Ep09 GameShark and Cheats!

Tox  0:06  
This week on MXPB we talk Game Genie game shark and cheat codes. Plus, we've got overcooked robots and dinosaurs. Stay tuned, and next PB starts now.

Hello and welcome to the Morning xp boost, where your hosts tox and glitch, and we're here to give you the experience points you need to get through your week glitch, how are you doing,

Glitch  0:45  
I am fantastic How about you tox.

Tox  0:48  
I am also fantastic. Go figure. What a coincidence. Day we're recording is a good day in my books.

Glitch  0:56  
I totally agree with you on that.

Tox  0:59  
Totally. So we're gonna do some news we're gonna do some history, and this week we're going to talk about Game Genie game shark and cheat codes, so stay tuned for that. But first, let's do some news. So, the thing that I found super interesting. From the past couple of weeks, article on Nintendo life featured a robot that plays the NES version of Super Mario Brothers the original Super Mario Brothers game, And of course that's kind of the headline. And when you see the video you sort of see that is a perhaps a slightly generous interpretation of the word plays the game is pretty simple I guess because you just have to press the right arrow button to go forward and then ADA jump. And that's basically what the what the robot does. But the cool thing about the robot is that it is squishy. It's like, it's a 3d printed material that is flexible, and it actually uses water like fluids to control these three fingers so the, it's just like a little hand with three fingers, and it's super interesting to me how it works. They feed water through just one input, and it's water pressure, and if there's a low water pressure, then it depresses the first finger, the first finger goes down and presses the right arrow. If there's a medium water pressure, the second finger also goes down, and presses the A button, and then if there's high water pressure they didn't show this because you don't need to do it, the third finger also goes down and presses the B button, so you get either only the right arrow, or right arrow, and a button, that would be a typical jump in Super Mario Brothers, or you get all three right arrow a button, and B button, which is probably less useful and Super Mario Brothers, but I thought it was a super cool demo of technology, and I thought was super cool looking, and that uses water to control a video game.

Glitch  3:08  
It's really interesting, actually I was just reading the article myself not too long ago, and looks like the they're trying to make this more portable, do you think this is so they're teaching it to play video games, and they're using it and kind of showing it off in that, that aspect, is this gonna probably have medical implications probably later down the road is that what you think they're, they're kind of doing with this.

Tox  3:34  
Oh yeah, for sure, I mean this is a demonstration of a fundamental technology that they've made these fluidic transistors or whatever they call it that, that takes in one input for control and sort of makes a simple but effective little robotic mechanism out of it and I love it because it just shows how, you know, all this sort of important research that goes on throughout the world. Gamers are doing it to be someone on that team is a gamer at heart, or at least appreciates the application of Super Mario Brothers.  It made me smile.

Glitch  4:09  
That's fantastic and also I mean, Not only are their being able to showcase a new technology. This also has applications I think for accessibility for video gaming, which is something I think that video games have only just started to scratch the surface of, but building something with video games in mind. And being able to utilize a new technology, you know, whether it's to replace a hand or something like that to play video games that's, I mean that's a, that's a really great step in, in the right direction. I think for video game accessibility, cuz I think video games are just kind of a little behind the curve on that right now but definitely a step in the right direction.

Tox  4:53  
That's a great point. I hadn't really thought of that and then if you if they make, you know, the robot playing a video game well or controlling the fingers well enough to play more complicated games then that's a nice natural leading towards making games more accessible.

Glitch  5:08  
I love it fully, and then to build off of your robotics piece here, actually this morning. They, they announced that at the Olympics, Toyota has made a baller robot. He was yeah he was he was shooting threes and half court shots, and it was nothing but net. This for this Toyota made robot over in Japan. The demonstration was absolutely phenomenal to watch, it's all the videos available on YouTube, just go check it out. The robot is really cool and I think there was a feature that you really enjoyed wasn't there talk.

