wall jumps, air specials... there was so much cool stuff you could do there. Really changed the way the game was played.
I never had a Game Genie as a kid, but some of my friends did and we would randomly try different codes in various games to absolutely break them. It was always pretty amusing.
It is funny how different Nintendo and Sega's business philosophy was (and still is). Nintendo seems to always have chosen the litigation route. Though, I can't believe it cost them $15 million for that Game Genie case. Yikes!
Swear man, 90's commercials for SNES always felt like the spiritual sequel's to Bill & Ted.
My brother and I caused a permanent effect on our Final Fantasy VI (3 US) cart. We weren't using custom codes or anything, just using 5 codes from a list. Somehow the order we entered them caused an ancillary effect of swapping color palettes for party character sprites.
Mog changed from white and pink with blue eyes to cream-manilla with turquoise wings and pom, and purple eyes. Terra had blonde hair like from her concept art, Edgar and Sabin swapped palettes, Gogo was inverted. After all these years the battery still works and that save file is still messed up. The other save slots don't have that issue.
Makes me wonder if it's actually just some status condition like Shadow's dog Intercepter is actually just a status effect in code terms.
Apparently the Moogles from the opening area are linked to the main characters. Using Game Genie you can replace all of the normal party members with Moogles.
I remember how cool I felt when I discovered a cheat in Riddick Bowe Boxing. When you get to the post fight training, just keep resetting the game until you get the gold gym! :)
I always envied my friends who had a game genie. I had big, bulky code books, and they had a hardware enhancement that didn't require timed button presses. I still remember the moment I got tired of using cheats, though, and I've really never looked back, but it's still fun to crack a game open sometimes and find the tastiest bits in all the chaff and pulp.
Man that Ken Griffey baseball you had in tha genie was one of my all time favorites
Didn't grow up owning a SNES, but my NES won't work unless I have its Game Genie in it. I played it constantly back then. I even found the Code Book not too long ago. Still love that thing.
Those SF2 codes takes me back to the early 90s playing rainbow edition at the local laundromat as a kid.
I can't believe I actually made it into a SNESdrunk video. The Super Nintendo era was a very fundamental part of my childhood, and shaped how I approach gaming today. I love your videos my man, and keep up the quality content!
Total length of video: 730 secs.
Total length of "SNES Drunk": 3.5 secs.
.48% of the video was spent listening to "SNES Drunk".
Yes give us more Clyde the dog !!! I hope your depression and anxiety are ok snes drunk, thanks for all the work you do !!
Game Genie was one of those turning points back in the day. I still remember the early commercials, and I ended up getting the NES and, later, the SNES Game Genies. I still have the NES manual that came with the accessory, but the SNES one wasn't as... erm... durable. I tried to only use them for games I had beaten for additional fun, but there were a few games where I admit I ended up cheating my way through because I either lacked the patience for the game, or it was just a terrible game and I just wanted to see the stages/story/endings, if any.
Some of my favorite codes usually did something like make temporary party members permanent (usually replacing a normally permanent character), or changing up a character's stats/weapons/fighting style/etc. General Leo of FF6 comes to mind, though he obviously lacked some things that the other characters got. Infinite money or MP (depending on the game) usually just allowed for insane fun.
You can have Leo around for the ending. The game doesn’t know what to do with him sometimes though, so Kefka will be giving his final speech and Leo will just hover at the bottom of the screen.
great topic for a video, i never knew if the game genie was even sold in my country, but playing around with cheats is always fun as a kid (i did a real mess in gta3 later on)
Final Fantasy 3 (6). There were some codes that let you start with better equipment. I used to use that code that gave you the ragnarok sword. When you normally get it late in the game you have to choose between keeping the sword or turning it into an esper item, which was one of only two ways to learn the ultima spell. With the code I could have both!
Yes that single jump to clear Mario levels! I used a similar code for Mario Bros 3 called Skywalker. You jump and you stay at the top of the map, just off screen as long as you hold the jump button. Then you just hover your way over to the end of the map!
Also, I always wondered why the SNES game genie didn't have passthrough connectors for the pins on the edge of the cartridge?
I remember using game genie to bypass to level 8 in little nemos dream master just to hear that awesome nightmare land theme music. Now you can hear it all over youtube and I can relive my childhood on emulators!
