Cheating devices have been around almost since there was electronic gaming. For the Sega Genesis, most North American gamers recall the Game Genie distributed in the U.S. by Galoob (and actually developed by the British-based company Codemasters). This handy little cartridge was used as a pass-through between the game of your choice and the console and allowed modifying the game code in order to achieve effects that usually made the gaming life easier, like unlimited energy or starting with many more extra lives.
Action Replay Code Manager. Action Replay DS is a powerful cheat code system for Nintendo DS. This program, Action Replay Code Manager, allows you to connect your PC to your Action Replay DS cartridge via USB to add new codes which can be downloaded from various Internet sources using this software. Here's an example of three different formats you can find codes appearing online. Action Replay Codes Converter. PAR Code: 7E0F7404 Game Genie Code: AE8A-D4FA Raw Data Code: 7E0F28:03 These codes may or may not work for you when you try to input them into the Emulator. Windows 10 generic usb driver download. If you'd like to convert them into PAR or Game Genie codes you can do so.
However, there was another device that was in direct competition with the wish-fulfilling little cheater. Also based in Britain, independent hardware manufacturer Datel pushed its own series of lock-on game manipulation devices that still exists for consoles up until today: the Action-Replay line of modules. What few people remember is that there were not one, not two, but actually three (technically four) different revisions of this device released. And even less remembered is the fact that while the original Action Replay for Mega Drive and Genesis has basically the same functionality as the Game Genie, the two Pro revisions tack on several nifty extra features that make the cart even more desirable.
A Little Bit of History
Datel hadn’t just released the Action Replay as a knock-off following up on the success of the Game Genie. The series of modules had actually been around since 1983, though not for video game consoles. Still, as cheating devices for video game consoles, Codemasters and Datel were quite fierce competitors. As the story goes, when Codemasters tried to protect its Game Genie by filing a patent for cartridge-based game manipulation devices, Datel countered that attempt by stating: “We’ve been cheating at games since long before the Game Genie existed!” However, while the Game Genie was a product officially licensed by SEGA, the Action Replay didn’t get to wear this seal, which may have been due to the company’s reputation at the time.
The Action-Replay-line originally saw its birth on the Commodore 64 home computers. While the video game crash of 1983 left the North American console scene floundering, the European home computer market was booming. Developers like Atari, Commodore, Texas Instruments, Sinclair, or Amstrad all developed their own home platforms. The Commodore 64 in particular, first introduced in 1982, proved to be quite the smash hit across Central and Western Europe. Not only did the computer sport some advantages over the competition, like the then-novel sound chip and a whopping 64kb of RAM, like many of its competitors it also allowed for expansions over a built-in cartridge slot. Originally thought of as a means to allow for more memory or an easy way to instantly start programs and games (disk and tape drives had to be bought separately for the C64, so the cartridge slot was the only way to actually do something with their computers besides stare at a blue screen), some inventive developers soon found new ways to enhance, but also to tamper with the machine and the software it ran. One of these fellows was Richard Bond, who designed the first Action Replay.
Datel had already been around a few years as a developer of third-party hardware and interfaces for several home computers, but the Action Replay for the C64 proved to be its first big hit. Basically, the device, once plugged into the expansion port, allowed users to create snapshots of the Commodore´s memory and dump them on either disk or tape. Also, handy Peek and Poke commands could be executed while a program was currently running and could be enabled or disabled over a handy “FREEZE” button. This enabled a player, for example, to set the number of lives one had in a game to a fixed state and “freeze” them in place, so to speak. This function proved to be extremely popular, and many computer magazines in Europe in return started to publish so-called “freeze codes” or “freeze addresses” in their hint sections due to the popularity of the device. Over time, the Action replay saw several revisions and received new, additional features. The sprite monitor allowed modifying sprite graphics and could enable or disable the collision detection, basically making the player invincible. The hardware monitor made directly manipulating game code far easier, and later revisions also had a fastload option that made the C64’s notoriously slow load times a little more bearable.
