Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: A there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: job and Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and I love all things tech. And for some
Speaker 1: of you, the following sequence will have at least some
Speaker 1: level of significance. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left right,
Speaker 1: b A, and maybe start. For those of you who
Speaker 1: have never heard of that, that is the famous Konami code,
Speaker 1: which was first used in a Nintendo Entertainment system part
Speaker 1: of the arcade game Gradius way back in n And
Speaker 1: what did that code do? Well, actually could do a
Speaker 1: few things. If you put it in during the title
Speaker 1: screen of the game, you would start the game with
Speaker 1: thirty lives during the game. If you paused it and
Speaker 1: you put that code in, you would receive extra missiles
Speaker 1: and a speed boost and some other goodies, but only
Speaker 1: once per level. It's arguably the most famous cheap code
Speaker 1: of all time, one that has appeared in multiple games,
Speaker 1: dozens of games, and also on other platforms not just games.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's a cheap code, sometimes it's an easter egg.
Speaker 1: It goes well beyond Konami games. But why would Konami
Speaker 1: even include that code in the first place. Well, see kiddos.
Speaker 1: When video games were young, they were also vicious, Like
Speaker 1: early video games were mega difficult and unforgiving. There's been
Speaker 1: a resurgence of those kind of games recently, largely because
Speaker 1: the people who played them as kids are adults now
Speaker 1: and that's the kind of games they like to play.
Speaker 1: But some of those early titles lacks stuff like continues,
Speaker 1: so once you round lives, that was it. In fact,
Speaker 1: in the early consoles, there was no real way to
Speaker 1: save your progress at all. Some games would sometimes include
Speaker 1: a code at certain points of a game, and if
Speaker 1: you were to write down that code and then enter
Speaker 1: the code in a future play session, it would allow
Speaker 1: you to start from your finishing point. So that was
Speaker 1: sort of a workaround for the lack of a save function.
Speaker 1: Before you had stuff like memory cards and other ways
Speaker 1: of like onboard storage that you could use to to
Speaker 1: save games. But my point is these games were wicked hard,
Speaker 1: and they weren't just hard for consumers, you know, they
Speaker 1: were also hard for game developers. And sometimes you just
Speaker 1: need to test the game code to make sure everything's working.
Speaker 1: You want to check the graphics and the gameplay. You
Speaker 1: might need to see how transitions are working, and you
Speaker 1: want to make you know sure that the stuff is
Speaker 1: behaving the way you want it to. And this can
Speaker 1: be really slow going if you know, it's a bullet
Speaker 1: hell style arcade game and it's so hard you can't
Speaker 1: even get very far to test things, even though you're
Speaker 1: the one have made it. So this programmer named Kazuhisa
Speaker 1: Hashimoto decided to include a code that would give him
Speaker 1: some boosts so that he could continue to play this
Speaker 1: game he was working on. He said the arcade version
Speaker 1: was so difficult he could never play through it, and
Speaker 1: he was in charge of creating the port, so it's
Speaker 1: possible the code would have remained more or less unknown.
Speaker 1: I mean, back in those days, the average person didn't
Speaker 1: have access to the Internet, and there was no such
Speaker 1: thing as the World Wide Web at that point. In fact,
Speaker 1: most gamers would just get their information from hard print
Speaker 1: magazines like Tips and Tricks or Nintendo Power. So while
Speaker 1: some curious folks would likely have uncovered the code one
Speaker 1: way or another, it was possible that word wouldn't have
Speaker 1: really spread very much. But Konami also included the same
Speaker 1: code in another game. This one called Contra. This was
Speaker 1: in Contra was a big hit in America, but it
Speaker 1: didn't take long for word to spread that the code
Speaker 1: that first appeared in Gradius is also in contract. Soon
Speaker 1: folks share the information in various ways, like word of
Speaker 1: mouth or in one of those video game magazines. Will
Speaker 1: come back to that in a second, and the Konami
Speaker 1: code was well on its way to becoming one of
Speaker 1: the pillars of gaming in its own way. So I
Speaker 1: thought I would do an episode about cheats and video games,
Speaker 1: and some of the examples I'll mention are things that
Speaker 1: developers built into their own games, either as like an
Speaker 1: easter egg or sometimes like Hashimoto, as a way for
Speaker 1: allowing developers to test certain game aspects without having to
Speaker 1: worry about, you know, a ghost gobbling them up, or
Speaker 1: a space marine stomping their brains in or whatever. I
Speaker 1: also want to touch on, you know, the black market
Speaker 1: industry of game hacks. These are tools that give players
Speaker 1: unfair advantages in games, mostly you know, multiplayer competitive games.
Speaker 1: We're gonna focus on that more in the following episode
Speaker 1: or Wednesday's episode. I should say, I'm sure any gamers
Speaker 1: out there have encountered sort of thing at one point
Speaker 1: or another. If they play multiplayer games, I'm sure you've
Speaker 1: had an experience where you've encountered a cheater. I know
Speaker 1: I have. I remember playing a game of pub G
Speaker 1: where I was in a car going very fast and
Speaker 1: got sniped with one bullet to the head by a player,
Speaker 1: And when I watched the death cam, I saw that
Speaker 1: they weren't even in line of sight with my car,
Speaker 1: and I thought, huh, that seems suss And then considering that,
Speaker 1: that player then went on to like headshot three other
Speaker 1: you know, players in the same moment told me they
Speaker 1: were cheating. But I hope none of you have actually
Speaker 1: made use of those kinds of cheats, because, let's face it,
Speaker 1: that kind of cheating is totally lame. If you're relying
Speaker 1: on code to give you an edge on other players,
Speaker 1: well it's not really you that's putting in the work,
Speaker 1: is it. But again, we'll get to that in the
Speaker 1: next episode. Really, honestly, the history of cheat codes predates
Speaker 1: the famed Konami code. I figured I had to start
Speaker 1: there because it's the best known cheat code of all time.
