Game Genie

The Game Genie, developed by Codemasters and distributed by Galoob Toys, is a peripheral device which allows the user to effectively hack video games for a variety of effects, from such practical things as giving yourself infinite lives or ammo or making you immune to damage to stranger things like turning Mario into an indistinguishable purple thing that swims through air. This is accomplished by entering a series of six-to-eight digit codes onto the startup screen, which will modify the game's data or programming. The original Game Genie was for the Nintendo Entertainment System and allowed you to enter up to three codes (sometimes jokingly referred to as three "wishes", hence the name "Game Genie").

The peripheral proved popular despite Nintendo's disapproval, and a lawsuit ensued, temporarily halting the sale of Game Genies through an injunction, but the courts ruled in Galoob's favour, likening the use of the Game Genie to "skipping portions of a book" which is in no way a derivative work, let alone a pirated copy. Not that it deterred Nintendo, though, and in recent years the Japanese government outlawed the sale and distribution of third-party console enhancers, something which Nintendo may have had a hand with given their history of ruthless litigation. Sega on the other hand approved of the Game Genie, giving it their seal of approval and versions of the Game Genie appeared for the Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo, and possibly some other systems. Some of these allowed five "wishes" instead of three. There also exists a Family Computer version of the Game Genie, but not much information is known about it apart from it being sold by a company called Realtec in regions where Famiclones are common and is thus extremely rare.

Game Genies usually came packaged with a book containing codes, and users could subscribe and receive regular updates. In addition, more inquiring gamers would attempt to find their own codes. To this day, there are websites where users log and attempt to create Game Genie codes, and most console emulators feature an emulated Game Genie as a built-in option.

The Game Genie spawned one competitor, the Pro Action Replay, which worked in a similar fashion. Both peripherals were retired at the end of the 16-Bit generation. The equivalent for the 32/64-bit era was the Interact GameShark. The next generation of Console Wars, dominated by the PlayStation 2 and Xbox, benefited from a new generation of the Action Replay, as well as the Pelican Accessories Code Breaker. No off-the-shelf tool permits similar enhancement to the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 (though a version of the Action Replay was released), and with the upswing in online console gaming and remote hardware verification, they may not ever be back and may end up being Deader Than Disco. Similar cheating tools for seventh- and eighth-generation consoles do exist but are for the most part illicit Game Mods designed with an individual game in mind and are made to facilitate unfair play in multiplayer, which has led to players being banned and even litigation against authors of such mods. As such, the Game Genie and related devices have become a footnote in the history of gaming, remembered mostly by nostalgic gamers as a life-saver in the days of Nintendo Hard.