Tox  5:47  
The robot rollerblades on the basketball court. It was so funny. And the way that it looks too it's got like, a humanoid shape, and it's basically arms and it picks up the ball and it has the form, you know where you've got kind of your hand underneath the ball on the other hand to the side of the ball to get the, the one hand is completely superfluous in this because it, it's clearly just the hand underneath the ball that does the shot, but it is, it is really something and and it's accurate. So, yeah, watch out, LeBron.

Glitch  6:27  
Then we also had a YouTuber by the name of kid stain, who just completed a no damage run of RDR two that is, that is an incredible feat there are parts in that game, where you don't have a firearm. I've watched playthroughs of this game a lot. You know this is a game that I want to purchase, so I've watched this game, not only in the shop for when it goes on sale, but also on Twitch I've watched some streamers play it. And there's some really difficult parts where taking damage is almost a necessity. And the fact that kid Stan was able to complete this with no damage at all. In the video, he actually explains the most irritating parts for the sections related to hand to hand combat. So much had to go right, that's a direct quote from Kid staying in his video or two I think has been out now for three years, Red Dead Redemption two, and players are only beginning to scratch the surface of these extreme challenges. I think it's incredible that we are seeing games like this. Live well past I think what the developers had in mind, you know, it's Skyrim and Skyrim and Dragon Age. These are games that people are still discovering day, you know, 1013 years later, new, new things and they're doing new challenges there, there's different playstyles that are evolving with these games like the, the speed running that we talked about, to, Two episodes ago, what do you what do you think about this tox?

Tox  8:14  
I have not played Red Dead Redemption to myself, but game, no damage challenge, just totally blows my mind, I, I could never do it. And especially if there's those elements of randomness like I could see, you know, playing Super Mario World, or original Super Mario Brothers, taking no damage, like fine you know exactly where everything is going to be. You can repeat the same, you know, muscle memory, every single time. But when you've got sort of an element of randomness and open world exploration, you, there's a lot you can't control, you just have to, you just have to get good.

Glitch  8:52  
Yeah and I mean, there's also the random bear attacks, right, like there's there's bears. Bears Bears, could be, you could be getting off your horse to go save the fair maiden. I don't think they call them fair maidens in the game, you know you're trying to untie somebody from the railroad tracks right. And the next thing you know you're being eaten by a bear. And, and kids Dane was able to play through the entire of RDR two without being eaten by a bear, that's very, very impressive. But

Tox  9:26  
I wonder if kids stain has any regrets about choosing that name in your video game career and that's a great name I shouldn't bash it.

Glitch  9:41  
Well, we'll have to ask him someday. Yeah, um, we do have an amended from our previous episode, you know here at MXPB, we do want to make sure that we're providing accurate information. And the last episode I think we talked about the steam deck or streamed deck as we kept calling it. And we mentioned that when it was docked, we thought that maybe it was only capable of I think 1080p is what we had said, recent information now it is, you know, it is kind of evolving information. It is actually going to be capable of 4k 120 hertz docked and 8k 60 hertz docked. So those are kind of the upgraded resolutions just wanted to provide those numbers for everybody out there, make sure you're getting the accurate information.

Tox  10:28  
Nice, thank you for that clarification and it makes sense to, I mean if it's a PC. A lot of that stuff you can configure, as long as the hardware supports it.

Glitch  10:38  
Right and I think a lot of people are probably, you know, especially if you're running a game with higher end graphics, if you are playing it in portable. In my opinion I think it would probably make sense if you're trying to get some battery life out of it you know you're on the subway, the train, the back of an Uber, you're gonna probably want to try to turn those settings down as low as possible to get to maximize that battery life.

Tox  11:02  
I hope there's some kind of like quick switch settings, at least in this CMOS, where you've got your portable settings and your dock settings.

Glitch  11:11  
Find out when I get my hands on one.

Tox  11:15  
Did you preorder it. You're not getting one.

Glitch  11:19  
I know I know maybe in three years. Yeah.

