General Discussion [ Page 90 ]

The Game Genie is Magic

To celebrate Retro Tuesday today I am dialing the time machine back to awesome and talking about Galoob's magnificent Game Genie. Buckle up kids, the Game Genie allowed you to enter video game worlds you didn't know possible and often times more glitchy than before!

First time I was exposed to the Game Genie was when @WhiteboySlim showed it to me. It was a gold half cart that connected to the end of any Nintendo game. After you switched on the Nintendo a screen came up to enter a code and after the code was entered you could start the game. Game Genie came with a manual for how to essentially mod or cheat at a game. The only mod I remember was in Super Mario Brothers... Read All To celebrate Retro Tuesday today I am dialing the time machine back to awesome and talking about Galoob's magnificent Game Genie. Buckle up kids, the Game Genie allowed you to enter video game worlds you didn't know possible and often times more glitchy than before!

First time I was exposed to the Game Genie was when @WhiteboySlim showed it to me. It was a gold half cart that connected to the end of any Nintendo game. After you switched on the Nintendo a screen came up to enter a code and after the code was entered you could start the game. Game Genie came with a manual for how to essentially mod or cheat at a game. The only mod I remember was in Super Mario Brothers where Mario could jump really high. This allowed you to jump over the flag and if you did that and continued right, the map would continue without end.

Oh right, check out this awesome Game Genie commercial from the 80's. I remember this one as it was released during the Bill and Ted era and the commercial totally rides that 80's skateboard to paydirt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xi4m2qnZaY

The Game Genie manual recommended you try out random codes on games and see the effect. I remember us trying a bunch of random codes on Gradius and most of them scrambled the screen and other less awesome things. I am not sure if we hit pay dirt with any of the codes but it was fun trying things out. We always wrote them down in case we hit Genie gold so we could do it again.

Game Genie lives on in PC gaming now in that some games offer a console mode to change things if you desire. Proliferation of mods allow you take your game to a level Game Genie didn't, Skyrim being one modern example. That said, the ghost of Game Genie lives on in most emulators as all the major emulators support game genie codes.

Game Genie is one of those awesome things from the past that I don't see make the transition into the modern console era. In a world where console manufacturers are making systems more closed, a system to allow you to mod your game sanctioned by Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo seems unlikely. The openess of the PC system allows this but not as retroly awesome or one stop as the Game Genie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie
http://gamehacking.org/w/images/2/2a/Game_genie_nes_screen.png (the code screen)

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 08/14/2012 at 03:40pm

! comment I saw on the Game Genie commercial "For rich kids who sucked at video games

Travis Admin wrote on 08/14/2012 at 04:50pm

I hit paydirt with one. I managed to edit a known code for Ninja Gaiden to basically plow through everything without trying. Essentially, you stand next to something, and it's dead.

I loved the Game Genie. Not for the cheat factor, but because I felt like I was doing something that I shouldn't be able to. I WAS HACKING THE GAME.

Tungsten wrote on 08/14/2012 at 08:47pm

I loved it for the weird stuff: playing as the bad guys, replacing all of one sprite with another etc. You were able to actually make Shining Force II (my favorite game) a two player game, although with real intelligence, the enemy pretty much always won.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/15/2012 at 12:36am

I agree, the Game Genie was game modding / hacking! Never hit as much pay dirt as your guys, then again I never owned one just played it at other peoples houses.

Playing as bad guys sounds awesome, that kind of rings a bell but nothing comes to mind immediately. Would be kind of interesting to play Mario as a Goomba!

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/25/2014 at 01:10am

I loved the Game Genie! I'm happy that I can still use one in an emulator, that and Pro Action Replay. I always found it more fun to play a game where I can't die, I know it sounds lame, but I just enjoyed many games much better that way.

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Finished John Carmacks yearly Quakecon keynote today. It

Finished John Carmack's yearly Quakecon keynote today. It comes in a little over 3 hours and is jam packed with information about all things gaming and tech related. The video is linked above and I took notes on the things I felt were interesting.

First part of the keynote he talks about Rage and apologizes for the PC launch.

He talked about Doom 3 BFG Edition and that it will run at 60FPS on consoles and higher on PC.

