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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'

#51

Post by viraptor »

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…

> Nintendo does many things I personally find counterintuitive and even counterproductive.

I'm amazed at the number of times I heard about Nintendo basically shooting themselves in the foot just to retain more control. Like banning Psycrow from Mario maker. Using content identification to silence audio from streamers. Taking down fan-made Mario-related content. Every one of those bringing them free advertisement and more customers.

I'm surprised that smm rom-hacks still exist given the restrictions.

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

#52

Post by filmgirlcw »

periphrasis wrote: post #36
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…

Regular use gradually bent the pins in the NES cartridge slot. Without really good pin contact, the NES10 lockout chip wouldn’t authenticate the cart, and the flashing red light and blanking screen were the indicators for authentication failure. Using a game genie increased the stress on those pins due to its altered insertion angle for the cartridge. So it wasn’t your imagination: game genie really did “break” your…

Of course, if you out the Game Genie in the 1993 model, you really would break it. Galoob or whoever marketed the Game Genie did make a top-loading model, but as I recall, they are very rare.

I got an NES in 1988 when I was 4 or 5 and it died in 1993 and I got the new design for my birthday (a month before I got an SNES for Christmas, so it didn’t get a ton of use). I stupidly sold it at a garage sale for $20 in 1995, not realizing it would be worth a ton later on. But in 2001 or 2002, I actually took that original NES to an authorized repair center, they shipped it off and it returned, essentially brand new. It still works today. As I recall, I paid less than $50 for the repair, which was less than a front-loading NES was going for at the time on eBay. The fact that Nintendo would service a system that was 16 or 17 years old always stuck with me, especially since Sony disavowed working on a 1996 or 1997-era PSX at that same time (I managed to fix it myself, but Sony was utterly disinterested in even allowing me to pay to repair a misaligned laser and just wanted me to buy the redesigned PS One). It’s part of why I’ve continued to be a loyal Nintendo customer for more than 30 years.

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

#53

Post by schwartzworld »

Honestly the language used makes it sound like the Game Genie was a cheating device, but it was a lot more than that. Game Genie allowed you to breathe new life into your old games.

I had the game genie for Sega Genesis. I had like 15 games for it, and I played some of them like Sonic 2 and Kid Chameleon a lot. Sega games didn't have a way to save them, so you played the beginning levels again and again until you knew the Blue Hill Zone map inside and out. "Cheats" were the only way to change this. Even without GG, you could enter debug mode in Sonic 2, (1 9 9... Damn I can't remember the rest.) and use it to reshape levels in fun new ways.

Game Genie gave you access to those sorts of features on all your games. Sure, being able to jump higher is helpful in Mario, but in Sonic the Hedgehog it's just different, and sometimes harder. My friends and i tried thousands of codes at random, noting the ones that still loaded a playable game.

We also noticed the digits of the hex codes were significant. So to stick with the jumping example, we figured out which digits meant "jumping code" and then tweak the others. I didn't know what hexidecimal was, so it was a wow moment when I realized a > 9

I think it's worth noting that Sega incorporated the thru-cartridge design of the GG into the game Sonic and Knuckles. If you connected it to other Sonic titles you could play those games as Knuckles. If you connected it to any other random game you got new levels of the mini ring collecting game that was part of Sonic 3/Sonic and Knuckles.

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

#54

Post by skocznymroczny »

schwartzworld wrote: post #53

Honestly the language used makes it sound like the Game Genie was a cheating device, but it was a lot more than that. Game Genie allowed you to breathe new life into your old games. I had the game genie for Sega Genesis. I had like 15 games for it, and I played some of them like Sonic 2 and Kid Chameleon a lot. Sega games didn't have a way to save them, so you played the beginning levels again and again until you kne…

> I didn't know what hexidecimal was, so it was a wow moment when I realized a > 9

Reminds me when I was a kid in DOS days. I somehow managed to learn how to save a game, modify something (e.g. sell some items to get gold), save a game again, compare two savegames and then use a hex editor to modify the memory that changed between those two savegames. I also didn't really know hexadecimal back then, I just knew to put 0xff into all changed fields. I always wondered why it gave me "ugly" numbers like 4294967296, but I wasn't complaining because it was a lot of ingame gold.

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

#55

Post by rograndom »

oriolid wrote: post #49

I wonder if it occurred to Nintendo at the time that they could have sold the device by themselves. Right now it seems that one of the best business models in (casual mobile) games is to make the game unwinnable at some point and then sell boosters that allow progress to next level.

That was what Nintendo Power magazine subscriptions were for. Recurring revenue for stuff that should've been in the game manuals (maps, secret explanations, etc)

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

#56

Post by minimaxir »

colordrops wrote: post #47
minimaxir wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

If this is what scared you from computer science, then if game genie didn't exist, something else would have scared you.

I was scared away from CS many times before I was forced to do it and it turned out I was good at it.

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

#57

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#58

Post by oriolid »

rograndom wrote: post #55
oriolid wrote: post #49

I wonder if it occurred to Nintendo at the time that they could have sold the device by themselves. Right now it seems that one of the best business models in (casual mobile) games is to make the game unwinnable at some point and then sell boosters that allow progress to next level.

That was what Nintendo Power magazine subscriptions were for. Recurring revenue for stuff that should've been in the game manuals (maps, secret explanations, etc)

To me it sounds more like cheats for people who can't be bothered to draw the map or find the secrets than something that should be included in game instructions. So, almost like selling gems now.

Btw, the map that came with Star Control II was brilliant storytelling addition. It was really there for copy protection, but in-game it represented the game universe in the past and if you had the map, you were in for some surprises.

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

#59

Post by ficklepickle »

minimaxir wrote: post #56
colordrops wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is what scared you from computer science, then if game genie didn't exist, something else would have scared you.

I was scared away from CS many times before I was forced to do it and it turned out I was good at it.

Me too, my friend! Part of me wishes I got into it earlier. But another part of me wouldn't change a thing for fear of messing it up.

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

#60

Post by ficklepickle »

sircastor wrote: post #42
14 wrote: post #35

I am using my game genie daily these days. My 4 year old does better on my old Nintendo since the controls are so basic. I had to replace all the capacitors on the nes before it would work and all my old games didn’t work right away they had to wiggle back and forth before making a good pin connection and I assume wear some of the tarnish off since the games since start better no messing around. I have always wondere…

I wasn’t able to find it with a quick Google search, but I recall seeing a couple of years ago a replacement 72 pin connector that would work more reliably that the original, if you were interested in making the effort.

Indeed, the originals are prone to corrosion. The replacement pins are gold-plated.
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