Topic: Less than 2000 topics on a system that has been out since 2013?

I relatively bite my tongue when I see a lack of support for gaming systems that have been out less than a couple of years, but this is getting quite ridiculous trying to find support for a system that is almost a decade old.

I had read in another article on another site that it would be a solid ten years before any type of advanced cheating system would be applicable to the PS4 like Game Shark was to previous PlayStation consoles. The Save Wizard is O.K. but it isn't a real cheat engine in comparison to Action Replay for the PS2.

I guess I miss the good ole days of having infinite health which is lacking on the title "The Last of Us" for the PS4 using the Save Wizard. The Save Wizard gives you infinite health in the sense that you have to manually trigger the cheat while in the game unlike the days of PS2 gaming where your health was automatically regenerated or simply never depleted without having to equip something in order to trigger the cheat engine to work.

Now this all brings me back to the point of support in general. For the PS2, there were endless sites you could go to in order to get codes to input into your cheat devices directory and simply start using them. With the PS4, I can't find a single site that displays a list of cheat codes to input into the Save Wizard; yet the Save Wizard has an "Advanced Mode" to add cheats and codes.

Does anyone know of a site that has additional codes that you can add to the Save Wizard?

I don't mean the Save Wizard site itself, because the Save Wizard is an on-line database that is constantly updated, or so it is claimed to be updated occasionally, but there are never any new codes added for older titles. I guess older titles would refer to any game that is only a year old for the PS4; but I mean come on, I can still find new codes for older games on my PSOne Game Shark for crying out loud.

I'm just saying, there are still sites out there that add new codes for a gaming system like the PSOne and PS2; yet when it comes to the PS4, it is like gaming Guru's just gave up on the Playstation Platform itself because the PS4 platform gained the ability to play on-line.

I don't play online with my PS4 and the only time I connect to the Network (PSN) is when I buy a digital copy of a game or get a free download voucher for a game.

Will we ever see sites that support codes for the Save Wizard for the PS4? It doesn't currently look like it, that's for sure!

@Juxtaposition

https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/8qg7gk/how-cheat-codes...

“Built-in cheats weren't the limit to bending and breaking the rules of a game, though. Devices like Game Genie went above and beyond by offering cheats that developers never intended to pack into their game. Game Genie acts as a sort of bridge. Players attach a cartridge into the device, then insert it into a console where, in the case of the NES, it sticks out like a plastic tongue.

Powering on the console deposits players at a menu where they enter three cheat codes for the Game Genie to carry out, like its mythical namesake granting three wishes. Once players leave the menu, Game Genie hands control back to the game and begins scanning its memory while it runs, looking for a change that corresponds to the player's three codes, such as a lost life or a decrease in health or power-ups.

Determining what a Game Genie could or could not do was the responsibility of engineers like Allen Anderson and Graham Rigby. "He would usually start by finding the easy things, such as lives, and then go on to more esoteric stuff like jumping through walls," said Aplin, referring to Rigby.

Sitting in a room filled with thousands of cartridges, Rigby or Allen came up with cheats by plugging a prototype Game Genie into a cartridge and console, then using a scope—a homemade instrument with a screen and wave-sign indicator—to scan the game's memory as it runs. The wave indicator slows down or speeds up as the game's memory makes changes that near or match their search parameters. Once Rigby or Anderson pinpointed the memory address that changes when a particular action occurs, they converted its hexadecimal location to a string of letters that players punch in at the Game Genie's menu.

"When the console requests the data for the specified [memory] address, the Game Genie chip momentarily disables the cartridge and instead provides its own value on the data bus," explained Richard Aplin, one of the engineers responsible for a number of Game Genie devices including the never-released Game Genie 2 for Super NES.

The data bus is the collection of pins inside a cartridge, connected to the Game Genie's silicon teeth. That connection allows the device to override the game's processes with its own instructions. "Things such as lives and health were almost always stored in fixed locations," said Allen Anderson, a contract programmer hired to engineer Game Genie for Super NES. "All the Game Genie did was constantly replace those values with the new values over and over."