Tox  11:23  
That's awesome. All right, well I think that wraps it up for a new segment let's dive into this week in gaming history. My pick is from four years ago on July 27 2017 overcooked, a special edition hits the Nintendo Switch. I really liked this game, I didn't play it until that fateful year of 2020. When for some reason I needed more stuff to do to sort of keep me sane and I had heard about this game, and just watching the gameplay, it looks so chaotic and so fun. So I picked it up and my wife actually played it with me. She doesn't play every game with me but I convinced her to play this one. And it was kind of an interesting game to play with your significant other because it can get pretty heated, you have to work together, so you're, you are both you both play at one to four players play on any given map and you are short order cooks, and so you get the orders flying in at the top of the screen. They include ingredients that you have to collect from different areas of the screen, which of course are obscured by things like cars like highway traffic or fireballs or actual fires that you have to put out, and you collect the ingredients. Oftentimes there's an element of chopping, sometimes the ingredients are raw sometimes you have to cook them in a pan or boil them in a pot and then you have always have to assemble it on a plate, in just the right order and then deliver it to the delivery area, and so you're these little, I don't know, squishy little characters running around the screen, you can dash, and you can dash into each other, and sort of like, whack each other out of the way. So, if you're unable to verbally communicate what you want the other person to do, there's definitely an element of like, Fine, I'll just do it myself and then you walk through them, grab the ingredient and hopefully your relationship survives.

Glitch  13:30  
I have had many a an overcooked ad. During my, my time of playing mobile games did overcook start as a free to play mobile game, By chance, made its way into this, into its new form.

Tox  13:53  
I'm gonna have to look that up, but I have not seen it on any platform for free. So I'm not exactly sure the history but it doesn't have the trappings of a free to play game, there's not like an item shop. There are lots of DLC content, I mean, it releases this one we're talking about is this special edition. So, it was not the very first one and not the very first platform either, but it is a cross platform game. So you can play on your platform of choice and overcooked to brings online play so you can play over the electric internet.

Glitch  14:31  
I did see that overcooked has also done a crossover with Gordon Ramsay, that, that also piques my interest, have you seen that

Tox  14:40  
I missed that one. Tell me more.

Glitch  14:43  
I just saw, so his if you if you go to Twitter, Gordon Ramsay's profile picture is is him as an overcooked character. 

Tox  14:57  
That's awesome. Yeah, you can swear in overcooked. You can like, sort of, you can do emotes, and they're like things like high or like, let's go. One of them is just a culmination point pound sign dollar sign dollar sign apps. Because that's definitely a feeling you get sometimes playing the game, and that that matches with the, with Gordon Ramsay,

Glitch  15:20  
I think, I think it was called the, the gourmet edition I believe. Yeah, Gordon Ramsay is overcooked, too. They do in fact do a crossover with Gordon Ramsay and it's quite funny.

Tox  15:35  
Yeah, so it's definitely been a popular game as you can see from the number of DLCs. There's a story element to, you're helping the onion King, save the kingdom from various threats, I think in the first one. It's actually a Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is sort of a neat little reference and then in the second game. It's the unread, the zombies that are made out of moldy slices of bread.

Glitch  16:00  
We also had Zoo Tycoon to the dyno Danger Pack release 15 years ago for PC and Mac. Did you ever play the Zoo Tycoon.

Tox  16:14  
I never played Zoo Tycoon there were a bunch of Tycoon games right I played the roller coaster one, and that was super fun, kind of, you know, roller coaster simulator type game.

Glitch  16:25  
Zoo Tycoon was an absolute blast, you not only had to make sure that your guests were fed, and that they had restrooms every five feet. But you also had to make sure that your animals were fed that they were happy that they had toys that their enclosures were, you know, of an acceptable size and that they had all the things that they needed. Like if, if you had, say, your dolphins that there was water, obviously. Yeah, yeah, right. So, this the Dino Danger Pack kind of paved the way I think for games like Jurassic World evolution, And if you haven't played that game. It's zoo Kai Zoo Tycoon to die no danger pack, like to the nth degree it's an incredible game, it, and honestly, that's the reason that I brought this up because Zoo Tycoon to die no danger pack, the building blocks of that game and Jurassic World evolution to drastic world evolution two will actually be coming out soon so if you haven't played it yet. I strongly encourage giving that game a shot, because it's, it's Zoo Tycoon two but so much better.