I've been playing SimCity since I was a single digit kid and had no idea there was a $1 dollar code. I knew about the budget screen trick but not an actually Game Genie cheat. Welp I guess I know how I am spending my work from home day now 😂 Love the videos so much, can't wait to see the Pro Action Replay!
I remember that commercial. I thought it was pretty annoying back then too. Remember advertisers, kids aren't stupid! Me and my brothers would make up codes all the time, it was so much fun. I don't remember any of them, but I do remember fixing a couple from the booklet that would normally crash the game.
Me and my cousin growing up had a blast using Game Game codes with SF2 Turbo it pretty much made it like the home version of the Rainbow edition SF2 arcade game.
Thank you for including that Game Gene commercial, it took me back!👍
Nintendo sued someone over having anything remotely to do with their own IP? I can't believe it. Color me absolutely shocked.
My favorite Game Genie codes were for infinite lives in Contra III. It’s how I originally learned the game. Would have a friend over every weekend and one of our rituals for the night would be to play through Contra III and see how few times we’d die. Then we’d play through Turtles in Time.
0:24 Your dog is so disappointed in your cheating, she can't even look at you
The dog can sense the angry genie forced into the cart
On PS1, there was a GameShark code for Final Fantasy Tactics that changed the character in a certain slot of your roster. The last two digits of the code were a modifier that denoted which character would appear. The book I had showed a list of the different characters and the respective modifier for the code. Well, I messed around with it, putting random numbers/letters in the modifier slots and got some insane results like having the final boss on my team. It's crazy to see how each entity in the game is programmed the same (that's just how the battle system works) in that they have fully functioning commands and ability lists. Fun times.
Edit: Oh yeah, most of the ones I tried though ended up just being garbled pixels that crashed the game lol
Game Genie also saw a revival on PS3, though as a save editor rather than an outright cheat device.
The people who revived it now have one for PS4 known as Save Wizard. Still a save editor, though.
It is worth mentioning that the SNES version of the Game Genie has a switch on the front so that you can turn off all the codes while you are playing. I think they did this to allow you to use some of the codes that would otherwise crash the game, or maybe so you can turn off things like every hit a home run when the other team is at bat.
Those gnarly dudes make me both miss the 90s and be glad that time is gone.
Wow, flashback to me getting a keyboard for PS2 just so I could enter 120 lines of code to have a controllable Sephiroth in ff7
I've never had a GG for the SNES...only for the NES...although I wish theses devices would come back...or at least cheat codes....now you gotta buy the same cheats or unlockables!
When I was a kid (this was a few months after Super Metroid came out and my parent's bought me it), I had beaten the game without using the Genie and had my big saved file on the cartridge, as well as my mother's saved game, and figured I'd start messing around with the Game Genie since I beat Super Metroid. There was one particular code that the book warned in bold letters that it MUST be typed in correctly, and I used it a few times, no problems (it was like a infinite life code).
THEN one time I must have type that code in wrong, and I all of a sudden got an FBI warning screen telling me how copying videos games will get you this and that kind of fine and jail time, and the screen completely froze my snes. Started the game up again, and the FBI warning had wiped out all of my saved games lol. The mistyped code literally made the game think I was trying to copy it, and Ninentdo clearly had safeguards to detect that on their games, and would give you a punishment of erasing your data.
That happened to me with DKC but I don't own a game genie. It just randomly happened. It game me an illegal operation screen. All I did was turn it on. Both the cartridge and console are offical products so I don't know what happened. I was super mad my save file got deleted.
If you're interested in some other game genie codes, there's a TH-cam channel called "Displaced Gamers", the guy has a series where he looks into old NES games that were messed up in some way and usually provides a game genie code to fix the error. He did one on NES TMNT and fixed hit boxes and attack speed delays, really interesting stuff!
dude... that game genie screenshot made me have to pause the video , man the good old days, i should call my brother and tell him i miss him
FF3: replacing Terra’s “Fight” with “Magitek”
Gau using Rage and Mog-Dance without frenzy status
My older brother's friend gave me his SNES Game Genie when I was in elementary school and I wore that thing out. I still have the code book and a photo album full of old GamePro clippings with tons of other codes.