Speaker 1: I think before codes were really that accessible. However, players
Speaker 1: have to put a little more work into cheat in
Speaker 1: a video game, a computer game specifically. Now keep in
Speaker 1: mind when personal computers were relatively new, they were largely
Speaker 1: the domain of hobbyists and hackers and amateur programmers. And remember,
Speaker 1: the hacker in this sense is a more broad term
Speaker 1: than how it typically is used by the media. Hollywood
Speaker 1: version of a hacker is someone who specializes in infiltrating
Speaker 1: secure systems and then messes around with stuff or steals
Speaker 1: data or whatever. You know, someone who's hacking into the
Speaker 1: Pentagon or something. But that's just one type of hacker.
Speaker 1: The more broad definition of hacker is someone who is
Speaker 1: interested in learning how systems work, typically computer systems, and
Speaker 1: then finding interesting things that they can do within that
Speaker 1: system that perhaps were never intended by the people who
Speaker 1: built the system in the first place. Like you might
Speaker 1: discover that if you were to look at the code
Speaker 1: underlying a program and changed a few values, you can
Speaker 1: make the program and do entirely different stuff, or you
Speaker 1: might just break everything and have to go back to
Speaker 1: the original code. While on the old days of computer games,
Speaker 1: hackers would use the good old peak and poke method,
Speaker 1: now peak refers to getting a look at computer code
Speaker 1: stored in a computer's memory. Now, remember, back in the
Speaker 1: early days, we're not talking about computers that had like
Speaker 1: hard drives and stuff. They were typically reading media from
Speaker 1: some form of storage, right, They were reading it from
Speaker 1: a disk or a cassette or something like that, and
Speaker 1: it would load information into the computer's memory and then
Speaker 1: execute instructions upon the information. So if you were able
Speaker 1: to look at the information that's in the computer's memory,
Speaker 1: and if you're really able to look at it carefully,
Speaker 1: you might be able to suss what is doing what.
Speaker 1: You might be able to say, oh, when I shoot
Speaker 1: my gun, this one value changes, so that value has
Speaker 1: something to do with me shooting my gun in the game.
Speaker 1: Poke refers to changing those values within the code in
Speaker 1: the computer's memory before you load the game in, So
Speaker 1: you're poking or prodding the code in order to see
Speaker 1: what happens. So let's use a theoretical example. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're playing an old computer role playing game, something that
Speaker 1: clearly drew inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons and and other
Speaker 1: pencil and paper RPGs. There were tons of these in
Speaker 1: the early days, Like I remember games like Bard's Tail
Speaker 1: and Wizardry and countless others. Part of these games revolve
Speaker 1: around creating a character, and each character has ability points
Speaker 1: or attributes that have a number that describes how their magnitude. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you were doing classic Dungeons and Dragons, you
Speaker 1: would have an ability like strength, and it could range
Speaker 1: from three to eighteen because you would in the old days,
Speaker 1: rolled three six sided dice, So the lowest you could
Speaker 1: get would be three. The highest you can get with
Speaker 1: you an eighteen, and the average human would be somewhere
Speaker 1: in the ten to eleven range. So if your computer
Speaker 1: generated character has a strength of six, because that's the
Speaker 1: quote unquote random number that the computer generated for that score,
Speaker 1: that would mean that that character would be a little
Speaker 1: bit on the weak side, and that would affect what
Speaker 1: kind of class you could play, or how much damage
Speaker 1: you would do with a melee weapon, or how much
Speaker 1: your character might carry that kind of thing. However, let's
Speaker 1: say you peak at the code in computer memory and
Speaker 1: you suss out which bit represents the ability scores, and
Speaker 1: then you go in and change a few values, and
Speaker 1: you reload the game, and now you see that your
Speaker 1: previously feeble character has been buffed out to eighteen strength
Speaker 1: or heck, you know, some games actually didn't have limitters
Speaker 1: on them, like within the game you could only get
Speaker 1: up to eighteen, but if you went in and set
Speaker 1: the strength higher, then you would effectively have that as
Speaker 1: your strength. So while you could not at it through
Speaker 1: the regular character generation, by manipulating the code, you can
Speaker 1: give your character like strength and suddenly they would be
Speaker 1: way more powerful than any other, you know, regularly created character.
Speaker 1: I mean you could, uh just you know, you create
Speaker 1: an entire party of characters this way, and you can
Speaker 1: max out all their stats if you wanted to and
Speaker 1: just roll over anyone who's in your way. Now, that
Speaker 1: could get old pretty quickly because there's very little challenge
Speaker 1: in the game left. But on a meta level, you
Speaker 1: would be learning more about how game designers were building
Speaker 1: out their games and designating the variables that determine how
Speaker 1: the game works. So there was another level going on
Speaker 1: in here. But anyway, the peak and poke method wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly super accessible. Most folks didn't own a computer back
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, and the people who did
Speaker 1: own a computer, a lot of them weren't necessarily savvy
Speaker 1: enough to get their hands dirty with altering code in
Speaker 1: computer memory. I certainly did. Like I that was a
Speaker 1: step further than what I was comfortable doing when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, And some computer systems made this a
Speaker 1: bit more tricky to pull off than others. But you
Speaker 1: could think of that as sort of the predecessors to
Speaker 1: computer game hacks. But then we get into the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties and then Nintendo Entertainment System. Earlier consoles like
Speaker 1: the at Ty had games that had exploits built into them,
Speaker 1: or sometimes they were just errors that developers had made
Speaker 1: and players found them and found they could exploit them.
