The Game Genie

The Game Genie architecture seems to involve triples of the letters; for ABCDEFXX, ABC seems to be the ML command, DEF seems to be some sort of data, and XX is only used on a few extended commands (such as long jumps), and only appears on certain combinations of the ABC letters.

When I have many games in this list, there will be a subindex here to allow you to instantly jump to any game review. However, right now, as there is only one game, I felt that a subindex would be superflous; therefore, instead I have placed this text in the space, which should have probably been left empty, anyway.

Super Mario Brothers 1

I made up several codes for this game.

• POLLEN, everything falls upwards instead of downwards.
• ZAXXON, Did something whenever you walked rightwards on the screen and scrolled it, but I forget exactly what (crashed, I think).
• POLXON, Every so often, as Mario walks towards the right side of the screen, a left - to - right pan will occur, causing the scene to change to one later in the level. The frequency of this scene change seems to vary inversely with the speed that Mario walks.
• PAPERV, changes the background colour scheme, trnsforming all black pixels to blue. This makes the game look really werid in the Underground levels such as World 1-2.
• ATTIKA makes Mario phase into another dimension (the Foreground Dimension) and be immune to contact with moving objects (except for a few in the *4 castle levels, such as the rotating beams of flames). Unfortunately, this makes it impossible to pick up power-ups, which makes the game slightly more difficult.
• OAPPLE makes the scenery vanish. Now you have to play the entire game from memory!
• PNYOPI changes the layout of the levels, replacing many normal objects such as pipes and the rows of blocks with trees from World 2, even in the underground levels. However, this makes it very difficult to travel as Big Mario, leaving a huge advantage to the small player.
• AESOPS allows you to skip levels by replacing the flagpole with an axe. When touched from above, the axe takes you to the next world... however this soon stops working as in the second World the flagpole is replaced with a steel platform, preventing further advancement.

Here are a few codes which were co-authored by me and my good friend Breet:

• NSiteY makes the game background be replaced by a plain blue screen, lettered with messages such as "Welcome to World 1-1", etc. it is a good test of memory to actually complete the game with this code running.
• ISALLK, which makes Mario float up as long as you are not holding down the jump key. When you hold down the jump key, Mario seems to fall.
• POPEYE crashes the game, but its derivative
• POLEYE slows the game by a factor of forty. Unfortunately, this code also destroys the screen driver of the cartridge, so you will only be able to see three flashing bars of light, perhaps with a background of noise letters. You can press Start twice to begin the game, and sometimes you can see the monsters through the haze, but it seems that all of the blocks are invisible.