Lost Classics: Game Genie (NES, SNES, Genesis, Game Gear, Game Boy)

Remember back in the days when cheat codes were the holy grail of video games? What gamer worth their salt didn’t remember the Konami code? How about the Sonic cheat that made our favorite blue hedgehog turn into anything and replicate himself? Looking for the perfect Mega Man 3 password that put you outside the gates of Dr. Wily’s castle with 9 energy tanks and using the second controller to jump super high? How about punching in the ‘blood code’ for Mortal Kombat on Genesis, or the more cooler and useful “DULLARD”? One device, like no other, gave us access to an unlimited amount of game-changing cheats…provided you could figure them out.

The Game Genie was a device created by Codemasters and distributed by Galoob and Camerica. It was the first of its kind, allowing players to hack their games. It allowed players to do everything from gaining infinite lives and skipping levels to viewing unused portions of a game and unlocking secret content. It works by isolating various values in a game, assigning them a hexadecimal value, then allowing one to change the value by adjusting the number. Codes were found in various game publications, but as this was before the internet, there were few ways of finding out new codes. Of course one could poke around through trial and error, but more of then than not this led to glitches and corrupted save files.

Nintendo was at first vehemently opposed to the device, even going so far as to sue Galoob, claiming that the units allowed copyright infringement and having them removed from store shelves. However, when it was later discovered that the unit didn’t allow bootlegging, they went back on sale. The device was not only available on NES, it was also available for Game Boy, Genesis (where it allowed players to play games made outside of their region, making it into a converter), Game Gear, and Super Nintendo. The Super Nintendo version of the device was interesting to say the least. When used with Mortal Kombat, it changed the white sweat back to blood (provided you had the right code), and you could even change its color. When used with Street Fighter 2, it allowed one to play as the bosses, albeit in a glitched up way.

The Game Genie was the spiritual successor to the Pro-Action Replay, Gameshark, and other similar devices. In a world where winners never cheat and cheaters never win, the Game Genie shook things up and turned gamers into armchair hackers. What’s better than discovering a secret code? Making one yourself.