While the C64s Action Replay was generally well received as a cheating module, it also gained quite an infamous reputation due to its ROM dump functionality. Using the cart it was very easy to simply “dump” a tape or disk to another drive and create a copy of a game, often even circumventing copy protection measures in the process. You could even dump “enhanced” code and create a copy of the game where the player had, for example, additional lives. Needless to say, Datel came under a lot of fire, and its devices for the C64 and the Commodore Amiga were often blamed for hurting the still fledgling (in Europe) game industry. The company reportedly sold hundreds of thousands ARP devices, and if each device sold had copied at least ten games, the damage to program developers would range into the millions. For that and similar reasons, the “Copyright Law of the United Kingdom” was accordingly amended in 1988. The so-called “Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988” was directed precisely against this particular manner of copying software. Other countries followed suit. However, many critics forget that the devices were also very popular among programmers, since they were a simple means to easily and quickly access the full potential the machine had to offer and sped up development.
While the original Action Replay achieved the height of its popularity in the late ‘80s, Datel began to struggle due to the aforementioned legislative act but also because the home computer market in general entered a slump when the 1990s rolled around. In order to stay relevant, the company had to expand its market to other platforms. Thus, the Action Replay was brought to the 8 and 16-bit consoles, which, with a few years’ delay after the North American market, were just having their big comeback in Europe.
“Freezing” the Mega Drive
While Codemasters certainly was first when game manipulation devices for the NES are concerned, it is hard to tell which cheating cartridge was first released for the Mega Drive. The ROM of the Action Replay bears a 1991 copyright date, which would suggest a released date in late 1991, early 1992 and thus slightly before or at least roughly around the same time the Game Genie hit the Genesis.Whatever the case, the first iteration of the Mega Drive version of the Action replay is remarkably similar to the Game Genie. Both cartridges have a switch that allows toggling the device on and off, which can be handy at time. Some games might freeze if a certain cheat code is active after a specific point in the game, or a gamer might just have limited invulnerability and continue on his own later on. Also, similar to the Game Genie, it might happen that your game freezes up if you toggle the switch too often.
The first, most visible difference to the Game Genie is that the Action Replay doesn’t use the somewhat coded 8-digit integer values. Instead, codes are entered in the form of hex addresses, which is a more easily interpreted way of reading the game code. As such, it is easier to pinpoint the exact place and manner in which a cheat is implemented. If a certain hex-code is entered, the value that is found under the given address is basically frozen in place, so if you know under which hex address a game saves the number of lives, “freezing” this number basically means an unlimited amount of lives.
It didn’t take long for gamers to realize that this manner of code manipulation meant another big advantage: Hex codes could be used to bypass regional lockout as well. The values for which region a cart is meant to be played can usually be found at a certain address in the game’s code. Replacing and freezing this address with a different value would change the region as well. This manner of using the Action Replay as an import module worked the same way as the Game Genie. Again, game magazines used to print many of these “freezer addresses” in their cheats and tips sections.
However, there was a hitch. In order to make a game region-free, you usually needed to freeze at least two, sometimes even three addresses. For example, to enable the Japanese version of Mega Man: The Wily Wars for play on PAL Mega Drives, you needed to fix the addresses 00018: EAD23, 0001F: 04520 and 00036: A4E71 in place. Also, some developers tried to prevent such manipulations. For some games, players needed to enter so-called master keys, or the game would freeze up otherwise. The first Action Replay allowed a maximum of four codes to be entered, barely enough (and on rare occasions insufficient) if you needed both a master and an import key.
The biggest downside of this device though was also that, just like with the Game Genie, you never really knew what a code did unless you tried it. If you entered the wrong code, the game would glitch up or freeze. Luckily game publications provided hundreds of valid codes, ranging from color manipulation to absolute invincibility. If you wanted to create cheat codes on your own with this device though, all you could do was guess wildly.
Going Pro
To rectify this, Datel revised the device and in 1992 released a new version called the “Action Replay Pro Version,” which was later superseded and simply called “Pro Action Replay.” As the name suggests, this was an enhanced version of the original device. The most visible difference between the AR Pro Version and the PAR is a slightly different menu design, but basically both devices are pretty much the same. The number of codes entered simultaneously was raised from four to 20, and as a neat extra the box also included a little booklet containing hundreds of already existing codes from the Genesis library of games. But that was not the most important change. On top of that, the Pro Version now had an implemented trainer and game code search mode, which allowed looking for and creating your own cheats, given some time and patience. For that, the switch on the cart now had three positions: “trainer” (down), “off” (middle) and “on” (up). You had the options of looking for “lives or other number,” “timer or similar,” “energy bar or similar” and “change of status.”
