The Game Genie is a series of devices sold by Camerica and Galoob for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Game Boy, Sega Genesis, and Sega Game Gear that modified game data allowing the player to cheat. It was attached to the end of a cartridge and the whole assembly was then inserted into the cartridge port of the console in question. When the console was started, it allowed the player to enter "codes" that were actually addresses in the cartridge's ROM. Contained within the "code" was an integer value that would be read by the system in place of the data that was actually present on the cartridge. For this reason, Game Genie codes are sometimes referred to as patch codes, because they patch the program code of a game. The codes had many effects, most often giving the player some form of invulnerability or infinite ammunition or some such modification. The codes came in a little booklet shipped with the Game Genie or in a quarterly update that a Game Genie owner could subscribe to. To keep demand up, the booklets would only last a certain number of months/issues. Today these codes, and many others discovered or created by players, can be found online.

When the original NES Game Genie was introduced, Nintendo opposed it utterly, taking matters to court, and actually managed to initially stop the sale of the device in the U.S. (though they failed further north - in many gaming magazines of the time, Camerica had placed Game Genie ads saying "Thank You Canada!") However, after the courts sided with Galoob, Nintendo could do nothing to stop the Game Genie from being sold in the U.S. Sega, however, fully endorsed the product with their official seal of approval.

The design of the NES Game Genie meant to deal with the awkward loading mechanism on the original console. This prevented it from being used with ease with the later revised NES, though it can be forced in. An adaptor was made to deal with the problem, but few were requested, and can be hard to find today as the stock is liquidated.

Though there are no current Game Genie products, most video game console emulators feature Game Genie support, and both the Action Replay and Gameshark "game enhancers" can trace their lineage in part to the Game Genie.

See also

• PEEK and POKE
• Cheat cartridge
• GameShark

External links

• Game Genie Code Creators Club
• Game Genie and other Game Enhancers Code Archive
• GSCentral (Has a large collection of Game Genie codes)
• The official Game Genie website (Archived copy from archive.org)