He wants to Open Source Doom 3 BFG Edition but its unclear if thats possible. Might be able to just release parts of it.

Talked about what part of the Doom 3 codebase has changed. Much is similar in Tech 5.

The rendering engine was improved over... Read All

First part of the keynote he talks about Rage and apologizes for the PC launch.

He talked about Doom 3 BFG Edition and that it will run at 60FPS on consoles and higher on PC.

He wants to Open Source Doom 3 BFG Edition but its unclear if thats possible. Might be able to just release parts of it.

Talked about what part of the Doom 3 codebase has changed. Much is similar in Tech 5.

The rendering engine was improved over time.

Carmack wants to port Doom 3 to the Wii U, Vita and iPhone. Development and time constraints won’t allow it.

Doom 4 will be done when its done, no date to announce.

People felt Rage would be like Borderlands or Fallout 3 and that wasn’t what they were trying to do. People understand Doom, so Doom 4 will be an easier sell.

iD is closing down its mobile development.

Doom 3 BFG Edition is less of a survival horror game and now an action shooter with the recent changes:

They brightened things up.

The flashlight is attached to your gun now.

Less ammo stinginess, more liberal amount of ammo.

He thinks its more fun now and less masochistic as gamers are much less hardcore these day.

Recently he played Super Mario 3 and it was pretty hard, newer games are fun, but not really challenging.

iD games can’t take 6 years to create anymore. Hopefully Doom 4 won’t.

Feels like he has grown a lot in the last year as a software engineer.

NASA’s software engineering reports are not too useful to Carmack.

He is doign much more software engineering stuff like code reviews and helping the team learn best practices.

Carmack thinks Cloud Gaming is the unquestionable future of gaming. When he sees Gabe Newell he tells him this.

Its faster to send a packet over the web to Europe than it is from the back of your computer over a cable to your monitor. He thinks that is wrong and we shouldn’t put up with it.

Carmack is very interested in head mounted displays.

Doom 3 BFG Edition will work with head mounted displays and 3D tvs.

He doesn’t care about Windows 8. XP and 7 are just fine for him.

Here are the rest of the Quakecon panels featuring people from iD, Bethesda and Valve:

http://www.bethblog.com/2012/08/04/quakecon-2012-keynote-panels/

Tungsten wrote on 08/07/2012 at 05:37am

I love that guy. He talks about video games like an engineer. I read an interview with him a while back about voxels and octrees... stuff that I still only half understand. He's a genius, and he devotes that genius to helping me destroy the minions of hell. Sounds like fun to me.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/07/2012 at 05:59am

Yeah, Carmack is awesome and his yearly keynotes are great. This one was especially long which was good.

hardeyez wrote on 08/07/2012 at 11:58pm

That's surprising that they are closing down their mobile development, they made so much money off it (I thought that most of there recent profit was from mobile -- Rage didn't do so hot)

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2012 at 02:12am

I heard from Carmack the year earlier that they paid peoples salaries from it? He mentioned that some people can do 20mil+ sales but they didn't. Didn't say it wasn't good sales, just not AAA sales they are used to apparently.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2012 at 02:12am

Rage made money, according to sources I saw it sold maybe a million + units? A few bucks but not a Skyrim.

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I have wanted more major players to port games to Linux for

I have wanted more major players to port games to Linux for years. For along time iD was the only AAA developer that ported its games to Linux. Occasionally other companies would dabble in it but it was largely ignored.

As Windows 8 is nearing release some people are not happy with the direction Microsoft is headed. Gabe Newell recently called Windows 8 a catastrophe and make no secret that they were going to be porting Steam to Linux in response. Valve has stated the first game they are porting to Linux is Left for Dead 2 and have posted an update about it.

Snipped from the Valve blog post:

"After this work, Left 4 Dead 2 is running at 315 FPS on Linux. That the Linux... Read All

Tungsten wrote on 08/04/2012 at 06:08am

...hmmmm... i just started liking windows again, don't do this to me.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/04/2012 at 02:14pm

I'm sure it will still be around :) having choices isnt bad plus I imagine this may be a pre-cursor to a Steam console.