Here’s a short breakdown of how the process worked. Say you wanted to search for where a game saves its number of lives. First, you plugged the game into the PAR cart and inserted both into your Mega Drive. Then, you flipped the switch down (trainer position) and started the game, so you could see the number of lives. Immediately hitting reset would bring you back to the menu of the Action Replay. Under the section “start trainer – lives or other number,” one would now set the number of lives the game had presented up to that point (three in case of Sonic The Hedgehog, for example) and choose “exit to game” afterwards. Now, you started a new game but immediately lost a life. After the counter went down, hit reset again, then choose “continue with trainer” from the menu. If you now reduced the number of lives by one (for example, from three to two), the trainer would now list all instances where in the game a value of three had been replaced with a value of two. Since that would usually result in hundreds of codes, one would then repeat the process, sometimes losing more lives, sometimes none at all, and always searching for a corresponding change in the trainer afterwards. Eventually, one would whittle down the number of possible addresses to a handful of codes (between eight or twenty). Now you would just try out these addresses one after another, one of them then usually would give you unlimited lives. Like I said, it takes a little patience, but back in the day it was very satisfying to finally have a method of passing those incredibly hard games and being able to create your very own cheats. When I was fifteen I had used that feature to discern how to get unlimited energy in Mortal Kombat 3. It took me about 15 minutes, but when I had finally found the codes out I felt so very, very smug.
From Small-Time Cheat to Big-Time Importer
In 1994, Datel would eventually release the final, definite version and the most versatile cheating module for the Mega Drive in existence, the Pro Action Replay 2. Again raising the number of simultaneous codes up to a whopping 100, the PAR2 now also included all the codes that had previously been printed in the Pro Action Replay booklet in the cart’s ROM itself and could be selected directly, saving the hassle of entering several ten-digit codes by hand. Most importantly however, the cart was now able to function as an import cartridge without any need of freezer addresses at all! By going to the so-called option screen, players now could select the cartridge type and thus, for example, force a PAL console to accept a Japanese cart even if said game was region locked.
Unfortunately, Datel had only optimized the import option of its cart for the European market. If plugged into an American NTSC Genesis, users would find the selection “use PAL cartridge” missing from the menu. While importing Japanese games to a Genesis would still work fine, the handful of region locked PAL titles like Alien Soldier would still remain unavailable for American gamers without a hardware mod or a Mega Key device. Using region-locked Japanese games is still possible however, so you’re not missing out on much.
Top of the Line
There’s also another tiny flaw that all iterations of the Action Replay share with the Game Genie. On some games that use memory saves, the cart may occasionally wipe all save states. It happened to me when using the module to play an NTSC copy of Landstalker on my PAL Mega Drive, and I wasn’t even using any cheat codes at the time but just the import functionality. Needless to say, it was a very frustrating experience.
Other than that though, the Pro Action Replay 2 is an awesome little device. While the Game Genie would eventually vanish from the console market, Datel was still continuing its Action Replay line up until the sixth console generation (in the U.S., Action Replay devices would sometimes be found under the Game Shark imprint). So far, latest in the lineup was the Action Replay DSi released in 2009.
Nowadays, it seems like the Game Genie is better remembered as the prime 16-bit cheating device instead of the Action Replay. But that’s mostly due to the fact that while Codemasters and Galoob could secure an official license by Sega, Datel didn’t, which gave the Game Genie an advantage in advertising and a huge boost in general popularity. And yes, the basic Action Replay, with just four lines of cheat codes and no trainer or import features, was very lackluster and didn’t achieve much by comparison. The Pro versions, however, and particularly the PAR2, were immensely superior and leave very little to be desired, particularly for owners of a PAL Mega Drive. If you go hunting for a cart of your own, make absolutely sure to get the Pro Action Replay 2 (in the RED box) if you also want to have the import function included into the module. It should take you down no more than 30-40 Euros (40–55$ US) without shipping. Be extra careful, however. Sometimes sellers try to trick you by selling the Pro Action Replay (white box) and labeling it something among the lines of “Action Replay v2.” Be extra careful that it says Pro Action Replay 2 on the cart itself.