Tox  17:43  
Definitely want to make a raptor enclosure and, you know, just see what happens.

Glitch  17:48  
Well, you can also let them out and see what happens that's always pretty fun.

Tox  17:53  
I was half kidding but now I definitely have to try that. Let's move on, keep the momentum going to our feature presentation about Game Genie in shark, and in game cheats. All right, so I don't even know where to begin with this one there's so much good stuff to cover here, maybe, first, let me quickly sort of define what Game Genie and game shark were, and maybe what cheats are with trying to hone in on that a little bit so you know teats in a video game cheat codes codes whatever they modify the game in a way, usually, that gives you an advantage or sometimes is just for fun, make something silly happen like low gravity or paint balls, or something like that, and Game Genie and game shark were devices that you would sort of plug into your system. Sometimes they sat between their systems input like a cartridge slot and the actual cartridge so you'd have cartridge Game Genie GameShark and then plug that into your system, or sometimes, in this case of PlayStation they were sort of a CD that an extra CD that you would, or a peripheral that you would plug in, sort of on the side, and they would these devices specifically would allow you to modify the memory addresses that were being read from the actual game and from the system so you know it would read a certain address that usually has data x, but you plug in your game shark and type in a code and now it has data y and that, that why gives you low gravity or whatever the cheat may be. So that's kind of what these things were, and we were thinking, happened to them.

Glitch  19:41  
Where'd they go where they were so much fun to use,

Tox  19:44  
what yeah. Tell me about your experience with these first as we get started.

Glitch  19:49  
For sure, so I can definitely remember lots of eights and zeros, because I think almost every code started with 800, and then something else it was they were close to I think 12 digits right,

Tox  20:04  
something like that varied a lot I was reading up about it and they got longer and longer because the games getting more complex and the systems support larger memory addresses so yeah 12 Eight to 12 Sounds right for those original ones.

Glitch  20:20  
Yep, so I had the game shark for Nintendo 64 And it was, it was glitchy, dare I say,

Tox  20:29  
they loved it then.

Glitch  20:32  
Yeah, absolutely did. My favorite game of all time to use it on was Goldeneye double oh seven gave you invincibility you could unlock all the different weapons you could have unlimited ammo, or in this game's case it was I think 999 ammo and then the little nine on the very end would always glitch, after you had fired it would go back to nine suffice. But I remember, you know, if the game didn't always, if the game didn't freeze, you know, and you were able to play through because it would freeze sometimes. Yeah, what am I one of my favorite places to use those codes was in the facility. And, you know, the facility was a harder level. Yeah. You start off in that bathroom. You go down through the ductwork, you have that guard that's in the bathroom, you have the guard that's on patrol that comes in through the double doors. Wow, remember this like it was yesterday,

Tox  21:30  
great memories. I picture it in my head right now and I'm like, yep, takes out takes out,

Glitch  21:35  
You'd go down the stairs there was a couple guards, but being able to, I guess essentially speed run it was, was a blast being able to go through and just whatever weapon like the, I was at the RP 90 The

Tox  21:49  
yeah that machine gun, like tiny machine gun. Yeah, yes. Oh, or the,

Glitch  21:55  
the, was it the car or clog the club was at the club.

Tox  22:00  
The club named after one of the developers Kevin Love, by the way, random family.

Glitch  22:05  
Yes,

Tox  22:06  
that was known sometimes by my friends and is the pea shooter because it's kind of a weak gun.

Glitch  22:12  
Oh yeah, it was but, but when you doubled up because you were using the game shark and you could have two of them, the sound that it made, and it's wild and accuracy, just made it so much fun.

Tox  22:25  
I actually, I use the game shark, as well on this game to get to the floating island in the dam level, that first island, or that first level rather, and there was nothing there but it was just so cool that was one of my favorite things about the N 64 era was that, as it was sort of open world, you think, Oh can I get there it's like well I can see it, I should be able to get there. I remember doing the same thing in Mario 64 To where like, I could totally jump on top of this slide, but I can't quite reach it. If only I had a little boost, I would see something cool, that's kind of, I think the feeling that I get from these things, you know, just expanding that game and really experiencing more of it.