Speaker 1: But it was the Konami code that really established the
Speaker 1: video game cheat. I would say it's not that it
Speaker 1: was the first one, but it was the one that
Speaker 1: kind of set the bar. And again, early on, this
Speaker 1: was something that game developers would include so that they
Speaker 1: could continue to test and build out a game without
Speaker 1: having to worry about being pixel perfect with their jumps
Speaker 1: and whatnot. The only reason they made it into the
Speaker 1: final product is that by the time these developers were
Speaker 1: done building a game, they just kind of wanted to
Speaker 1: ship it. Sometimes they just had to hit a deadline,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to take the time and trouble
Speaker 1: to go in and remove code that you inserted to
Speaker 1: make it easier to navigate through the game. For one thing,
Speaker 1: you might break something just by removing that code, and
Speaker 1: then you're, you know, back to square one. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure a lot of developers thought, who the heck is
Speaker 1: going to stumble across this seemingly random sequence anyway, No
Speaker 1: one's gonna just randomly do be A B A, you
Speaker 1: know whatever, whatever. Except there was one step in this
Speaker 1: process of bringing a game to market for the Nintendo
Speaker 1: Entertainment system that guaranteed people will learn about these tricks. See,
Speaker 1: Nintendo decided to do something that Atari did not do
Speaker 1: back in the pre video game crash days. So before,
Speaker 1: n Atari tried to be the only source for games
Speaker 1: for the Atari console, but disenchanted developers who wanted more credit,
Speaker 1: not to mention a share of revenue generated by games,
Speaker 1: they left Atari to found their own studios, Activision being
Speaker 1: a famous one. You know. Back then, if you programmed
Speaker 1: a game and it was a smash hit, you essentially
Speaker 1: got paid pretty much the same as if the title
Speaker 1: had turned out to be a dud. Atari didn't give
Speaker 1: like royalties to people even if their game sold millions
Speaker 1: of copies, or really, we should say tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of copies. It wasn't quite in the millions range for
Speaker 1: the most part, except with the exception of a few titles.
Speaker 1: So influential developers at Atari decided they would leave and
Speaker 1: create new programmer centric business model companies like Activision, at
Speaker 1: least the original Activision anyway. Atari tried to fight that,
Speaker 1: but they lost, and third party developers had the legal
Speaker 1: right to create titles for Atari consoles. But this also
Speaker 1: meant that a bunch of sketchy companies began churning out
Speaker 1: junk titles for the Atari twenty s DRED and the
Speaker 1: console's reputation suffered as a consequence. Now, whether those junk
Speaker 1: titles actively contributed to the video game Crash of three
Speaker 1: really depends upon whom you ask, but it definitely didn't
Speaker 1: help Attari's reputation. When Nintendo entered the market with the NES,
Speaker 1: one of the decisions the company made was to require developers,
Speaker 1: including internal Nintendo developers, to submit games to a certification
Speaker 1: process to make sure that the games, you know, worked.
Speaker 1: They didn't have to be a masterpiece. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that every game that came out for the NES was
Speaker 1: a show stopper. There were plenty of bad games on
Speaker 1: the NES, but they had to at least work properly.
Speaker 1: They had to pass, you know, at least a cursory inspection.
Speaker 1: Part of that submission process meant the developers also had
Speaker 1: to reveal any codes that they had built in that
Speaker 1: would allow for different features in their game, even if
Speaker 1: those codes were only put there for the purposes of
Speaker 1: building out the game in the first place. So again,
Speaker 1: let's say that you've created a game that has you
Speaker 1: know when he levels in it, and for the purposes
Speaker 1: of developing the game, you have a code that lets
Speaker 1: you skip levels. Well, you would have to disclose the
Speaker 1: information when you submitted the game to Nintendo certification process
Speaker 1: to let them know this exists there. Now, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter that it existed there just for development. As long
Speaker 1: as it's in the game, you had to disclose it.
Speaker 1: And part of this process also meant that Nintendo Power
Speaker 1: the magazine, would get access to that information. This was
Speaker 1: partly to help reviewers get through particularly difficult sections of
Speaker 1: games so that they could write a thorough review of
Speaker 1: a game as a whole. Like the reviewer might only
Speaker 1: have a few days with a game maybe just a
Speaker 1: day or two, and they need to be able to
Speaker 1: write a comprehensive review, but they might not have the
Speaker 1: ability to play the game all the way through, so
Speaker 1: they might make use of these codes. The only catch
Speaker 1: was that the magazine was to hold off on publishing
Speaker 1: those codes, at least for a few episode issues, rather
Speaker 1: after reviewing the game, so they couldn't just say, Hey,
Speaker 1: the game's great, and here's how you get god mode
Speaker 1: on it. But then once a few issues had passed,
Speaker 1: they could publish the cheap codes and they would make
Speaker 1: the pages of the magazine, and gamers would learn about
Speaker 1: the codes either by reading about them or as was
Speaker 1: pretty common on playgrounds in the nineteen eighties, through scuttle.
Speaker 1: But I'll explain more about cheat codes after we take
Speaker 1: this quick break. Okay, So magazines like Nintendo Power start
Speaker 1: to publish cheak codes, and once people learned about the
Speaker 1: Konami code, it became a way for developers to kind
Speaker 1: of play with gamers. So in some games like Castlevania,
Speaker 1: the Konami code would unlock tons of extra lives. I
Speaker 1: think you got fifty lives when you used it, which
Speaker 1: was really useful because that was a very challenging platform
Speaker 1: or otherwise. In other cases, like an early teenage Mustant
Speaker 1: Ninja Turtles game, if you put in the Konami code,
Speaker 1: it would unlock a feature in which the characters made
Speaker 1: weird noises when they moved around. So it wasn't always advantageous.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it was just a funny little joke. So the
Speaker 1: Konami code wasn't just a developer tool now. It was
Speaker 1: a fun surprise for gamers who took the trouble to
Speaker 1: learn and use the code in the first place. It
Speaker 1: would also go on to inspire future generations of game developers.
Speaker 1: They're still games coming out today that pay tribute to
Speaker 1: the Konami Code, though it's pretty rare for the code
Speaker 1: or the equivalent of that code to actually unlock, you know,
Speaker 1: game cheats. You're more likely to unlock an Easter Egg
Speaker 1: or maybe even a reprimand sometimes putting in the cheat
Speaker 1: code gets you a message from the game saying, uh,
Speaker 1: but it's you know, it's a tougue in cheek, Hey,
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing their kind of thing. For example,
Speaker 1: in the recent and reportedly terrible remastered Grant Theft Auto
Speaker 1: the Trilogy, the Definitive Edition, which is supposed to be
Speaker 1: a remastered version of Grand Theft Auto Three, Grand Theft Auto,
Speaker 1: Vice City, and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, but has
Speaker 1: turned out, at least according to most reviews I've read,
Speaker 1: to be awful. Anyway, the Konami code on that one
Speaker 1: apparently turns everyone's heads larger, so it activates big head mode,
Speaker 1: something that was made famous in games like NBA Jam
Speaker 1: and based on how some of the quote unquote remastered
Speaker 1: characters look, that sounds like it could be pretty horrifying.