As much as i abused the game genie cheat my way thru games in the 8 and 16 bit era, i loved the pro action replay even more for the psx era. It let me recruit all the normally unplayable and guest characters in my party for final fantasy tactics, and if I'm not mistaken if you had one for the sega Saturn you could play import games without modding the consoles. I bought dragon force 2 from a local import shop and i think that's in part how i got it to play.
Good Memories. Glad I was able to give my son this experience too
That was pretty fun, you should definitely do the Action Replay video. Tackle the Genesis too.
Somehow your "rad voice" is a SCARILY accurate impression of Otto from the simpsons
Now I need a best "SNES 90's commercials' from you speaking in 90's bro voice the whole time.
I loved being able to turn SNES Street Fighter 2 into the Rainbow Edition style hacky gameplay we could also play down at the local corner store at the time. So damn cool doing air specials and modifying other aspects at home. Crashing roulette was just part of the game when you messed with the Genie 😅
The nice shimmer effect that the GG invulnerability code for Super Mario World makes it my personal favorite.
One of the best MLB games ever on SNES. Played it all the time when I was a kid. What a great era to grow up in back then.
One of the best things for me using the Game Genie on the SNES was the switch so that you could shut off the codes if you backed yourself into a corner. If you had invincibility on but the game was one that had a forced-loss fight, you could bypass the Game Genie for that fight and then turn it back on once the story progressed.
----
Also, I remember Nintendo being so pissed at losing the Game Genie lawsuit that they made sure you could not play Super Mario RPG with the existing Game Genie, which required there to be a Game Genie 2 for the SNES that worked around Nintendo's shenanigans.
Dude!! SWEET!! Haha, I love that Game Genie ad.
I was more of an Action Replay man myself. I had one for the Commodore 64 when it was first released.
Of course, in the case of the Action Replay for the C64 it also had the ability to save the entire game at any point, to either a cassette or indeed disk drive. Making it an almost legitimate game pirating device.
When I ordered my first one via an ad in Zzap! 64 magazine, I received a letter by return post that requested I sign an enclosed form stating that I wouldn't be using the device to pirate software. Then the device was dispatched once they received my signed form. Quite a lot of faffing. Worth it though for what was a total game breaker back then in times of proper hard games.
The 3 True Outcomes mode for Winning Run is an interesting one for sure.
Ryu jumping around like a grasshopper while setting those he kicks on fire sounds like a particularly deranged season of Kamen Rider, and I am super-here for it.
Clyde does not approve of the use of cheats.
“He’s damn opposed. Damn, damn, DAMN opposed!”
Favorite channel wish you could do a video on the GameShark for the PlayStation one
For Street Fighter I like to use the special moves in the air with the unlimited Zangief grab range. It’s super broken and he can beat anyone at any difficulty level.
The Game Genie allowed me to enjoy so many games that frustrated my limited skill set. I don't say I beat those games, but I did enjoy them.
8:20 Funny enough, thats the very point BEFORE you'd normally locate the Hadoken.
SNES slowdown was a much a feature as a flaw. Fight me.
Game Genie was the only reason I was able to see later stages as a kid in Battle Toads. I was probably going to game over 90% of the time on the Turbo Tunnel. I couldn't have imagined there would be something even harder in the game than that, but I found the snake level.
That Mega Man X code is literally how I played the game for the first time! I got the game for Christmas along with a new "High Frequency" controller that had turbo and slow-mo. The problem was slow-mo was just a turbo switch for the start button...I couldn't understand why the menu kept popping up, I thought my new game was broken out of the box! I was so upset I even called my mom at work hah. Took me a bit to realize it was that slow-mo switch I had flipped before even starting the game. I got ZAMN and Paperboy 2 that Christmas too...awesome memories!
That ad was the most 90's thing, I loved it.
I remember one of the things I did the most was get a walk-through-walls code for FF4 and sequence break the game, getting characters I wasn't supposed to get out of order, and sometimes just crashing the game. Was hilarious when I was a kid to be sure, for a game I played through countless times.