Glitch  23:13  
So we also had a beep codes. Right. Those.

Tox  23:20  
Oh yeah, and why downtown while never forget that and Donkey Kong Country Code, lets you play the bonus levels as much as you want.

Glitch  23:29  
How did you how did you gain access to your cheat codes back then.

Tox  23:35  
It's a website that still exists today, it blew my mind when I was researching this cheat CC calm. I forensic forensics before I went, I went there looked at every game I had, and printed out all their pages. But, I apologize to my parents for probably spending $100 In printer ink and put them in a little binder and I had my cheat codes binder and it was, it was the best.

Glitch  24:00  
I actually I had a cheat code, do you remember the, the black and white journals that you would have in like kindergarten. Oh yeah. So I had an extra one. And by the time it rolled around for us to that you had access to find these cheat codes and stuff. Actually I think I had started using it for the Nintendo, the NAS system. Um, oh and I'd also used it for the Super Nintendo, you would come across codes. They used to hide these codes and stuff on like cereal boxes, you would go into like a Babbage's or something and you could gain access to these codes because they would have them in like a magazine. Oh, what I did is I would write down these level codes I remember I had entire pages dedicated to Indiana Jones on the SDS, and it was all level codes for all the different levels. Yeah, and then there's a particular code that I remember that was for vigilante eight, it wasn't necessarily like, up, up, down, down, left, right left right But show me eight actually gave you a place to enter the codes then. And yes, I actually had it, I had it memorized. Go over to friends houses. Take this game with me I had a massive in 64 library. And I had this, because I didn't want to take the book with me I memorized it. It was JT BT seven CFD one L R M G W.

Tox  25:36  
I have no way to verify that, but I could take your word for it.

Glitch  25:41  
Yep, I, and I can remember it to this day, you know, it's, it's one of those things that sticks with you like, you know old phone numbers right you remember those because we didn't have cell phones, and I didn't have like a notes in my cell phone that I could just write down this vigilante eight code or just look it up, you know on the internet had to memorize it. If I wanted to use it.

Tox  26:04  
That's so much do you had a notebook full of codes, it's just like, how, you know, for a kid, how magical to discover these things in various ways out in the real world, squirrel them away in your notebook and then you've got like a legit, a secret, that's sort of just for you. And, and so you know, some ways we've sort of moved away from that. In modern games, and we were thinking, they're probably a bunch of different reasons why. But why do you think that, you know, we see sort of less of that, in, in the games we played today I

Glitch  26:43  
think one of the big reasons is so larger corporations now are kind of, kind of doing the the game development so they have stricter deadlines than previous developers did you know, Video games were kind of in in an experimental phase I want to say all the way through Nintendo 64 Up until we got to Xbox and PlayStation Plus we're just kind of feeling it out and seeing, you know, how can we streamline this, and developers were having a blast making these video games so they were able to work there weren't really deadlines, it was the wild west of video game development, they could throw in whatever they wanted. And, you know, now we have deadlines. Now we have results and we have ways to, to monitor those things back then, You know, there was no way to monitor the progress that was being done, or they hadn't figured out how to do that yet they hadn't figured out how to make smart video games using SMART goals. You know, I could spend months on, you know, a piece of code, and right no one was the wiser. Oh yeah, it's definitely gonna take that long. Yeah, I

Tox  27:58  
think there's definitely an element to that and I think that it's not just a sort of a soul crushing corporate thing either. I think it kind of get rolled into the main games themselves like some of the cheats and codes and things that game sharks would do. They modify the game too and we did talk about mods in a previous episode, but mods, sort of, of course, are their own entire thing some games will build in the ability for you to mod them, some won't, and people will still not them, and then also DLC content, kind of shows up as you know, we spent this extra time on something, and time is money and development studios, they, you know, there's a, we could do 10 episodes on the economics of video games and all the problems with it but no, they need to make money to stay in business so they take that effort and they put it in the form of DLC and sell that

