Game Genie Guy and Assorted SNES Replays
Aug. 30th, 2021 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThere are a bunch of SNES action games I have fond memories of, but I only have a limited amount of patience and skill for. Some of them I developed actual skills for, back in the day, but a number of them I only beat (and generally replayed) thank to Game Genie and emulator cheat codes. An issue I’ve had with my emulator handhelds (that I feel like I’ve commented on) is that most of the emulators don’t support cheats. PocketSNES, in particular, is an excellent emulator but (at least the version I have) lacks any kind of cheat support.
Enter Game Genie Guy!, a utility that creates a hacked version of the rom with the cheat applied. It doesn’t work for all codes and it doesn’t work for all games (and there are some codes that work fine when applied through SNES-9X but seem to do nothing when applied this way), but it’s a solution for some. In general, setting something to "infinite" tends not to work, but invincibility sometimes does (presumably by not registering hits). Setting a starting value for something like lives or money generally seems to work well. I’ve been experimenting.
Smartball (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) - I can't remember the last time I played this; it's probably been 15 years or more. It was one of the earlier SNES games I got and it still holds up decently as a platformer with some tricks. It's short--16 levels that you can finish in an hour-- but there are a decent number of puzzles and secrets, even if finding them isn't strictly necessary. Among other things I learned while trying to find more information on it: The Japanese version of the game is called Jerry Boy, a play on the L/R confusion because Prince Jerry is transformed into jelly. The Japanese version also actually had cutscenes, interactive town areas, and in-game plot. The story (part of which made it into the English manual, at least) is that Jerry’s brother Tom was tempted by an evil wizard, who cursed Jerry so that Tom could marry Jerry’s fiancée Emi. (There are some entertaining bits we missed out on, including an angel village in the clouds that the evil wizard escaped from, and a group of people trapped in the belly of a whale!) Back in the day, I never did figure out what's up with the random boy in a dead-end room halfway through the game. It turns out he’s an alternate ending to one of the stages that they didn’t fully remove when they localized the game—in the original he’s lost, and rescuing him takes you to a town scene with some free 1-ups. There’s a fan translation of the original version, and there’s a full LP on Youtube of it.
Contra 3: The Alien Wars (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) - Contra, as a series, is the classic example of “NES hard” gameplay—there are bullets and enemies everywhere, the slightest touch kills you and removes your power-ups, and you have very few lives to get through all the stages. This even has a hard mode on top of that, which adds even more enemies and some extra attacks for a couple of bosses. With cheats, so you’re either invincible or have infinite lives (and preferably keep your special weapons when you die), it’s possible to beat that hard mode, and I have fun touristing / massacring my way through it. I’m sure that someone has done it honestly, but that person is not me.
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) – This actually was the first SNES game in the Ganbare Goemon series and one of very few that made it to the states. In our version, Goemon is renamed “Kid Ying” and they try (unsuccessfully) to make it a little more welcoming to American audiences. (We just ended up not being able to tell what was a Japanese reference and what was just general wackiness.) I loved the fact that there were rpg elements; that you can collect money and buy armor, healing foods, extra weapons and special abilities. Also, the third area is a carnival with completely unrelated minigames. For the few times I beat the game, I spent a lot of time grinding in the first two stages. There are nine stages, but I'm not sure I ever beat stage 8 as a kid. (I didn't actually remember what happened after it; it's really long and has some really hard jumping segments. I had to use save states this time around.) I had beaten the final boss, though, because you can use passwords to jump ahead. I remember having a lot of trouble with the jumps in stage 4, too, but I know I eventually got through those without help. The mix of ¾-view areas (with grinding, shops and minigames) and side-view jumping stages is a strength of this game, even though things like needing to buy the pass and the text to advance are just padding. I definitely couldn't remember where most of the secret areas were, which meant I didn't find many extra lives at all. Also, there's definitely a different flavor to the game playing two players rather than one, but for the jumping areas, either you both need to be very good, or one of you needs to be amazing to manage the jumps in piggyback mode. I believe there are fan translations of the sequels; I should really give them a shot.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV – Turtles in Time (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) – A friend noted that this is based on an arcade game, so you can just emulate the arcade version and pump as many virtual quarters in as you need. While I agree that’s an option, my nostalgia is for the SNES game that I played many sessions of (particularly with my cousins at family gatherings; I didn’t own many 2-player simultaneous games). This is such a well-done example of the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre. You have multiple special attacks, including multiple variations on the jumping attack, throwing foot soldiers at the screen, and the insanely-useful “puny god” maneuver, where you smash a foot soldier back and forth and instant-kill anything you hit with him. (The two-button special attack that’s unique to each turtle but costs health really isn’t worth using.) They also get really creative with how the foot soldiers appear on the screen and the variety of weapons they use (the pair of boomerang-using foot soldiers still haunts my nightmares), and also the other enemies and their attacks. Really, it’s a masterful example of the genre and it very much holds up.