Speaker 1: By the way. I do plan on doing a series
Speaker 1: of episodes a little bit later on about the history
Speaker 1: of the g t A series because it's really bummed
Speaker 1: to see how the g t A Trilogy came out
Speaker 1: because Vice City was one of my favorite games back
Speaker 1: in the day, even though I also recognize it as
Speaker 1: a very flawed game. Anyway, I mentioned earlier the peak
Speaker 1: and poke method of cheating. That was something you could
Speaker 1: do on computers, but it wasn't so simple to do
Speaker 1: on consoles. See, this was the time of video game
Speaker 1: cartridges and the games were physically programmed. They were hardwired
Speaker 1: in read only memory format. That's wrong, which means you
Speaker 1: can't make changes to it. You can only read information
Speaker 1: from it. And they were hard coded onto circuit boards
Speaker 1: that were housed inside plastic cartridges. So when you plugged
Speaker 1: the cartridge into a console, the circuit board has little
Speaker 1: contacts on it that would come into connection with elements
Speaker 1: inside the console and it would complete a circuit. And
Speaker 1: thus the the console could consult the video game cartridge
Speaker 1: and pull the relevant information needed for any particular part
Speaker 1: of the game, and you play your game as the
Speaker 1: console would load stuff into the console's memory. But there
Speaker 1: was no easy way to interact with that system beyond
Speaker 1: just playing stuff in a straightforward way. One company that
Speaker 1: tackled that problem early early on was a company called
Speaker 1: Detail based in the UK. The company created a piece
Speaker 1: of hardware called the Action Replay now the O General.
Speaker 1: Action Replay Device worked on Commodore sixty four personal computers
Speaker 1: and you would plug this into a serial port in
Speaker 1: the Commodore sixty four and it would let you do
Speaker 1: stuff like freeze a program, like say a game, as
Speaker 1: it was running, and it would reveal the code that
Speaker 1: was in the computer's memory. That gave you a chance
Speaker 1: to peak and poke essentially, but it was pretty challenging
Speaker 1: for the average user to do this, and it also
Speaker 1: followed on the heels of older devices that would let
Speaker 1: you do stuff like bypass copy protection or alter code,
Speaker 1: again tools that were mostly useful for folks who had
Speaker 1: a bit of programming knowledge already, but it would spawn
Speaker 1: some heavy hitters in the years to come. Enter the
Speaker 1: Game Genie. This was a device that acted as a
Speaker 1: middleman between the game cartridge and the game console. So
Speaker 1: you would plug a cartridge into one end of the
Speaker 1: Genie and you would plug the Genie into a video
Speaker 1: game console. So there were different versions of the Game
Speaker 1: Genie for different consoles. So, for example, the Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System had a Game Genie version, and this would mean
Speaker 1: that if you've plugged this kind of thing into the
Speaker 1: Nintendo Entertainment System, the little door on the NES wouldn't
Speaker 1: be able to close, the cartridge would be sticking out.
Speaker 1: But it totally worked. The Genie came with a book
Speaker 1: of codes for various games, and the codes would allow
Speaker 1: a player to set values for stuff, similar to the
Speaker 1: poke approach with old computer games, but all the work
Speaker 1: had already been done for you, so when the console
Speaker 1: went looking for specific information. The Genie would intercept that
Speaker 1: request and replace whatever the intended value would be like
Speaker 1: if it actually came from the cartridge with a new value. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say you were playing punch Out on
Speaker 1: the NES and you really wanted to knock out Mr Sandman,
Speaker 1: but you never could nail the timing. Well, you could
Speaker 1: use game Genie to enter in certain codes that would
Speaker 1: mean you would never lose stamina when you were hit,
Speaker 1: or that you would take us damage when you were hit,
Speaker 1: or that you could knock down your opponent if you
Speaker 1: just land one punch. The game Genie would understand what
Speaker 1: information to return to the console based on whichever code
Speaker 1: you entered into the Game Genie, and the NES would say, oh,
Speaker 1: here's what I'm supposed to do, because it would be
Speaker 1: getting the information from the game Genie thinking that that
Speaker 1: information was coming from the cartridge itself. So it was
Speaker 1: a workaround. Now, how did the game Genie programmers even
Speaker 1: do this, Well, they probably use something like a debug
Speaker 1: kit and they ran cartridges through their debug kit. Deep
Speaker 1: bug kits are essentially special versions of consoles, in this
Speaker 1: case for video game consoles specifically, and they're meant for
Speaker 1: developers to use so that they can look for problems.
Speaker 1: Let's say that they're designing a game and something's not
Speaker 1: working correctly. This is a way where they could run
Speaker 1: it through a debug kit. They could create whatever the
Speaker 1: scenario was and look for the code to find out
Speaker 1: where the problem is. That's the purpose for a debug kit,
Speaker 1: but it also means that if you were running a
Speaker 1: game and you have a debug kit on, you could
Speaker 1: watch those values and see which ones change whenever you
Speaker 1: do something specific, like when you jump, and then you
Speaker 1: might say, well, what happens if I change the variable there?
Speaker 1: What if I change a number and see what that does?