As kids we used the Action Replay Cart allll the time it was fantastic 😁
Dad said if we bought the Action Roplay cart we were not allowed other birthday gifts so it was the one time all of us got together to get that gift😋
Having a cheat cart was just the done thing everyone had a Game Genie for the Nintendo NES it was on sale at the time for £10
Please keep going with these cheat code videos
Not a snes code but the game genie code for Kirby and the amazing mirror that lets you keep your ability upon getting hit is an absolute godsend
What's up with the dollar store Bill and Ted? I don't remember that commercial 🤣.
Some notes regarding the Nintendo/Galoob lawsuit. You're mostly correct, but it is a bit more complicated than most people think. For one, it was actually Galoob and Codemasters who initiated the lawsuit. I mean, it's evident from the lawsuit's title, "Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc." that it was Galoob who acted first. The suit was a preventative measure against Nintendo, who was known for making a hostile marketplace for unlicensed software. The suit was to seek a declaratory judgment and file and injunction against Nintendo to prevent them from interfering with sales of the Game Genie. Only after this did Nintendo countersue, and everything else you said about Nintendo's side of the suit was true.
What I also found interesting is that Sega was *not* as welcoming of the Game Genie as everyone assumes. It was only after Galoob issued a threat to Sega to issue a similar suit as the Nintendo one that Sega decided to play nice with the Game Genie. The Sega Genesis Game Genie had a nasty feature seldom talked about, which was that it prevented games with battery back-ups from saving progress.
I forgot all about the "Bill and Ted Present: Game Genie" commercials
Seeing the gane genie screen gave me some nostalgic moments! Thank you for doing another codes video!!
Another great video, please do more of these. Great content!!!
Props for the Godfrey Ho reference!
yeah I have lots of memories of building in simcity and then leaving the game alone for a hour while I did yard work or something and coming back and building. Now I have my phone or a book while I wait
Think it's funny that the game genie let Sf2 characters do their special moves airborne, and years later. Capcom makes it officially part of the game.
To this day, I want a code for ToeJam & Earl on the Mega Drive that lets the player walk on air without falling.
Cheats and passwords used to be fun unlockables.
The best game genie code I found changed all the fatalities in MK2. One of Baraka’s left the opponent doing the “clutching their groin in pain” animation, FOR 30 SECONDS, as blood would nonsensically explode everywhere and the game would eventually crash.
There’s something sooo magical about the first time you modify hex values and change the way a game plays
As a kid I always looked down on people who owned a Game Genie, I saw it as a crutch for people who sucked at games, I never really thought about them from the perspective of just experimenting and game breaking. Flash forward 5-10 years and one of the most fun times I have ever had playing video games was a few sessions of the first Drive game on Playstation 1, a Game Shark or Action Replay (don't recall exactly, wasn't mine), and a sheet full of codes. Manipulating the way the cars worked and the games physics then driving around would have my friends and I laughing uncontrollably at how the game would break in the most interesting ways. Good times!
Just saying that, your 90s coolness voice would fit well for a parody of 90s video game ads, seriously.
My personal best use of game genie was using it on street fighter 2 to win with each character on the hardest setting basically I could do each character’s special moves with just pressing one button this worked best with fireballs and characters that shot fireballs like ryu ken guile etc. and you would shoot them so fast the computer controlled characters wouldn’t have enough time to block them I was able to get the ending for each character this way cuz I wasn’t good enough to beat this game on the harder settings
Pffff i have an Action Replay!
I still have a messed up Save Game from Zelda and i remember it was neat (but useless) to get with Yoshi into the Castles.
I still use some codes nowadays with some Games that are just not fun without, unlimited continues/lives et cetera on unfair games are just a blessing.
I made a lot of SNES codes. These codes are a little more complicated than people might imagine. For an infinite life code you are not changing the lives value in RAM you are actually editing the code of the ROM that would remove lives. This is much more similar to cracking due to that. The easiest way these days to create codes is to get an emulator with a debugger and look for some guides to get you started. The main limiting factor of the game genie was the number of codes otherwise you could have just made your own game with it. This also led to codes being wrote in a space saving way. You also will need to learn some assembly to write codes.
It was so nice to saw your dog again. It makes me happy. Well is there a generel list for all snes games because so many codes dont work
I had a game genie for my game boy and it allowed me to port all 151 Kanto Pokemon into one game. It's a nice quality of life feature especially for those days when trading was a pain in the backside.