Enter Game Genie Guy!, a utility that creates a hacked version of the rom with the cheat applied. It doesn’t work for all codes and it doesn’t work for all games (and there are some codes that work fine when applied through SNES-9X but seem to do nothing when applied this way), but it’s a solution for some. In general, setting something to "infinite" tends not to work, but invincibility sometimes does (presumably by not registering hits). Setting a starting value for something like lives or money generally seems to work well. I’ve been experimenting.
Smartball (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) - I can't remember the last time I played this; it's probably been 15 years or more. It was one of the earlier SNES games I got and it still holds up decently as a platformer with some tricks. It's short--16 levels that you can finish in an hour-- but there are a decent number of puzzles and secrets, even if finding them isn't strictly necessary. Among other things I learned while trying to find more information on it: The Japanese version of the game is called Jerry Boy, a play on the L/R confusion because Prince Jerry is transformed into jelly. The Japanese version also actually had cutscenes, interactive town areas, and in-game plot. The story (part of which made it into the English manual, at least) is that Jerry’s brother Tom was tempted by an evil wizard, who cursed Jerry so that Tom could marry Jerry’s fiancée Emi. (There are some entertaining bits we missed out on, including an angel village in the clouds that the evil wizard escaped from, and a group of people trapped in the belly of a whale!) Back in the day, I never did figure out what's up with the random boy in a dead-end room halfway through the game. It turns out he’s an alternate ending to one of the stages that they didn’t fully remove when they localized the game—in the original he’s lost, and rescuing him takes you to a town scene with some free 1-ups. There’s a fan translation of the original version, and there’s a full LP on Youtube of it.
Contra 3: The Alien Wars (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) - Contra, as a series, is the classic example of “NES hard” gameplay—there are bullets and enemies everywhere, the slightest touch kills you and removes your power-ups, and you have very few lives to get through all the stages. This even has a hard mode on top of that, which adds even more enemies and some extra attacks for a couple of bosses. With cheats, so you’re either invincible or have infinite lives (and preferably keep your special weapons when you die), it’s possible to beat that hard mode, and I have fun touristing / massacring my way through it. I’m sure that someone has done it honestly, but that person is not me.
The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) – This actually was the first SNES game in the Ganbare Goemon series and one of very few that made it to the states. In our version, Goemon is renamed “Kid Ying” and they try (unsuccessfully) to make it a little more welcoming to American audiences. (We just ended up not being able to tell what was a Japanese reference and what was just general wackiness.) I loved the fact that there were rpg elements; that you can collect money and buy armor, healing foods, extra weapons and special abilities. Also, the third area is a carnival with completely unrelated minigames. For the few times I beat the game, I spent a lot of time grinding in the first two stages. There are nine stages, but I'm not sure I ever beat stage 8 as a kid. (I didn't actually remember what happened after it; it's really long and has some really hard jumping segments. I had to use save states this time around.) I had beaten the final boss, though, because you can use passwords to jump ahead. I remember having a lot of trouble with the jumps in stage 4, too, but I know I eventually got through those without help. The mix of ¾-view areas (with grinding, shops and minigames) and side-view jumping stages is a strength of this game, even though things like needing to buy the pass and the text to advance are just padding. I definitely couldn't remember where most of the secret areas were, which meant I didn't find many extra lives at all. Also, there's definitely a different flavor to the game playing two players rather than one, but for the jumping areas, either you both need to be very good, or one of you needs to be amazing to manage the jumps in piggyback mode. I believe there are fan translations of the sequels; I should really give them a shot.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV – Turtles in Time (SNES, Replayed on PocketSNES on RG350) – A friend noted that this is based on an arcade game, so you can just emulate the arcade version and pump as many virtual quarters in as you need. While I agree that’s an option, my nostalgia is for the SNES game that I played many sessions of (particularly with my cousins at family gatherings; I didn’t own many 2-player simultaneous games). This is such a well-done example of the side-scrolling beat-em-up genre. You have multiple special attacks, including multiple variations on the jumping attack, throwing foot soldiers at the screen, and the insanely-useful “puny god” maneuver, where you smash a foot soldier back and forth and instant-kill anything you hit with him. (The two-button special attack that’s unique to each turtle but costs health really isn’t worth using.) They also get really creative with how the foot soldiers appear on the screen and the variety of weapons they use (the pair of boomerang-using foot soldiers still haunts my nightmares), and also the other enemies and their attacks. Really, it’s a masterful example of the genre and it very much holds up.