Speaker 1: And you find out, oh, this makes me jump much
Speaker 1: higher or much lower, or much faster or whatever. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of trial and error, but it's one way
Speaker 1: to figure out how the game is working. It's essentially
Speaker 1: the peak and poke approach, and once you know how
Speaker 1: it works, you can create instructions that tell the console
Speaker 1: to do something instead of what it was supposed to do,
Speaker 1: like give you extra lines, or make your character stronger,
Speaker 1: or whatever it may be. The game genie codes were
Speaker 1: typically in the form of eight characters, you know, usually letters,
Speaker 1: So if you wanted to be invulnerable and punch out,
Speaker 1: then you would enter into the Game Genie code s
Speaker 1: z v A L P A X, and then you
Speaker 1: would never lose stamina. That code is effectively an instruction
Speaker 1: to the Game Genie. It tells the Game Genie what
Speaker 1: to look out for when the console requests certain information
Speaker 1: from the game cartridge, and then what information it should
Speaker 1: send back based on that request. Now, Action Replay also
Speaker 1: had devices out for the NES and other consoles you know,
Speaker 1: so Game Genie was not the only game out there.
Speaker 1: But unlike Game Genie, the Action replay systems frequently incorporated
Speaker 1: a code trainer in them, and the trainer, as the
Speaker 1: name implies, would search for recurring codes that might represent
Speaker 1: something important within the game, an important effect in the game,
Speaker 1: such as what happens if you lose a life in
Speaker 1: the game, and so. Theoretically, anyway a player could use
Speaker 1: the trainer to figure out which lines of code we're
Speaker 1: creating these effects and then substitute their own values in
Speaker 1: that code. Means the player could actually change the way
Speaker 1: the game works. The trainer meant that if you had
Speaker 1: a bit of determination and patients, you could have practically
Speaker 1: limitless abilities to change the way a game performed, rather
Speaker 1: than relying upon a sequence of codes coming straight from
Speaker 1: a company like Game Genie. Despite this technological advantage where
Speaker 1: you know you're no longer just limited to whatever a
Speaker 1: company publishes, you can do whatever based on the amount
Speaker 1: of time you spend trying, the Game Genie ended up
Speaker 1: really dominating the space. So while action replay had advantages,
Speaker 1: it could not compete with Game Genie on the market.
Speaker 1: This industry, by the way, was really tumultuous. For one thing,
Speaker 1: Nintendo was none too pleased that companies were producing hardware
Speaker 1: that's circumvented Nintendo programming, so the company would end up
Speaker 1: suing Galobe. That was a toy company that had acquired
Speaker 1: the distribution rights to the Game Genie, and at the
Speaker 1: heart of the lawsuit was Nintendo claiming a copyright infringement
Speaker 1: against its property. So Nintendo's argument was that the Game Genie,
Speaker 1: by altering the code, or rather by substituting new code
Speaker 1: for what was supposed to be fed to the game console,
Speaker 1: was essentially creating a derivative work. That is, the game
Speaker 1: that a Game Genie user was playing wasn't the quote
Speaker 1: unquote original Nintendo title but rather a game based off
Speaker 1: that title because the code had been altered. The courts, however,
Speaker 1: didn't buy Nintendo's argument. Essentially, the court said these devices
Speaker 1: don't create derivative works and therefore are not part of
Speaker 1: a copyright infringement scheme. Now, this set of precedent that
Speaker 1: allowed the game enhancement business, because that's what these devices
Speaker 1: are largely referred to as as game enhancers. It allowed
Speaker 1: that business to flourish without the fear of copyright infringement lawsuits,
Speaker 1: particularly from Nintendo. Glube supported the game Genie Brandon products
Speaker 1: for a few years, but by the mid nineties decided
Speaker 1: to get out of that business. This gave day Tell,
Speaker 1: the company behind the Action Replay hardware, a shot at
Speaker 1: really establishing a presence in the North American market, because
Speaker 1: while the Action replay was, you know, fairly popular in
Speaker 1: the UK and in Europe, it never really took off
Speaker 1: in America. So Detail would partner with a company called Interact,
Speaker 1: which has its own interesting history, fairly brief but interesting history.
Speaker 1: But the important bit for our story is that Interact
Speaker 1: had established a reputation as a company that carried pretty
Speaker 1: good quality third party peripherals for big video game systems,
Speaker 1: so stuff like controllers that included features that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: find on the bog standard version of the controller that
Speaker 1: would come with a console. So day Tell had a
Speaker 1: partner in North America that had established relationships with retailers,
Speaker 1: and finally, Detel had an opportunity to get its hardware
Speaker 1: a good chance in the North American market. The company
Speaker 1: decided to introduce game enhancement hardware with a new brand,
Speaker 1: So instead of using the brand Action Replay, the new
Speaker 1: hardware had the name game Shark. The first two products
Speaker 1: that Interact released were game Shark devices for the original
Speaker 1: PlayStation as well as for the Sega Saturn. Now that's
Speaker 1: interesting to me because by this time, most of the
Speaker 1: game console world was migrating away from cartridges and heading
Speaker 1: toward optical discs a a compact discs or c d s.
Speaker 1: Nintendo would actually be an exception to this. They held
Speaker 1: onto cartridges a while longer, largely because it's more challenging
Speaker 1: to copy a cartridge than it is a CD. But
Speaker 1: there are a few other benefits with cartridges as well,
Speaker 1: like load times are typically much lower with cartridges, but
Speaker 1: the capacity of a cartridge is much more limited than
Speaker 1: on optical discs. Alright, so see d's gave developers more
Speaker 1: room to build games. They didn't have the same limitations
Speaker 1: as cartridges though, as I mentioned, you know, you had
Speaker 1: to figure out stuff like copy protection to mitigate things
Speaker 1: like piracy and emulation. That was a challenge with CD
Speaker 1: based systems, especially as h C d rewrite capabilities hit
Speaker 1: the market. These game Shark devices would plug into you know,
Speaker 1: an expansion slot, serial port, or a memory card slot
Speaker 1: on consoles like the Sega Saturn. Uh. There would be
Speaker 1: other versions for game Shark that were for older cartridge
Speaker 1: based systems as well, including the Game Boy handheld consoles.
Speaker 1: And there were lots of different game Shark products, but
Speaker 1: the ones I found most interesting had the game Shark
Speaker 1: Pro designation. These not only could store thousands of codes
Speaker 1: within the game sharks themselves, they also included memory space.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, if you were to buy say
Speaker 1: a Sony PlayStation memory card, you would have enough space
Speaker 1: on there to store were a whole fifteen game saves
Speaker 1: and that was it. You could save fifteen times, not
Speaker 1: just in one game, I mean in all of your games.
