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In the beginning... Throughout the history of gaming, there have always been accessories that defined the systems. For the Nintendo, the Zapper and Power Glove have provided endless Internet Photoshop parodies, the Super Nintendo had the big ass Super Scope, and the Atari essentially had it’s own controller. For the PlayStation, however, there would come a piece of plastic and circuit boards that not only caused various debates in the gaming community, but practically re-wrote the way gaming companies dealt with certain situations. That little bastard would be the GameShark, and let me tell you of the wild times this poor thing has caused. The GameShark in and of itself wasn’t exactly new to the scene – the NES and 16 Bit systems had the Game Genie, but that worked on a different scale. Licensed from its parent company Datel, the Action Replay was brought over to the States via Interact Accessories and re-named the GameShark. Available for both the Saturn and the PlayStation, we’ll focus on the Sony version for this article. Before we get into the drama, we must first understand how the device worked, where it went, and what it was abused to do. At its core, it’s essentially a cheat device. The accessory would plug into the parallel port of the original PlayStation system, and upon turning on the system you would be brought to the GS Main Menu. Here a Menu could be opened to select a game from the available list, and then within the game’s main page you could select from a variety of codes. Codes varied based on what type of game it was and what was hacked by the Interact hacker / programmer. By choosing a code or codes, the GameShark would permanently ‘write’ that code to whatever line of hex it was being used at in the system’s memory. This allowed for games to suddenly have Infinite Lives, Endless Fuel, and more. Slightly more complex codes could unlock every character in a game, every weapon, crazy speed boots and whatever else the person hacking could think of. All it took was the right lines of hex. As it turns out howver, the little cheat device that could was about to unleash an entire industry within the gaming collective. |
An original model GameShark
(2nd Version) that came packaged with the VHS Gaming Magazine FUSE.
The VHS tape was...brutal to watch.
Big Wave CDs
were Upgrade CDs that would automatically update the device with the
latest game code lists. The Upgrade CD in the corner allowed for
more features to be added.
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We heard you liked
codes... So with the original model of the device out and about, the next step was to provide users the ability to make their own content. This came about in two forms: The GameShark Pro, pictured far right, and the SharkLink boards. The GameShark Pro added the ability to hack your own codes via the GS itself. A small button on the side would bring up a menu that allowed you to do criteria searches (greater than, less than, equal to, etc) and then activate the line of hex once the GS had it weeded down. Not all codes could be hacked like this, which is why the SharkLink was created. Essentially it was a board that you installed into your PC, and would then connect either GameShark to it via a huge serial cable. Using either the provided software or fan made ones, you could then hack using the computer, which provided a much more comfortable environment. Even cooler, you could type up specifically organized Code Lists in Word Pad, and so long as you had all the right punctuations, update the entire Code List yourself rather than typing it in via the onscreen keyboard. |
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Sony stops living a
parallel life Now while all of the above sounded fun, a darker side to the cheat device began to rise up. Besides all the various bootleg versions now appearing, many more non-Interact branded cheat devices figured out how to allow the use of either Import Games (when the original spring trick didn't work) or pirated / copied games. Many 3rd parties were getting upset because gamers were now getting unfair advantages in their games, or creating codes that allowed things to happen when they shouldn't. Having Aeris live in Final Fantasy VII, inserting names and sentences where you shouldn't be able to, completely changing a character's fighting style in Tekken, and many more crazy hacks were appearing all over the internet, many of which were from Interact. So to try and combat all this, Sony officially removed the Parallel Port from the PlayStation system. That was that, done deal. So what happened? Everyone figured out how to do a CD / Memory Card device, as was the case with the GameShark CDX, pictured right. |
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Jumping the Dongle... Eventually a 'Lite' version was released that didn't need a Memory Card to boot, but could use one should you want to add cheats to the code list. This went well for a while, but the gaming industry is an ever changing beast. Due to the complexity of how games and the machines that run them work now-a-days, the ability to have these original designed cheat devices are evaporating quickly. Microsoft figured out how to get around the direct hacking, which lead to Save Data files being hacked instead. With the exception of the PSP and the DS, most hacking these days are strictly through the Save Data. It remains to be seen how the next generation of systems will handle the cheating environment. In the end, the days of simple cheating or 'enhancing' a game are long gone. Which is sad, because if it weren't for the GameShark, I would have never had the most awesome job ever for two years, and some of the reviews on Game-Rave would not be possible. Infinite Health is a glorious thing. Jason |
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are Copyright Game-Rave.com and Jason Dvorak. Game-Rave.com, PlayStation
Perfect Guide, Game Rave, and all related material are Copyright Jason
Dvorak. Biggest PlayStation Fan is Copyright Sony Computer Entertainment - All other content is the respective Copyright and Trademark of its owners. Till all are one. |
