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Game Genie was likely the primary contributor of exposing kids to computer science in the 90's/00's, especially with "63" or "FF" appearing in every Infinite Li

Game Genie was likely the primary contributor of exposing kids to computer science in the 90's/00's, especially with "63" or "FF" appearing in every Infinite Lives cheat code. The "wow" moment for me was a Encounter the Specified Pokemon cheatcode for Pokemon Red where the specified Pokemon was their ID in hexadecimal. Once I got a GameShark which included a VHS on how to create codes with the GameShark (identifying which memory addresses change and how to fix them to a specific value), and admittingly that may have scared me off of the computer science path.

chollida1 1y ago
> Game Genie was likely the primary contributor of exposing kids to computer science in the 90's/00's I"d say the internet and creating webpages with javascript probably had a slightly bigger impact on young programmers at the time, by maybe 3 orders of magnitude.
- minimaxir 1y ago
  I said computer science specifically: for web development in the 00's, Neopets was by far the biggest contributor for exposing kids to the power of the internet, but that was more limited to HTML.
  - bitwize 1y ago
    Not MySpace?
- TylerE 1y ago
  This was way before javascript. The first Game Genie was released for the NES in 1990. The very first version of Javascript wasn't until 1995.
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    Qbasic and nibbles/gorilla was around at the start of the 90s, but the proposal was 90s/00s which is basically the time period of the internet pre mobile phone.
    - anthk 1y ago
      No, late 90's and very early 00's were almost devoid of JS and it was anecdoctical. It was Flash and some ActiveX malware, if not both. And NPAPI/IE plugins for video players and such.
      - hdgvhicv 1y ago
        Well I was writing JavaScript in the late 90s, alongside things like server side includes. Come early 2000s I was paid for it.
- anthk 1y ago
  No, not even in late 90's. Emulators for GB/GBA (sometimes MSX/ZX/C64...) and PSX/N64 did far, far more than JS. When you could play for free games for the N64 (which weighted just a few MB's, good enough to get them from cybercafés in CD-ROM and play THPS2 at home), you have to be good to at least understand what the graphics mode did to emulators, the filters, the audio quality on CPU usage, and sometimes even hex-editing some ROM headers to enforce compatibility with some emulators. And, a bit later, in early 00's, compiling them for GNU/Linux for performance and patching some of them to understand odd bootleg NES cartridge mappers.
derefr 1y ago
> especially with "63" or "FF" appearing in every Infinite Lives cheat code Except that those numbers did not commonly appear in Game Genie codes, because Game Genie codes are [trivially] enciphered. See e.g. https://gamehacking.org/library/114 https://gamehacking.org/library/114 for an explanation — the cipher used was different for each system. AFAICT this enciphering was done precisely to discourage third-party code creation. Galoob never made any explicit statements about why they did it, but I'd guess† it served as a kind of DRM for codes, so that Galoob could be the only source of them, and thus sell you code books or something. If you're remembering "a cheat-code device that preceded the GameShark that had literal address:value codes, and became the default input format for cheat codes in NES/SNES/GB emulators", then you're probably thinking of the Game Genie's competitor, the (Pro) Action Replay. --- † There was also possibility of a vague hope on Galoob's part of contracting with games studios to create and publish "licensed" codes — making their device into less of a "cheating device" and more of a kind of post-sales-marketing micro-DLC-publishing channel for games studios. Think of the type of thing that you see in e.g. Nintendo Switch Online with "special editions" of games that are just the regular game with a code applied. Studios could have been putting out "special editions" after-the-fact by publishing [i.e. working with Galoob to publish] officially-sanctioned codes in gaming magazines. This never materialized... probably because studios that wanted to do post-sales-marketing micro-DLC, had enough foresight to build it into the game, in the form of pre-written live logic whose only live codepath involves a long and esoteric title-screen button-combo no player would ever guess; or even pre-written dead logic, that can be made live by an executable payload encoded into a password-system password, or a link-cable / e-reader / wi-fi distribution.
- bongodongobob 1y ago
  Using the letters was just shorthand, I think you're overthinking it.
  - LocalH 1y ago
    It wasn't shorthand, I'm pretty sure it was basic obfuscation. It was done by shuffling bits around then translating to letters using an algorithm that I don't know off the top of my head, but is well-documented. To me it shows explicit intent to cause codes to be harder to make.

