the Gameboy had a cheat cartridge called GameShark that allowed cheating in GB games. How did it work?
In: Technology
The GB cartridge stores a program. This program is a list of instructions for a CPU. So a CPU asks the cartridge about a specific location in memory and gets a response like “this location contains a command to change this value” or “this command tells you to jump to this location if this value is zero” etc.
Game shark intercepts the communication and allows to override some values. So let’s say that your character just got killed. The CPU asks the cartridge about the command to perform. The cartridge would say “decrement the life counter”. But the gameshark says “no operation”. This is how you get infinite lives.
The games are made up of strings of code, GameSharks basically intercept that code as the console is interpreting it and replaces it with it’s own strings, which change how the console then renders the game
…. I feel so old reading the question.
Like.. everyone should just know this, then I realise I am nearing 40 😭😭
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