Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

Comment by grawprog | Hacker News Reader

I had a game genie, pretty sure it was responsible for giving my nes the blanking screen of death.

Seems like nintendo should have been happy, the game genie probably led to a bunch of snes sales due to its console killing tendencies(possibly just a myth...but I swear...that thing caused trouble on my nes.) and you literally needed a nes and games to use it.

I get the philosophy behind making games unfun and such, I personally would rather beat a game genuinely than cheat, but seems kinda hypocritical from a company that prides itself in making games where players can enjoy themselves in their own way.

There's a Miyamoto interview on the front page currently espousing exactly such things. Nintendo does many things I personally find counterintuitive and even counterproductive. Especially in regards to things like this. I also owned a few of those black 'non-licensed' nes cartridges that exist for similar reasons.

Nintendo makes some damn good games and I understand the Disney-esque protection over their ip, but some of the things they do just seem like it would be better off if they just let things be.

Regular use gradually bent the pins in the NES cartridge slot. Without really good pin contact, the NES10 lockout chip wouldn’t authenticate the cart, and the flashing red light and blanking screen were the indicators for authentication failure. Using a game genie increased the stress on those pins due to its altered insertion angle for the cartridge. So it wasn’t your imagination: game genie really did “break” your NES.

As it turns out though, the pin array can be easily removed and serviced (just clean the pins and gently bend them back into shape) with next to zero risk of damaging the NES. Of course, none of us had the web to look any of this up back in the day, and we were left with schoolyard superstitions like blowing on the cartridge. Now though, it’s quite easy to get a “dead” NES working again. Or just get the revised NES model from 1993 that dumped the NES10 lockout chip and the failure prone front loading slot.

Of course, if you out the Game Genie in the 1993 model, you really would break it. Galoob or whoever marketed the Game Genie did make a top-loading model, but as I recall, they are very rare.

I got an NES in 1988 when I was 4 or 5 and it died in 1993 and I got the new design for my birthday (a month before I got an SNES for Christmas, so it didn’t get a ton of use). I stupidly sold it at a garage sale for $20 in 1995, not realizing it would be worth a ton later on. But in 2001 or 2002, I actually took that original NES to an authorized repair center, they shipped it off and it returned, essentially brand new. It still works today. As I recall, I paid less than $50 for the repair, which was less than a front-loading NES was going for at the time on eBay. The fact that Nintendo would service a system that was 16 or 17 years old always stuck with me, especially since Sony disavowed working on a 1996 or 1997-era PSX at that same time (I managed to fix it myself, but Sony was utterly disinterested in even allowing me to pay to repair a misaligned laser and just wanted me to buy the redesigned PS One). It’s part of why I’ve continued to be a loyal Nintendo customer for more than 30 years.

The NES was famous for flaky cartridge connectors (leading to the lore about blowing on them... which didn't really help) even when stock; the GG's design just stressed it more.

https://console5.com/wiki/Improving_NES-001_Reliability

I also had a game genie. There was a tendency for the nes to bug out when the gg was in use, but not when it wasn't. The thing is though, the issues started to manifest more and more over time even when the gg wasn't in use. There certainly felt and appeared to be a correlation between the use of the gg and the console not working properly anymore.

That said, I definitely used said Mario cheats and modifiers, also battletoads, and quite a few other games. Flicking through the old glossy paged code manual was always fun - I even bought a couple of games I had previously rented or borrowed based on the extra help the gg could give.

I had the game genie too and by far the most fun thing was to slightly edit the codes they provided you. You could get some weird memory hacks that would give you a broken power or some other way it broke the game world and then shortly crash afterwards

Yeah. Messing around with silly things like that breaking the game is what I remember most about it. It didn't really stop me from playing the game normally, it was just something you played around with to make crazy stuff happen. I probably spent more time playing games legit than using the game genie. It was fun, but the novelty wore off after a while.

The GG certainly fit tightly. It probably was responsible for wearing pins on the NES. On the other hand, I can recall that GG also fixed screen-blinking NESs for the same reason.

> Nintendo does many things I personally find counterintuitive and even counterproductive.

I'm amazed at the number of times I heard about Nintendo basically shooting themselves in the foot just to retain more control. Like banning Psycrow from Mario maker. Using content identification to silence audio from streamers. Taking down fan-made Mario-related content. Every one of those bringing them free advertisement and more customers.

I'm surprised that smm rom-hacks still exist given the restrictions.

I also 'had a Game Genie', but I didn't have a NES. I didn't even know it was a product for the NES. I had a Game Genie for the (orig.) Nintendo Game Boy. I don't remember much about it, except that it didn't fit with the rubber protector.

I do remember my favorite games for the Game Boy: Mystic Quest and Speedball 2.

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