Mainly making cheats for games. Back then you have devices which allowed you to view memory, so I would play games and look for changes made in memory when you

Mainly making cheats for games. Back then you have devices which allowed you to view memory, so I would play games and look for changes made in memory when you did certain actions. Made a map of them. Most of the time a life counter was good enough. Also for my own games - you don't have pointers as such, you have your memory, and you need to know what lives where (and when it lives where).