Speaker 1: You could have fifteen saves stored on that card and
Speaker 1: that's it unless you were to delete a save. The
Speaker 1: Game Shark Pro for PlayStation had enough memory to store
Speaker 1: a hundred twenty saves, and you know, it was way
Speaker 1: cheaper than buying the equivalent number of memory cards. So
Speaker 1: even if you looked at this is just a beefed
Speaker 1: up memory card, had a lot of value. The Sega
Speaker 1: Saturn version of Game Shark Pro similarly allowed players to
Speaker 1: have way more storage space than a standard Sega memory card. Now,
Speaker 1: for the original PlayStation game Shark, that device plugged into
Speaker 1: a port on the back of Sony's original PlayStation, not
Speaker 1: the memory card slot, but like a serial card slot,
Speaker 1: and eventually Sony decided to get rid of that port entirely,
Speaker 1: possibly in response to the Game Shark's rise and popularity,
Speaker 1: so later versions of the original PlayStation had no port
Speaker 1: in the back of them. But never fear, Game Shark
Speaker 1: released products that included a boot up CD that you
Speaker 1: would insert before you would launch a game, plus a
Speaker 1: device that plugged into the standard memory card slot on
Speaker 1: the front of the PlayStation. The device would store codes
Speaker 1: generated by either of the system itself or by the user.
Speaker 1: More on that in the second Game Shark codes have
Speaker 1: two parts to them. The first part of the code
Speaker 1: was the memory address for the line of code that
Speaker 1: you wanted to change, so it might be a line
Speaker 1: of code that represents your number of lives or your
Speaker 1: amount of health. The second part of the code represented
Speaker 1: the value you wanted to substitute, which is pretty simple really,
Speaker 1: so like if you found the line of code that
Speaker 1: was for the number of lives and you saw it
Speaker 1: started at three and you change that to boom, you've
Speaker 1: got ninety nine lives. And like the action replay pro
Speaker 1: models that came before it, the Game Shark. Game enhancement
Speaker 1: systems had ways to train codes, giving users the ability
Speaker 1: to make their own game cheat codes and not just
Speaker 1: rely on ones that were previously published. The system would
Speaker 1: look out for potential lines of code that might represent
Speaker 1: something important and give users the chance to insert new values.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it would take
Speaker 1: multiple attempts to find just the right line of code.
Speaker 1: But this provided a level of flexibility that you didn't
Speaker 1: find in earlier products like the game Genie, and again
Speaker 1: the Game Shark would inject this code to stand in
Speaker 1: place for what was supposed to happen. You could also
Speaker 1: do stuff like search for specific types of files in
Speaker 1: game data, like music files or video files, which would
Speaker 1: allow you to play those media files on demand. That
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. So you could like turn it into
Speaker 1: almost like a CD of music. You could pick which
Speaker 1: tracks to play. Or let's say that there was a
Speaker 1: an in game cinematic that you had never really seen,
Speaker 1: you could find it in those files and play it
Speaker 1: on demand. One Nintendo sixty four version of the game
Speaker 1: Shark even included the ability to connect to a phone
Speaker 1: line and access the Internet. This was a pretty amazing thing.
Speaker 1: It gave you Internet access, limited Internet access. It was
Speaker 1: kind of curated by game Shark, but you could do
Speaker 1: it through in sixty four. Uh the The whole thing
Speaker 1: came with a keyboard and the connectors that you needed
Speaker 1: to tap into Game sharks online services, which included the
Speaker 1: ability to upload and download saves two different games, as
Speaker 1: well as cheat codes. There's a pretty phenomenal development for
Speaker 1: the time, particularly for a game console that wasn't natively
Speaker 1: Internet ready. Uh Nandanto would later release its own peripheral
Speaker 1: called the sixty four d D that allowed players to
Speaker 1: connect to an online service called rand Net, but that
Speaker 1: peripheral wasn't available for very long, and I personally don't
Speaker 1: know anyone who had one. Uh. While Game Shark made
Speaker 1: a name for itself with gamer Circles, the parent company
Speaker 1: of Interact, it's North America distributor, was in financial trouble.
Speaker 1: In fact, its parent company was in financial trouble at
Speaker 1: the end of two thousand to Detail would part ways
Speaker 1: with Interact and lose that North American presence, and Interact
Speaker 1: retained the game Shark i P. Interact would later sell
Speaker 1: that I P to mad Cats, another third party peripheral company,
Speaker 1: and they did that in two thousand three. Uh Katon
Speaker 1: or recod Tan if you prefer, that was the parent
Speaker 1: company of Interact. It actually went into bankruptcy not that
Speaker 1: long after having sold off the game Shark I P.
Speaker 1: Detail meanwhile formed another relationship with a company called Rocket
Speaker 1: Game Products to market devices similar to the Game Shark
Speaker 1: in North America, and it turned out that Rocket Game
Speaker 1: Products was really a sister company to Daytail. Game Shark
Speaker 1: would undergo a major transformation under Mad Cats. It it
Speaker 1: shifted more towards downloaded save points to let layers skip
Speaker 1: tricky parts of games rather and entering cheap codes. The
Speaker 1: fact that products like game Genie and game Shark even
Speaker 1: came around would mean that console manufacturers would look for
Speaker 1: new ways to build in systems that would prevent such stuff.