Tungsten wrote on 08/05/2012 at 06:03am

I'm all for a linux based Steam. Actually, if they can pull some more gamers and publishers, maybe linux will finally be used by more than geeks.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/06/2012 at 01:28am

I hope so. Its a fine operating system and after playing the newest humble ports on Linux I am pretty convinced its ready for prime time gaming. Might have been a few years ago, but the UI and such has finally come into its own and its pretty damn good right now. Then again, I am programmer.

hardeyez wrote on 08/08/2012 at 12:17am

Linux FTW! :)

Actually, I've wanted to use linux boot disks with games as a console-like experience for games for a long time. That is, ship a bootable disk that used linux and a linux version to make the game as fast as possible on pc hardware. I pushed at several companies for linux versions -- but it always fell on deaf ears because of the install base, ignoring the fact that you could just tell people to reboot and the game would be MUCH faster... and gamers go to great lengths to eek out more performance. We (as developers) would spend so much time working around and just not being able to control windows at a low-level that it was painful... And those of use who loved being able to code for consoles and eek out every last shred of performance from the machine, LOVED it... Until xbox came around and brought along the windows-isms to consoles (including the painful directx rendering performance). I can't tell you the amount of time I spent lobbying Microsoft for just a couple changes to directx on xbox to vastly improve performance... ah so sad. (I got out of the game before the 360 hit shelves, so maybe they got better there, but I doubt it).

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/08/2012 at 02:11am

I remember Gentoo doing something you mention back round 2005 or something. I found a Linux distro for gaming:

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=linuxgamers

But I remember Gentoo making a bootable CD or DVD with Wolfenstein Enemy Territory that booted from the disc, with the right drivers and such to just play games. I don't remember that is was really popular, but it was something I remember being tried out back in the day. I am not sure if there were any performance gains, I imagine going right off the CD/DVD was kind of a hit right there?

I really notice how much better gaming is on my PC than the PS3. Load times are cut considerably, nicer graphics and the game is just a smidge more responsive. Still, in general the console experience even with a reduced FPS is a bit more polished in the UI.

Anyways, not sure where that last part came from but rad-sauce!

Tungsten wrote on 08/09/2012 at 04:37am

As a side note, which distro are you using now?

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/09/2012 at 08:05am

Latest Ubuntu LTS. Server and desktop depending on the context.

MoonWyrd Supporter wrote on 08/09/2012 at 02:32pm

At one time there was a company doing nothing but ports of games to Linux - Loki Entertainment. I played many hours of Civ:CTP on Linux. I think they were ahead of their time sadly.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/10/2012 at 01:22am

Loki was cool. Too bad they folded. A few good things happened from it though, SDL, the Loki installer and Ryan Gordon :)

I have a hunch he is working on Steam and Left 4 Dead 2 for Linux but he hasn't said officially. If I see him at PAX ill ask :)

hardeyez wrote on 08/10/2012 at 01:50am

There is also http://www.linuxgamepublishing.com/ but I never actually bought anything off them... (something about their site/messaging/communication that made them feel fly-by-night).

Also Neverwinter Nights (the first version) has a linux version... Not to mention the humble bundles have linux versions.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 08/10/2012 at 02:15am

I played Neverwinter on Linux, it was a good port!

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Quakecon 2012

To celebrate Quakecon 2012 iD Software & Bethesda are both kicking in to bring you the most kick ass gaming deal of the year folks. For $99 on Steam you get practically all the titles from both studios. But I won't bother you with any more details than the actual games you will get. *Ahem*

Oh right and Dawnguard is now available on Steam for download. Its $20. Yeah so I bothered you with one more detail. Totally worth it.

