Your earliest hacking methods

[Tony H]

What were some of your earliest hacking methods?

I remember before there were any known debuggers, and long before I knew any assembly, I used a very time consuming method to find the ROM addresses for the price of items, monster/enemy HP, etc (mostly for RPG's).

I would go to Gamefaqs and read a guide to find the most expensive items in the game, and then convert those prices into hex and search for every occurrence in the ROM with a hex editor. They were usually 2 byte numbers, so there were anywhere from a few, to 20 or more matches in the ROM. I would change each one in the ROM until I found the right one by going into a shop and seeing if the price had changed. Once you found the first one, the rest were pretty easy. All in all... VERY time consuming, but effective. I remember one trick I used was to number each occurrence sequentially... I would change the 1st occurrence to 01, the second to 02, etc. Then when I went into the shop, the new price of the item would tell me which occurrence had changed it.

[BigBossman]

I've always liked using the Game Genie, Gameshark, & the Code Breaker, but never gained understanding of how it was done until I bought a Gameshark Pro for the PS1. It had the built-in code generator. This made it possible for me to find the codes I wanted for most of my favorite games.

Prior to getting the GS Pro, I would look at people's codes that they made & alter the addresses &/or values to get another code. I did this with WWF Smackdown 2: Know Your Role. There was a code that changed parts of characters into other parts of characters. For Example: it could change Steve Austin into Jerry Lawler. I took the codes tried them separately & realized that one affected his head, the other affected his body, & the other affected the lower portion. After hours of tinkering with it, I figured out how to change each character & what you could turn that portion into. There were a lot of awesome codes made for that game. I just wish I was able to say that I made them all.

After I upgraded to the PS2, I couldn't use the GS Pro. I noticed that someone began making some codes to modify matches in the WWE Smackdown games. I bought the Code Breaker, & noticed that they had two different formats of the codes. One was the standard code & the other was a RAW HEX code (not sure if that's the actual name). After using an online conversion calculator, I started testing the codes & expiramenting with the values & addresses. By doing this, I was able to find other match types. For Example: I could make it to where all matches had submissions on, even if the match normally couldn't be won by submission. I also managed to find codes that modified who was on who's side. For Example: using a series of codes, I could make it to where I could play a 1 on 5 match. So I started coming up with ideas for lop-sided matches that weren't in the game (1 vs 2 vs 3 / 2 vs 4/ 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 1 vs 2/ etc).

I also had just started learning about joker commands. Since some of these rules modifiers, would cause the game to freeze when mixed with other match types, I figured out the values that correspond with which buttons (& directions). Then I was able to put those codes together so I could activate them when I wanted to. Some had be activated while the match was loading & others could be activated in the middle of the match. That worked like a charm. I just wish the same thing could be done with the WWE games for Xbox 360 & PS3. They started making some games to where you had to have a certain version of the Code Breaker, plus the codes were set up in a different format. Before you could easily modify the addresses or values, but these newer codes wouldn't work that way. I don't think it was ever able to be converted back to the RAW HEX format.

After getting back to playing the Genesis, I started seeing cool codes made for games I enjoyed playing when I was a teenager using the Game Genie. That's when I started putting in random codes & learning about how those digits work. Just about everyone knows that I got the PAR2 recently & have been able to find many more codes. That thing is awesome. However, I still have to say that my favorite hacking device was the GS Pro for PS1. I only wish they made that compatible for ALL of the game systems.

[Pugsy]

I remember making 255 lives pokes for the C64 in 1984 (26 years ago eeek!!) by making a simple basic prg that would peek memory to find consecutive 169,3,141 values in memory (3 being the starting number of lives). I then poked the addresses containing 3 with different values and then started the game, if I had 8 lives instead of 3 I knew which poke was the one needed so then poked just that one it with 255. Basically I was just searching for LDA #$03, STA $XXXX.

I used a similar technique to turn of sprite collision by searching for AD 1E D0 or AD 1F D0 and replacing them with a9 00 ea.

[BigBossman]

I also forgot to mention that I used a hexadecimal calculator & still have it. I still use it to figure out differences between addresses. This mostly helps when I'm trying to find a code that affects Player 1, Player 2, or a few enemies. It still comes in handy. The problem is, its not easy finding calculators that can figure hexadecimal digits & if you do find one, they're little bit expensive depending on where you go.

[Smart1988]

Lol good topic. Im first hacking game in snes where called Star Ocean and i hack in that game infinite gold in hex table where i making it normall(just turn on game and code in that game it was he he he i have that snes rom for this moment ha ha ha and change something tilesets and letters with snes edit program in DOS version but this i making later where i play on emulator
Much after making PSX region codes GS (US) codes convert to GS (PAL) codes or GS (PAL) codes to GS (US) codes. Where convert is really simple example:
PAL code - different value = US or US code + different value = give as PAL code see ya.

[Phil The Hammer]

I used existing GG codes from Galoob, changing them one letter at a time & noting the differences in effects. For games without any GG codes supplied, I used random codes by trial & error(mostly error) until I found something worth keeping.

I bought PARs for SNES and GEN early on. Still hadta use trial-and-error, as they often won't pinpoint a code I was seeking. Value codes were easy; effects codes such as "have items" codes or "super jump" were more difficult. And there was the constant, tedious turning the PAR or the console on/off to change codes, as well as all the handwriting.

Many of the codes I've posted here were found by these slow, tedious methods. THANK GOD I had enuff common sense to write'em down!

My hat's off to the makers of emulators with code generators built in! They've made it so much easier to find codes in old games now! (Guess I'm gonna hafta get my PS1 stuff back up!)