Speaker 1: Moving forward, when we come back, we'll look at the
Speaker 1: next era of game cheats. Let's talk about another cheat
Speaker 1: code that would hold a special place in video game history,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States. And this was
Speaker 1: one that players could put on a certain game for
Speaker 1: the Sega Genesis, that code was A B A C
Speaker 1: A B B. I'm curious how many of you out
Speaker 1: there already know what I'm talking about. The game was
Speaker 1: Mortal Kombat, and the code was the so called Blood Code,
Speaker 1: which would allow players to experience Mortal Kombat more or
Speaker 1: less the way it was in the arcades, namely as
Speaker 1: a gory, bloody fighting game. You see. Midway Games, the
Speaker 1: creator of the Immortal Kombat franchise, had banked on shock
Speaker 1: value being a big part of the Mortal Kombat game,
Speaker 1: and it totally worked. It was a huge hit in
Speaker 1: the arcades, but the home market was a different beast
Speaker 1: from the arcades, and Midway wanted to tread lightly so
Speaker 1: as not to invite regulatory oversight from the US government,
Speaker 1: So for most of the homeport releases of Mortal Kombat,
Speaker 1: the rule was that the gore and the blood would
Speaker 1: get toned way way down. Heck, Nintendo's version of Mortal
Speaker 1: Kombat replaced the blood with this grayish stuff that I
Speaker 1: guess was supposed to be sweat. Those fighters sure do
Speaker 1: sweat a lot when they get kicked in the face. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the blood code on the Sega Genesis restored the bloody
Speaker 1: nature of Mortal Kombat and became a big selling point.
Speaker 1: In fact, it really played into Sega's slogan, which was
Speaker 1: Sega does what nintend? Don't I stumble over that because
Speaker 1: I just think it's clunky, but I get what they
Speaker 1: were saying. It was cute, and that indicated that the
Speaker 1: Genesis was a console that wouldn't sugarcoat game content. Predictably,
Speaker 1: this marketing philosophy attracted not just gamers, but concerned politicians who,
Speaker 1: if you're being generous, they were earnestly concerned about child
Speaker 1: well welfare. But if you're more cynical, you might say
Speaker 1: they just wanted to score some political points among older
Speaker 1: voters who are far more likely to show up on
Speaker 1: election day. Joe Lieberman led the charge back in those days,
Speaker 1: condemning violent games as being harmful to children. Somebody please
Speaker 1: think of the children. Sag of America's VP said, Hey,
Speaker 1: old dude, games just you know, they're not just for kids.
Speaker 1: In fact, most people buying our games are adults. I'm
Speaker 1: paraphrasing here. That's not word for word what was said.
Speaker 1: But this was an early example of the video game
Speaker 1: industry trying to fight back against the stereotype that video
Speaker 1: games were solely for children. It was also another example
Speaker 1: of a younger industry having to with the fact that
Speaker 1: the people we have put in charge of making laws,
Speaker 1: at least here in the United States, tend to be,
Speaker 1: you know, a little bit older, like sometimes around twenty
Speaker 1: years older than their average constituents age yikes, and older
Speaker 1: people may have antiquated ideas about technology and media. The
Speaker 1: brew haha would lead to the emergence of the Entertainment
Speaker 1: Software Ratings Board or e s r B, which is
Speaker 1: made up of industry representatives who self monitor game content
Speaker 1: and apply labels to alert consumers about the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that appears in video games, and also consequently would
Speaker 1: lead to the founding of E three. But That's another
Speaker 1: story that I've already covered on this podcast in the past.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is kind of like the mp A
Speaker 1: A for movies. You know, it's that rating that tells you,
Speaker 1: you know, who is this game suitable for, or rather,
Speaker 1: who is this unsuitable for. If it's an imframature game,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be, you know, letting your eight year old
Speaker 1: play it. Right around all that mess, It's Software released
Speaker 1: a game that I'm pretty sure Lieberman would classify as
Speaker 1: the equivalent of a nuclear bomb for children's health. That
Speaker 1: game was Doom, which introduced a new approach that ties
Speaker 1: into cheats because you you actually did have cheat codes
Speaker 1: in Doom, like, for example, you could type in I
Speaker 1: D D q D and that would make you invulnerable.
Speaker 1: There was another code that would let you walk through walls,
Speaker 1: the no clip code, and those were present in Doom.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, it also introduced the WAD file extension
Speaker 1: w a D. At least according to some sources, that
Speaker 1: w A D stood for Where's All the Data. It
Speaker 1: was a file type that held information data for a
Speaker 1: Doom Engine based games, like a lot of the game's
Speaker 1: resources would be stored in that file. The WAD included
Speaker 1: rees sources like graphics and sound. It had a header
Speaker 1: and a directory as well as all the different resources,
Speaker 1: and when you paired it with a WAD editor like
Speaker 1: there are tons of them that became available, and most
Speaker 1: of them were free to use. Players would be able
Speaker 1: to access the files, you know, the WAD files, open
Speaker 1: them up, and change them. This took a huge step
Speaker 1: beyond just making a character immune to damage or allowing
Speaker 1: the player to walk through walls. Players can make changes
Speaker 1: in Wade to create mods for Doom. This opened up
Speaker 1: the ability for player generated maps and graphics. You needed
Speaker 1: the Doom engine to run the mods, but this meant
Speaker 1: that talented monitors could make their own levels and their
Speaker 1: own monsters in Doom. They could challenge players to complete
Speaker 1: those levels, or you know, sometimes they would just create
Speaker 1: jokes that were meant to make folks laugh as they
Speaker 1: blast you know, I don't know, smurfs instead of demons
Speaker 1: or something. The WAD files allowed for a pretty generous
Speaker 1: amount of of custom szation. Now, there was some stuff
Speaker 1: that was still set in stone that you could not change.
Speaker 1: There were certain gameplay elements that tied into other parts
Speaker 1: of the game engine, so you couldn't change everything, but
Speaker 1: you could make a lot of interesting mods. Uh. What
Speaker 1: the Wade development really did was encouraged communities of modyrs,
Speaker 1: which would be related to, but often distinct from, the
Speaker 1: communities of hackers and gamers looking for exploits. By the
Speaker 1: time we start creeping through the two thousand's, the landscape
Speaker 1: was changing rapidly. For one thing, Microsoft introduced achievements and
Speaker 1: Sony would follow suit with the trophy system. These systems
Speaker 1: reward gamers who complete certain tasks, some of which are
Speaker 1: notoriously difficult to pull off. The achievements or trophies are
Speaker 1: badges of honor. They showing that the gamer has managed
Speaker 1: to do something that was notable in some way. But
Speaker 1: obviously the value of those badges it vanishes if it
Speaker 1: turns out you can cheat your way to earning them. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are lots of games that include these sort of things,
Speaker 1: not just on consoles. You know, Steam games have these two.
