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[PeakPointMatrix]

I miss moon jumps

Had a PSX/2 Gameshark CD with preset cheats and codes that you ticked off before booting the actual game. Was sort of fun testing what would work and what would crash the game.

 

[George Claw M.D.]

This thread brings back memories. I started on the original NES Game Genie. I remember going to Barnes and Noble to look up codes in those cheat code books before the Internet was widely available. I also had a Pro Action Replay for the PS1, used in conjunction with the lid spring trick, to play imports and backups without having to dangerously swap out a spinning disc.

 

[Hardvlade]

Also, probably not anymore but IIRC, the Action Replay (GameCube) ver 1.14a used to go for a lot of money on eBay. I put it up for sale and ended up selling for $289 and it was in rough shape, buyer didn't care.

Not sure what was so special about it

 

[Movalpolos]

When I feel like ruining a game for myself I just cheat on PC.

 

[Crayolan]

When I was in middle school a guy I knew had a DS AR and passed it around my group of friends. Had a lot of fun screwing with Pokemon Diamond, getting all the event legendaries, infinite masterballs, testing out walk through walls, etc.

woooooooooooow, how's about a spoiler tag?! I was waiting to play FFVII for the first time with the remake..

woooooooooooow

lol

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

I had an Action Replay Mark III for my Amiga.

Now that was THE shit.

 

[Fall Into The GAF]

I fucked up a save on my Pokemon Gold cartridge using the Gameshark Pro and I extensively used Gameshark for both my PS1 and PS2, specifically on the GTA games.

 

[AppleSeason]

I mostly used them during the psx era for import playing when I did not have a modded console. The only times I actually used codes was to access stiff such as the debug menu on Valkyrie Profile.

 

[Tarahiro]

I had a red one (Equalizer?) that I mostly used for Alundra. I love that game but I was rubbish at it so being able to not die and do things like jump higher made it so I could actually complete the game.

 

[ffvorax]

I had Exloder for PS1.
In FFVIII

Spoiler

revived Aerith

and got Sephirot in my party
Satisfied.

 

[Dark Orchid]

Extensively used the ARDS towards the end of last decade to the point of even writing a few of my own codes, had a Gameshark for GB and an ARGBA, both of which were quite shoddily put together and only worked half the time (now not even booting at all).

Recently picked up one of these Monster Brains. It's only useful for Pokemon in the cheating department (even then, a few things are frustratingly missing) but it has a much handier feature: it can backup around 8-10 saves from any GB/C game. This is quite huge considering how frequently Pokemon G/S/C tend to need a replacement battery.

 

[fivepersondude]

On... I wanna say the psx, I had some sort of action replay, it had a button on the side that would let you look at hex values. I used to sit for hours in random games doing something and checking what was changed, figuring out what did what and modifying it so I got what I wanted. It was a blast.

Edit: I think it was the gameshark pro, actually.

 

[artsi]

I had this cheap thing but it worked with AR codes.

 

[GankzyMcfly]

This might as well be a game genie if your using it in a competitive FPS on a console imo.

 

[thomasmahler]

I grew up in Europe and had an Action Replay for my SNES. I must say, that thing definitely helped me to understand how games work underneath and I found the results all kinds of fascinating... giving yourself all items in ALTTP from the start, so you could actually walk into Kakariko while the rainstorm is still going, etc.

 

[Hero of Legend]

Was there a Gameshark/Action Replay for the original Xbox? I've been looking at some original Xbox games and wondering if there's any way to skip the unlocking grind on something like Timesplitters 2.

Seems like both GS and AR devices for Xbox were just power saves. But this disc must be a legit cheat device since I think it'd say Game Saves if it wasn't:

 

[Hero of Legend]

Here's a funny thing. I believe PS2 and GBA were the only devices ever to have both GameShark and Action Replay cheat devices, this actually is even more obvious since the original GS for GBA... is literally the same cartridge as the later AR, makes sense since as said, Datel were always the creators of GameShark, but InterAct released them in NA.

Then when MadCatz took over, they released possibly ONE legit cheat device; the GameShark SP:

Now check out for fun, the original GameShark and the Action Replay version:

Funny you can see that the innards are different despite the same shell.

ALSO, I can tell you first hand that the GameShark SP by MadCatz and Action Replay by Datel are very different.

See, the GameShark SP used far shorter codes (usually only two lines IIRC) compared to the like dozen lines for the same Action Replay codes.

But despite that, each felt they had their own advantages... I just can`t quite remember which, even ignoring the code lengths!

Also wanted to mention, this means we did get the GameCube GameShark in the end, they just changed the branding back to Action Replay to use instead in NA, meaning, it'd have been pretty redundant to release a Datel-created GameShark, when InterAct was near bankruptcy, only for Datel to just release it in NA anyways under its real name.

Only difference in the end is just the slight change in the interface (and maybe code lengths? Not sure how the GBA GameShark by InterAct handled codes, if they were shorter or if they were also like a dozen lines long.