chollida1 1y ago

> Game Genie was likely the primary contributor of exposing kids to computer science in the 90's/00's I"d say the internet and creating webpages with javascript probably had a slightly bigger impact on young programmers at the time, by maybe 3 orders of magnitude.

minimaxir 1y ago
I said computer science specifically: for web development in the 00's, Neopets was by far the biggest contributor for exposing kids to the power of the internet, but that was more limited to HTML.
- bitwize 1y ago
  Not MySpace?
TylerE 1y ago
This was way before javascript. The first Game Genie was released for the NES in 1990. The very first version of Javascript wasn't until 1995.
- hdgvhicv 1y ago
  Qbasic and nibbles/gorilla was around at the start of the 90s, but the proposal was 90s/00s which is basically the time period of the internet pre mobile phone.
  - anthk 1y ago
    No, late 90's and very early 00's were almost devoid of JS and it was anecdoctical. It was Flash and some ActiveX malware, if not both. And NPAPI/IE plugins for video players and such.
    - hdgvhicv 1y ago
      Well I was writing JavaScript in the late 90s, alongside things like server side includes. Come early 2000s I was paid for it.
anthk 1y ago
No, not even in late 90's. Emulators for GB/GBA (sometimes MSX/ZX/C64...) and PSX/N64 did far, far more than JS. When you could play for free games for the N64 (which weighted just a few MB's, good enough to get them from cybercafés in CD-ROM and play THPS2 at home), you have to be good to at least understand what the graphics mode did to emulators, the filters, the audio quality on CPU usage, and sometimes even hex-editing some ROM headers to enforce compatibility with some emulators. And, a bit later, in early 00's, compiling them for GNU/Linux for performance and patching some of them to understand odd bootleg NES cartridge mappers.

derefr 1y ago

> especially with "63" or "FF" appearing in every Infinite Lives cheat code Except that those numbers did not commonly appear in Game Genie codes, because Game Genie codes are [trivially] enciphered. See e.g. https://gamehacking.org/library/114 https://gamehacking.org/library/114 for an explanation — the cipher used was different for each system. AFAICT this enciphering was done precisely to discourage third-party code creation. Galoob never made any explicit statements about why they did it, but I'd guess† it served as a kind of DRM for codes, so that Galoob could be the only source of them, and thus sell you code books or something. If you're remembering "a cheat-code device that preceded the GameShark that had literal address:value codes, and became the default input format for cheat codes in NES/SNES/GB emulators", then you're probably thinking of the Game Genie's competitor, the (Pro) Action Replay. --- † There was also possibility of a vague hope on Galoob's part of contracting with games studios to create and publish "licensed" codes — making their device into less of a "cheating device" and more of a kind of post-sales-marketing micro-DLC-publishing channel for games studios. Think of the type of thing that you see in e.g. Nintendo Switch Online with "special editions" of games that are just the regular game with a code applied. Studios could have been putting out "special editions" after-the-fact by publishing [i.e. working with Galoob to publish] officially-sanctioned codes in gaming magazines. This never materialized... probably because studios that wanted to do post-sales-marketing micro-DLC, had enough foresight to build it into the game, in the form of pre-written live logic whose only live codepath involves a long and esoteric title-screen button-combo no player would ever guess; or even pre-written dead logic, that can be made live by an executable payload encoded into a password-system password, or a link-cable / e-reader / wi-fi distribution.

bongodongobob 1y ago
Using the letters was just shorthand, I think you're overthinking it.
- LocalH 1y ago
  It wasn't shorthand, I'm pretty sure it was basic obfuscation. It was done by shuffling bits around then translating to letters using an algorithm that I don't know off the top of my head, but is well-documented. To me it shows explicit intent to cause codes to be harder to make.