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When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

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Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#21

Post by redisman »

grawprog wrote: post #19

I had a game genie, pretty sure it was responsible for giving my nes the blanking screen of death. Seems like nintendo should have been happy, the game genie probably led to a bunch of snes sales due to its console killing tendencies(possibly just a myth...but I swear...that thing caused trouble on my nes.) and you literally needed a nes and games to use it. I get the philosophy behind making games unfun and such, I…

I had the game genie too and by far the most fun thing was to slightly edit the codes they provided you. You could get some weird memory hacks that would give you a broken power or some other way it broke the game world and then shortly crash afterwards

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#22

Post by ravenstine »

Man, I loved things like the Game Genie and Gameshark. They gave me my earliest understanding of how software runs in memory and the nature of the memory. Was great to just poke at parts of the memory with it and just see what happens.

I didn't need to be reminded of another reason to hate Nintendo. I think I air my grievances in every HN thread about Nintendo. But this does add to the pile. Around the same time I lost interest in Nintendo, games like Halo became attractive because Bungie explicitly wanted people to mod the PC version of the game. At the time, it was really cool for a game company to embrace the creativity of their players instead of putting a lock in their imaginations like Nintendo wanted.

Nintendo's misguided hatred of memory editors goes beyond just punishing players. They essentially against the nerds who one day might have become inspired to build their games. The only kids I knew who had the Game Genie/Shark were nerds. Average people didn't really have them and being able to "cheat" in the games wasn't really going to ruin their experience.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#23

Post by grawprog »

redisman wrote: post #21
grawprog wrote: post #19

I had a game genie, pretty sure it was responsible for giving my nes the blanking screen of death. Seems like nintendo should have been happy, the game genie probably led to a bunch of snes sales due to its console killing tendencies(possibly just a myth...but I swear...that thing caused trouble on my nes.) and you literally needed a nes and games to use it. I get the philosophy behind making games unfun and such, I…

I had the game genie too and by far the most fun thing was to slightly edit the codes they provided you. You could get some weird memory hacks that would give you a broken power or some other way it broke the game world and then shortly crash afterwards

Yeah. Messing around with silly things like that breaking the game is what I remember most about it. It didn't really stop me from playing the game normally, it was just something you played around with to make crazy stuff happen. I probably spent more time playing games legit than using the game genie. It was fun, but the novelty wore off after a while.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#24

Post by userbinator »

grawprog wrote: post #19

I had a game genie, pretty sure it was responsible for giving my nes the blanking screen of death. Seems like nintendo should have been happy, the game genie probably led to a bunch of snes sales due to its console killing tendencies(possibly just a myth...but I swear...that thing caused trouble on my nes.) and you literally needed a nes and games to use it. I get the philosophy behind making games unfun and such, I…

The NES was famous for flaky cartridge connectors (leading to the lore about blowing on them... which didn't really help) even when stock; the GG's design just stressed it more.

https://console5.com/wiki/Improving_NES-001_Reliability

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#25

Post by schoen »

kmeisthax wrote: post #17
lxe wrote: post #13

Towards the end of the second video, 3:50-ish they mention how Nintendo is being anti-competitive by fully controlling what (and how) software can run on their systems, and their reasoning is "quality control". Sounds familiar?

Nintendo literally invented the App Store model.

I have the impression that the NES was the first device whose manufacturer tried to license the developers of compatible software. Does anyone know an earlier example?

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#26

Post by minimaxir »

ravenstine wrote: post #22

Man, I loved things like the Game Genie and Gameshark. They gave me my earliest understanding of how software runs in memory and the nature of the memory. Was great to just poke at parts of the memory with it and just see what happens. I didn't need to be reminded of another reason to hate Nintendo. I think I air my grievances in every HN thread about Nintendo. But this does add to the pile. Around the same time I lo…

The Game Genie/Gameshark incidentally scared child-me away from computer science because I didn't understand how the hell they came up with these codes (aside from 99 in hex is 63 and 255 in hex is FF).

One Game Shark came with a "how to hack" VHS which came down to "it's easy, just observe which values change in memory when you perform an action, and just freeze that value!". That's one way to get imposter syndrome.

The best unintentional introduction to computer science/memory abuse in a video game for me was the Missingno glitch in Pokemon Red/Blue.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#27

Post by sokoloff »

schoen wrote: post #25
kmeisthax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo literally invented the App Store model.

I have the impression that the NES was the first device whose manufacturer tried to license the developers of compatible software. Does anyone know an earlier example?

Activision ended up paying Atari royalties on VCS game sales, but it's not clear if you'd consider that an attempt to license 3rd party devs or a reaction to ex-employees who quit because you treated them poorly and the royalty was the result of a court battle not a mutual negotiation.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#28

Post by kens »

schoen wrote: post #25
kmeisthax wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo literally invented the App Store model.

I have the impression that the NES was the first device whose manufacturer tried to license the developers of compatible software. Does anyone know an earlier example?

The TI-99/4A home computer (1981) restricted software to licensed vendors through a lockout chip. This was one factor that led to the failure of the TI-99/4A.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#29

Post by schoen »

kens wrote: post #28
schoen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the impression that the NES was the first device whose manufacturer tried to license the developers of compatible software. Does anyone know an earlier example?

The TI-99/4A home computer (1981) restricted software to licensed vendors through a lockout chip. This was one factor that led to the failure of the TI-99/4A.

Huh, I hadn't been aware of that example. But Wikipedia seems to think that the lockout chip came in in 1983 in a revision of the TI-99/4A design and that earlier models didn't have it. In that case, it might be roughly tied with the NES.

Re: When Nintendo fought a device that gave Mario 'new superpowers'

#30

Post by tadfisher »

schoen wrote: post #29
kens wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TI-99/4A home computer (1981) restricted software to licensed vendors through a lockout chip. This was one factor that led to the failure of the TI-99/4A.

Huh, I hadn't been aware of that example. But Wikipedia seems to think that the lockout chip came in in 1983 in a revision of the TI-99/4A design and that earlier models didn't have it. In that case, it might be roughly tied with the NES.

The NES shipped in limited quantities in 1985. The Family Computer shipped in 1983, and it lacked any sort of lockout technology, leading to the proliferation of unlicensed games in Japan and ultimately the development of the 10NES system for the North American NES.
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