Quakecon Pack contains:

BRINK
BRINK: Agents of Change
BRINK: Doom/Psycho Combo Pack
BRINK: Fallout/SpecOps Combo Pack
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Commander Keen
DOOM 3
DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil
DOOM II
Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition
... Read All

It took longer than two weeks, but it looks like starting in

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/i-DF5xBvt/0/L/i-DF5xBvt-L.jpg

It took longer than two weeks, but it looks like starting in November Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO is going the free-to-play route. According to the article, free players will be able to play through all the class story lines but be limited on what flashpoints (think instances or raids) they can do and have limited access to the auction house.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/175042/After_less_than_a_year_The_Old_Republic_is_going_free_to_play.php

This morning I read a really interesting article about the

This morning I read a really interesting article about the rise and fall of Curt Shillings 38 studios. A few things I learned from the Article:

1. 38 Studios bought Big Huge Games. Big Huge Games created Rise of Nations and Kingdom of Amalur.
2. The studio got a loan of about 50 million dollars from Rhode Island government by moving headquarters.

I wonder if this means the state of Rhode Island owns Rise of Nations, Kingdoms of Alamlur and the other 38 studios IP?

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/2012/07/38-studios-end-game/print/

The wonderful people behind the Humble Bundles are doing

The wonderful people behind the Humble Bundles are doing something different this time-- Music!

A few of the albums are video game related, some directly, some tangentially. All albums are available in MP3 or FLAC, DRM-free.

I wonder what their next foray into electronic media for charity will be. Movies?

This is an incredibly interesting resource. Their tagline

This is an incredibly interesting resource. Their tagline is "Explore the art, philosophy, politics, and psychology of video games with some of the medium's most influential designers and visionaries."

http://www.criticalpathproject.com/

When in Doubt, Shift

When in Doubt, Shift

My game play habits have shifted from PC to console back to PC again for my entire life. When I was a wee lad my parents bought us a Commodore 64 then a few Christmases later, our first Nintendo. 4-5 years ago after primarally playing PC games for years I picked up a Wii. A year or so later I nabbed a PS3 and I was primarally a console player up till recently. Fast forward to now and I am shifting back to the PC starting with the release of Lord of the Rings Online Free to Play and then Diablo 3 and now the amazing Steam sale.

Ive shifted to now 90% of my gaming happens the PC and I only go to the consoles occasionally or for BluRay or Netflix.... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 07/20/2012 at 03:33am

Same here. I didn't get in on the last generation until late in the cycle. I was pretty much PC only until grabbing a PS1 for the Final Fantasy games, then PC only until I played a friend's copy of Guitar Hero. From then on I had a lot of catching up to do on the PS2 and GameCube and then that spilled into current gen. But now that we are toward the end of this console cycle, I find that my very modest PC plays all the games I care about, often better, and almost always prettier. It is quite amazing that medium quality Skyrim is slightly better than console Skyrim (short of some pop-in).

This will probably be where I stay until the first or second price drop of the next console generation. The only caveat is exclusives. As long as Nintendo is in the hardware market, the next Mario or Zelda isnt going to show up on PC.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 07/20/2012 at 02:30pm

From what I have seen of the next gen consoles, the Wii U seems interesting but nothing gnaws at me to get it. Perhaps the PS4 or XBox 3 would but we still don't know what those will be. If they both have BluRay it will be a tough choice but I still prefer to not pay for an Online service.

Azurephile Super Member wrote on 01/24/2014 at 07:38am

Awesome! The first computer I had was a Commodore 128D (backwards compatible with the C64). I played around with that until we got out first PC in '95. Back in those days, I was predominately a handheld gamer (I had a Gameboy and a Sega GameGear) and then a PC Gamer (Doom II, Wolfenstein, and Command & Conquer). I think it wasn't until I went to college that I became more of a console gamer, which I am now. Lately, I've gone back and forth between handheld, PC, and gaming with Pokemon X, Terraria, and Batman: Arkham City Origins (to name the most recent games I've played).

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Video Game Cakes Are Magically Delicious

As I trawl teh intrarwebs I come across many things. Some interesting, some boring and some I don't want to ever think about in my lifetime. One such thing falls in the realm of interesting and "huh?"

A site called Game Ranx collects and lists certain kinds of game related information. One such list is "25 Best Video Game Inspired Desserts."

http://www.gameranx.com/features/id/7555/article/25-best-video-game-inspired-desserts/#p12

The Gears of War cake... kind of scary. The Zelda cake? Awesome. I get older soon, hopefully my friends bring Skyrim or Metroid cupcakes. That or I cut them loose. I think I draw the friendship line with themed desserts.