If you’re looking for PAR codes on the Internet, CheatZilla and BSFree host a pretty good selection, though whether the codes posted there actually work may not be guaranteed. On Sega Kore you can also find an online converter that changes Game Genie codes into Action Replay and hex addresses and vice versa. Last but not least, Tony Hedstrom (who also frequents the Sega-16-forums under the handle TonyH) hosts a great, 100% working selection of both old and new freezer codes over at his Website “The Code Hut“, along with a handful of nifty guides that teach you how to find and create new cheat codes more efficiently.
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Do you want to make your own cheat codes? This tutorial will show you how by using an example.
Contents
Download these programs:
Emucheat – Cheat code making software
No$GBA – Popular DS emulator
Steps to setting up your Emucheat
Extract all files
Place the EMU folder on the main root of Emucheat, along with the other folders.
Make sure it looks like below
Extras: 8 bit = 1 bytes 16 bits = 2 bytes 32 bits = 4 bytes Each byte contains two nibbles or a half a hexadecimal So 8 bits = 00 16 bits = 0000 32 bits is 00000000
Understanding the Concept of Codes Even more…
The idea when to use 0 , 1 , 2 is pretty straight forward…. Y – Address, X – Value 1-2 digit value will always be 8 bit – use 2 in front – 22YYYYYY 000000XX 3-4 digit value will always be 16 bit – use 1 in front – 12YYYYYY 0000XXXX 5-8 digit value will always be 32 bit – use 0 in front – 02YYYYYY XXXXXXXX I’m afraid if you don’t understand this, you will only be able to create basic codes.
The Beginning of Creating Codes – Ninjatown Money Code
Open up a ROM of “Ninjatown” with No$GBA 2.6A.
Open up Emucheat, And click on the tab (Emulator Select) at the bottom and select No$GBA.
Next, go to “Search” and on Search Type select 32bit
Get into your game of Ninjatown. (Be aware some pics and buttons to not show up on the glitchy No$GBA [Also Press Enter to skip Intro]) Your money should be 140
Type 140 in the target box and click on the binoculars. There should be around 5000 Addresses
Next, Buy a Wee Ninja Hut which costs you 40 cookies. Type 100 in the Target box and press on binoculars. There should be around 2 addresses. If not, continue updating building and typing in money amount left until you get 1-3 addresses.
Double Click on First code. Type 9999 in the value DEX box. You will notice the Value HEX is 270F.
In Desc. Box, Type in Money or something similar. Untick the Locked box.
Click OK.
Go to Table, and you will see your address. This is basically the code, you just have to piece it together.
You have to put 12 in front of the first part of the code, so it should look similar to this: 12211F74
The next part of the code is the 270F. So you have to put 0000 in front of this to add up to eight digits.
Your code should look like this: 12211F74 0000270F
Testing Your code
Go back into No$GBA
Go Add New, add your code along with the title, click on Action Replay, and ok. Next, double click on the tick box and go ok. See if your code works
Although, Some codes require an activator. I will talk about these below.
Activators and Codes
To acquire an activator for your code, Its very simple. Just go to R4CCE08. Add your code and at the bottom of the window should be a whole lot of numbers and boxes e.g STA SEL etc.
All you have to do is click on one and then Add. An Offset is often needed but I will talk about this later
Another example – Ninjatown Infinite Lives/Hearts Code
Action Replay Codes Converter online, free
1. Open up a ROM of Ninjatown on No$gba Emulator 2.6a. 2. Open up EmuCheat, and click on the Emulator Select tab at the bottom. 01j multitronic repair manual. Click on No$gba Emulator 2.6a. 3. Click on “Search” at the top of EmuCheat, and click leave the “Search Type” as 8bit. 4. Start a new game of Ninjatown, and build a Wee Ninja Hut. 5. It will ask you to upgrade the building, so after upgrading, destroy the hut. This ensures that your ninjas do not attack the Devils. You want the devils to escape. 6. Click on the fast forward icon on the Emulator, and click “Pause Emulator” on EmuCheat. 7. Type “10” into the search box on EmuCheat, see how many results you receive. There should be thousands of results. 8. Click “Run Emulator”, and your Emulator will continue. One of the Devils will eventually escape. As soon as it does, click “Pause Emulator”. 9. Enter the new number of Lives, that is, 9. 10. You should receive about 4 results. Double click on the first one. Type 9999 in the value DEX box. The HEX value becomes 270F. 11. The the Desc. Box, type in “Infinite Lives/Hearts”, or whatever you would like it to be called. 12. Untick the Locked box, click OK, and click on “Table”. 13. This brings you to another page, and now you can piece together your code. 14. Click on Utility, type in the first part, with “02” at the start. 15. Hit the space bar, and type 270F, with “0000” at the start to sum up to 8 digits. 16. After clicking on the words “Action Replay DS” and OK, double click on your cheat and it should become ticked. 17. Click OK. 18. Your cheat is complete. You should now have infinite lives.