Speaker 1: So as such, Microsoft really clamped down on cheating in
Speaker 1: two thousand eight, stating that if a player were caught
Speaker 1: cheating in an effort to boost their gamers score, that
Speaker 1: score would be nullified and the person would forever be
Speaker 1: branded as a cheater. Now, I'm in favor of that,
Speaker 1: in that an achievement really only means something if you've
Speaker 1: earned it. I'm sure all of you have witnessed some
Speaker 1: moment where someone received an award or something and you
Speaker 1: felt deep down to that person or that company, or
Speaker 1: that movie or whatever didn't really deserve that award. That
Speaker 1: kind of thing tends to tarnish the awards themselves, and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty hard thing to shake. And so Microsoft said, yeah,
Speaker 1: if we catch you, your toast. Another thing that made
Speaker 1: it important to scale back on cheating was the emergence
Speaker 1: of online competitive play. So in the old days, games
Speaker 1: are typically played on a single machine, so they were
Speaker 1: often single player games. Sometimes they were multiplayer games, but
Speaker 1: they were restricted to however many people could connect to
Speaker 1: a single system at that one time, so for a
Speaker 1: lot of consoles that maxed out at around four players,
Speaker 1: Cheats were usually something that a player could use against
Speaker 1: a system itself and give the player and edge against
Speaker 1: computer controlled enemies and that kind of thing. But in
Speaker 1: an era in which people could network computers together in
Speaker 1: a local area network or land, or later on connect
Speaker 1: via the Internet, there was this need to prevent cheating.
Speaker 1: That became more evident now it was no longer a
Speaker 1: tool that someone could use to experience a tough game
Speaker 1: that they otherwise would be unable to play or unable
Speaker 1: to finish. Now we're talking about tools that could be
Speaker 1: used to give one player and edge over other players.
Speaker 1: That's a different matter. Like I actually do think that
Speaker 1: cheat codes have a place in games. I don't think
Speaker 1: they are good for multiplayer games unless it's you know,
Speaker 1: to do stuff like cosmetic things that are just jokey
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. That's fine. Uh, And if it affects
Speaker 1: everyone equally. I don't really have a problem with that either.
Speaker 1: What I also don't have a problem with our single
Speaker 1: player games where there's a cheat code that would let
Speaker 1: someone experience a game that otherwise they might not be
Speaker 1: able to finish. Like, folks, I'm old, I'm I know
Speaker 1: that's not that old. I don't don't don't at me,
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is that my reflexes are not
Speaker 1: what they used to be. And I was never a
Speaker 1: elite gamer by any stretch of the imagination. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of those games that I probably never
Speaker 1: would have seen the end of, unless either I watched
Speaker 1: a video of someone else playing it, or I used
Speaker 1: some sort of cheat in order to be able to
Speaker 1: get through parts of the game that otherwise I just
Speaker 1: couldn't make it through. In those cases, I think cheats
Speaker 1: have a valid place, But when you're talking about multiplayer,
Speaker 1: that's a different story. And that was just a preview
Speaker 1: of the troubles we would see before the birth of
Speaker 1: e sports. Now, once e sports came along, you know
Speaker 1: the organized play of video games. We're talking about like
Speaker 1: seasons and tournaments where you have professional video game players
Speaker 1: pitting their skills against elite opponents, often for impressive prize money.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, just like in any other kind of sport,
Speaker 1: cheating would be a serious problem for that kind of competition.
Speaker 1: If someone were relying on codes to give them an
Speaker 1: edge over opponents, that could invalidate an entire tournament, and
Speaker 1: that has happened more than a few times. In fact,
Speaker 1: in our next episode, I will talk more about the
Speaker 1: cheating tools that have popped up more recently. These are
Speaker 1: the kind of things you'd likely to encounter if you
Speaker 1: were playing an online competitive games, So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: wall hacks and aim bots and that kind of thing
Speaker 1: and how those tools have created huge headaches for various
Speaker 1: studios and e sports organizations. Will also talk about some
Speaker 1: of the systems that are in place that are meant
Speaker 1: to detect that kind of cheating and then respond to it.
Speaker 1: And we'll cover a few instances of notable cheaters as well,
Speaker 1: including folks who try to cheat during massive et sports
Speaker 1: events and got caught in the process. Because you know,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about big prize money, it actually becomes
Speaker 1: a big business. Not only that, but then you've got
Speaker 1: the people who are developing some of these hacks who
Speaker 1: might be selling them on you know, the black market essentially,
Speaker 1: And there are gamers out there who will pay for
Speaker 1: that because they want that experience of being elite gamer,
Speaker 1: but they lack the skill and ability to actually do it.
Speaker 1: Like if I if I compete in any online multiplaying game,
Speaker 1: I guarantee it will be a miracle if I'm above
Speaker 1: the bottom. I mean, I just know that because my
Speaker 1: skills are limited. Uh, but I wouldn't want to cheat
Speaker 1: to boost that because that's not really me anyway, right,
Speaker 1: I Mean, it wouldn't be me being a higher scoring player.
Speaker 1: It would be the code I was using there's no
Speaker 1: accomplishment for me there, so I'm comfortable being the bullet sponge.
Speaker 1: That's my most valuable asset to any team I'm on
Speaker 1: that trust me. As long as I'm there, you don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about getting shot. I'm gonna be attracting
Speaker 1: every bullet in the game towards me, so you'll be okay.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we're gonna talk about all that in the
Speaker 1: next episode on Wednesday's episode, and uh, it's it's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing to really look into. It's also interesting to
Speaker 1: look into the ways that various companies have tried to
Speaker 1: detect and counteract cheating two different levels of success. There's
Speaker 1: some games that are notoriously rife with cheaters, and every
Speaker 1: now and again you'll see a big perch and then
Speaker 1: over time they build up again. So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: those in the next episode as well. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me. The best way to
Speaker 1: do that is on Twitter. The handle for the show
Speaker 1: is text Stuff hs W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
Speaker 1: heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.