I Dream of Genie (March 29, 2018)

[Bandit LOAF]

The Game Genie was a 'cheat' utility for cartridge-based systems developed by Galoob in the early 1990s. Game Genie hardware would act as a physical bridge between a game console and cartridge, allowing players to enter codes that would alter specific memory values in a given game. This would alter the game while in play, making changes to values like number of lives, amount of ammunition and the like. To allow the device to remain up to date with current releases, Galoob published a quarterly "Code Booklet" that listed cheat options for the latest titles. Three issues of the Super Nintendo code updates added listings for Wing Commander and The Secret Missions: "Vol. 1, No. 2" (Wing Commander,) "Vol. 2, No. 3" (The Secret Missions) and "E2C" (a compilation which reprints the codes from earlier booklets.) Scans of the Wing Commander enries are available below. Note that these codes are still useful for those running the games on modern systems; Super Nintendo emulators typically include an option to enter them. The codes for Wing Commander are specific to the Hornet and Scimitar while the Secret Missions selections have a much broader impact on the game.










Wing Commander (SNES)

Front Shield Increased on Hornet: 7ABC-3713
Rear Shield Increased on Hornet: 7AB4-4D1E
Front Armor increased on Hornet: 0DBB-4F1E
Rear Armor increased on Hornet: 0DBD-141E
Left Side Armor increased on Hornet: 0DBE-1D1E
Right Side Armor increased on Hornet: 0DB5-171E
Front Shield Increased on Scimitar: 17B8-3D13
Rear Shield Increased on Scimitar: 17B4-4F1E
Front Armor increased on Scimitar: 17BB-441E
Rear Armor increased on Scimitar: 17BD-171E
Left Side Armor increased on Scimitar: 17BE-1F1E
Right Side Armor increased on Scimitar: 17B6-1D1E
Mega Front Shields on Hornet: EEBC-37C3
Mega Rear Shields on Hornet: EEB4-4DCE
Mega Front Shields on Scimitar: 99B8-3DC3
Mega Rear Shields on Scimitar: 99B4-4FCE

Wing Commander The Secret Missions (SNES)

Unlimited Blasted Power: C2A6-4D0D
Unlimited Fuel: C2C8-14AD
Start on Mission 8: D668-C402
Start on Mission 4: D068-C402
Unlimited Missles: 3C66-C7A1

--
Original update published on March 29, 2018

 

[Worf]

Actually, the Game Genie never changed in-memory values. It had no access to the system or work RAM in the console. Instead, the codes would patch the cartridge ROM. This was because it sat in-between the ROM and the system, so every time a code matched (which was done by address matching), the Game Genie returned the coded value instead of the ROM value. Later ones (especially on 8-bit systems with mappers) they added a match value - because the mapper was hidden to the Game Genie, both the address and the data from ROM had to match before the Game Genie substituted the replacement value (to avoid replacing the wrong value because of the mapper).

It was a pretty neat system at it too - the code schemes were different - while all in the end resulted in an (Address, Replacement Data, (Optional Match Value)) format, how those were encoded into letters and numbers changed by platform. And platforms would often have limitations so only certain letters went in certain spots.

It all seemed so magical at the time, but in the end, it was really a simple device made all the more mysterious because of the interesting encoding scheme involved.