Action Replay Codes Gamecube
Another Example – Enchanted Folk and the School of Wizardry (E)
Speed Modifying Code Tutorial
1. Open no$gba and select Enchanted Folk. Also, open up EmuCheat and click the tab at the bottom and link it to no$gba. 2. Click on Options>Controls Setup and make the key B into a key close to the arrow keys on the keyboard. This will be explained later. 3. Click the Search tab on EmuCheat and we can now begin making the code. 4. First, walk right using your left hand, then use your right hand to click Pause Emulator on EmuCheat. Make sure your character is paused while he’s walking, or this won’t work. 5. Type ? into the Target box, and press enter. 6. Now unpause the emulator, but keep walking. Now pause it again, while the character’s still walking, and type = into the Target box. 7. Unpause, and hold B while walking to run. Do both of these with the same hand, and click Pause with the other hand while the character is running. Make sure you character is paused while running, or this won’t work 8. Now type ! into the Target box. This finds any values that have changed since the last time you pressed Enter. 9. Unpause the game, and go back to walking rather than running. Pause, and type ! into the Target box. 10. Keep repeating the above steps until you only have about 6-8 results. From there, start testing every code in this format: XXXXXXXX 00000014 <—— X = the code, 00000014 = the speed you want. (for those who understand hexadecimal, 14 = 20) When you’ve found the correct code, your character will move at an uncontrollable speed. You might even fly through the wall, so this is the best way to find out whether the code works. Now just lower the speed of the code somewhere between 7-9. The code should be: 2236A485 00000007 However, there’s a chance that you could find a better code than this one; post it up and let us try it out. Also, try the above code outdoors; it doesn’t work. So repeat all the above steps while you’re outside to make a new code, one for indoors and one for outdoors.
Applian Replay Converter
ANOTHER EXAMPLE – POINTER
Here is a pointer example. The game that we will be using for this example will be Giana Sisters DS. What we will be doing here is that we will fill the “Red Crystals” that we currently have, to their total ( the total crystals address), without overfilling. Of course, we could just find the current crystals address and input 999, but that would look weird (999/3 etc.). First off, we will need to; find the addresses of the current and total crystals. Open up EMUCheat or whatever you use . For the current address, you can simply input the number of crystals you currently have collected, and then collect more and search again etc. for example; if you have 1 crystal, search 1, when you get another, search 2, and so on, until you only get a few addresses, and then test them. If you did it correctly, you should have come up with (02)0A3012. For the total, you can just get onto a level, search the total number of crystals you need (3 etc.), jump onto another level with a higher or lower total (2 etc.) and search that, and then repeat until you get a few addresses. Alternatively, you could have just looked at the addresses when you were looking for the current crystals variable, and just changed one of them to change the total variable (which means they are right beside each other in memory). You should have come up with (02)0A3010. Now that we’ve found those, we will start to build the code. We need to set the offset value to our total crystals address, which means we will use the D3 code type. This will set the total crystals address as the internal “pointer” register. D3000000 XXXXXXXX , XX being the address. Next, we will need to copy memory (bytes), using the 0F code type, which works in conjunction with the code types (D3, DC or B) to set the offset beforehand. Doing this will copy the bytes specified, from the internal pointer register (0A3010 or the first line) to our current crystals address (0A3012). FXXXXXXX YYYYYYYY , XX being the address (current crystals), and YY being the number of bytes to copy. We’ll do only 1 byte, so 00000001. And then, we finish off with the terminator D2000000 00000000, which clears AR’s internal registers. If you followed correctly, the code should be:
This means that it will copy only the total to the current variable, no more, no less. Test that out on hardware. Remember that no$gba isn’t a proper AR, so it will not work there (will bring up a ?)