by Dark Hope » Sun Feb 27, 2011 4:23 pm
yea, the roots of cheat codes were for the game designers to 'test things out." Rather than having to go through the whole game to test out level 9, they would enter in a code to jump to level 9 and test it. after the game was made the codes were often never removed. Keep in mind this is around nintendo/sega genesis days. Game genie came out for super nintendo and allowed you to re-write certain codes in games, turning on switches that gave you items and such. Next gen hits and Playstation comes out, technology gets smarter and they take out the ability to attach hardware by using a compact disk. Gameshark comes out with a memory card hardware attachment to get around the issue. using the disk beforehand, and saving the code hacks to the memory card, which stays in the system while the game is running. Next gen hits, ps2/x-box/gamecube. all 3 consoles use memory cards, gameshark makes a killing. next gen, ps3/x-360, wii. well I think there MIGHT be a gameshark for the wii (not sure) the other systems have strong enough code to resist simple data entry from a gameshark, so now you have to pop open your system to make a "hard mod" (inserting a hack chip" in order to get around it, thus voiding your warranty...smart choice on sony and microsofts part.