The Game Genie was a cheat system originally designed by Codemasters for third and fourth generation consoles. It started with the release of the first Game Genie for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), and then later for the Super NES, Game Boy, Sega Genesis and Game Gear.
The way the original system works is by using what's known as a "pass-through device", which would act as a bridge between the cartridge and the console itself. This would allow the user to enter a series of characters referred to as a cheat code, that references addresses in the ROM of the cartridge. The new code would then be used in place of the data actually stored on the cartridge. The codes can have a wide variety of effects, from making the player more powerful in game to unlocking content that the developers had scrapped and rendered unreachable through normal play.
Codemasters did begin to develop a "Game Genie 2", but it never made it to market and only one prototype is known to exist. The newer version was to be substantially more powerful, with many improvements including the ability for users to find their own cheat codes, to selectively activate cheats during gameplay using the game controller, to switch games into a slow-motion mode, as well as automatically save and restore the high-scores from games into battery-backed memory on the Game Genie device itself. The fact that the Game Genie 2 was shelved allowed other companies to step up, and we had GameShark and Code Breaker for later generations.
If you've played any video games, you've probably picked up on the fact that Nintendo has a bit of a reputation for being very strict about their licensing and copyright. Nintendo sued Galoob, the company that distributed the devices in North America, in the case Galoob v. Nintendo, claiming that the device created derivative works in violation of copyright law. The lawsuit initially halted sales of the Game Genie in the US, but not in Canada. After the courts found that use of the Game Genie didn't result in a derivative work, Nintendo could do nothing to stop the Game Genie from being sold. Galoob had offered to make the device a fully licensed Nintendo product, however they were turned down.
Sega, on the other hand, fully endorsed the Game Genie and gave it their official seal of approval. There was one catch however, and that was that the Game Genie couldn't work with games that have a save feature, which they agreed to. For Sega, there was the Mega Drive/Genesis cartridge and Game Gear version too while Nintendo had ones for the NES, SNES and Game Boy. I actually own a fully boxed copy of the Game Boy Game Genie (what a mouthful), and you can see it further up the post. I'm a bit of a collector, so this is just a small part of my video game hoard.
Did you use the Game Genie back in the day? I was more of a GameShark for the PS1 kinda guy. Let me know your thoughts and feelings down in the comment section, and as always make sure to follow me for the latest Cryptocurrency, Technology, Internet and Pop Culture updates. If you're a fan of strange YouTube videos, you might want to follow me on Twitter. Until next time, Peace!
Sources:
Image by user naisatoh from Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/nesclassicmods/comments/5uj5rn/game_genie_folders/)
Game Genie on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Genie)