Glitch  29:01  
plan. And I think another reason why we've kind of seen codes, kind of go by the wayside is, you know, a lot of games now are made with the petition or competitive competitive side of the game in mind, you know, people are playing games like Call of Duty fortnight, and even like Dota, League of Legends, they're playing these games, money, like, actual money. Yeah, and you know I think if there's anything that could has the potential to break the game, that, that it cannot exist now. Steam, a lot of games on Steam, still have code accessibility. I don't know why this this maybe hasn't carried over into console so much. Certain games will allow you you know just by pressing that Tilde key that little squiggly line key up in the left hand corner of a keyboard, it'll actually take you to a cheats menu on a lot of steam games. Other Steam games will require, like an activation code, or just by selecting a cheat mode. And then others will also require you to enter a cheat activation line of code in the actual game codes, it's in the game code itself or in the games properties. So, steam still allows you to use cheat codes and end games on Steam still do. Honestly, I'd like to see that maybe trickle over into to console games I think they could definitely do it especially with a game like Borderlands. I think about the replayability, for a game like that, and I mean if you think gamers that aren't maybe that talented or somebody who's kind of shied away from getting into video games because they know they're not that great at it. They're like, you know, whoa, I could never, I could never land hits like that with my aim or, you know I'm brand new to this I don't know how to, how a controller works. If they, you know enabled these people, put it on a low difficulty level, maybe turn off the ability to get trophies, maybe turn off some achievements or some unlocks in the game, but allow the people to experience the developer story that they've created by enabling invincibility. I don't see the harm in that.

Tox  31:20  
I think that's a, I think it's a really good point. You know, it could enable more people to get into the game where people don't have fun with the game, I think, you know, the mechanism you described it really well on the Steam aspect, you know, it's kind of a hack, right, there's basically what these things are and there's a security aspect that comes along with that, not just for like, you know, whatever your data on that device, but also for consoles in particular, you know, you may have heard about Nintendo Switch and you know all the things that they do in Nintendo to try to discourage people from jailbreaking their switch and installing, you know, emulators and all that other stuff on their switch because people are tempted to do that because it's such a cool piece of technology, but it deteriorates, it has the potential to curate the experience, as well as leave individuals vulnerable to hacks, and of course, you know, sort of deteriorates the ecosystem that the console's try to create with their shops, and that whole experience. So I can see why something like modifying a configuration file to enable cheats is is never gonna happen on a, on a switch. But I think, you know, build it into games, right, add those fun modes, and I have seen a lot of games I play, have different difficulty settings specifically. So you can play on the easiest setting and get past that tough part. But yeah, I think you're right they could go one step further and just turn on invincibility mode and let it rip.

Glitch  32:58  
I think that would, I think, you know like that would be beneficial for for new gamers, just, it adds a real replayability and it allows you know especially, you've got, you've got YouTube creators or content creators now that, think about the stuff that they would be able to do, and that helped that only helps the game, you know, if I was able to go into let's say like a Borderlands or a just cause. And have invincibility enabled and just do some wild and crazy stuff that gets views on the game and it gets more people interested in it. And that's only good for the game.

Tox  33:37  
I have seen that. Speaking of Switch games on things like Breath of the Wild and even Mario Kart where they're able to hack the cc's, the engine capacity, like you know, normally you have 50 and 100 150, and then maybe 200 and a mirror mode but they'll but I like 1000 cc's, and it's funny how the game actually scales to that, and watching those are pretty hilarious, but again that's a really hacky sort of not technically supported way to make that happen, but it would be really cool if, you know, if you could, and I think it has to do with experience right if, if you could bump it all the way up, if everyone could do that really easily. Why wouldn't you and then you'd have a very different game in the case of Mario Kart, when you're going traveling at lightspeed. I can kind of see why, why they want to maintain that experience, but we're definitely missing something, I think with the, with the cheats, from our childhood. Alright, so that wraps up our feature presentation on Game Genie game shark and cheats writ large. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a review or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Feel free to work the socials to you'll find us we are at morning xp boost. Thank you so much for listening. We can't wait to see you again next week.