So if players, say, request invulnerability, the Game Genie waits for them to take damage then tops off their health by overwriting that value in memory with a higher number—so fast that, to players, it looks as if they never even got hit. Possible codes range from standard—immunity to damage, unlimited power-ups, skipping to the final boss—to borderline glitches such as "moonwalking," jumping higher and higher until players soar past the screen's boundaries, or granting characters a power-up every time they fall into a pit instead of subtracting a life.

The fact that developers like Nintendo did not bake in codes to give players endless lives or unlimited power-ups didn't matter: By manipulating a game's values directly, cheat devices like Game Genie were limited only by its engineers' imaginations.

By the early 2000s, industry-wide changes hobbled the air of mystery surrounding secrets. Switching from cartridges to CD-ROM rendered cheat devices like Game Genie, which depended on connecting to a cartridge's pins, obsolete. Manufacturers pivoted to hardware that had to be soldered directly onto a system's electronic guts, limiting their audiences to tech-savvy consumers who felt comfortable opening their consoles and working with dangerous tools.

Once consoles could connect to the Internet, neutering cheat devices was as easy as pushing out system updates or game patches. "You can't really release a serious commercial product that exploits bugs that are so readily patched by the manufacturer," Aplin said.

Affordable broadband made the Internet ubiquitous; the first person to find a code could publish it to any number of popular websites. At any given moment, cheat codes were a quick Google search away. Magazine subscribers went from being the first to know, to the last.

Out-and-out cheats like God Mode and unlimited power-ups fell by the wayside in favor of changes that altered a game's rules. Goldeneye 007's Big-Head and Tiny Bond codes make players easier or more difficult to hit, offering new challenges to overcome. In the same vein, paid downloads like gun skins for Call of Duty alter a weapon's look but not its damage, keeping players on even footing.

A significant factor in the decline of cheat codes lies in the fickle nature of trends. "Achievements wound up taking their place," explained Amrich, whose career took him from GamePro to senior editor of GamesRadar.com and then Official Xbox Magazine. Microsoft rolled out Achievements on Xbox 360 as a way to reward players for completing in-game challenges. Earned Achievements count toward a player's Gamerscore, a publicly viewable tally that elevated bragging rights from local playgrounds to a global stage.

Trophies, PlayStation's corollary to Xbox Achievements, take the concept even further. Every Trophy shows how many players have earned it, imbuing the rarest trophies with even greater allure. Microsoft put another nail in the coffin of codes by branding players found guilty of using external tools with a CHEATER label, a scarlet letter that taints their Gamerscore. "Cheat codes were no longer the currency of hardcore gamers once Achievements appeared," said Amrich. "They were another creative outlet for dev teams and they were required by Microsoft, so the effort that would go into cheats went into Achievements instead."

Almost overnight, players in possession of cheats went from the coolest kids on the block to frauds panned by those who took pride in securing Trophies and Achievements through blood, sweat, and tears. "A game people had anticipated for a year would finally ship, and the next day we'd get an email asking for cheat codes for that game," recalled Amrich of his days at GamePro. "I had issues with that approach: 'I can't wait to play this game so I can not play the game.'"

"Ironically, I wasn't a fan of the Game Genie," admitted Anderson. "I remember finishing the original Lemmings and seeing the four lines of text that said I did a great job. It wasn't much, but I knew how hard I had worked to do it. With the Game Genie you could get to the end of a game without actually spending the effort."

Despite having so many strikes against them, cheat codes will never die, and actually shine in games where they augment rather than circumvent gameplay. Players looking to cause mischief on one of Grand Theft Auto V's virtual highways can punch in a code to receive a full arsenal of weapons, expediting pandemonium.

Moreover, a cheat code can establish a connection between player and developer in a way microtransactions like gun skins cannot. "I think when you love a game, it is really fun to know as much about it as possible. To have a fun game and then find a secret inside of the product is always like opening a small door into the developer's mind and finding more out about how the developers think and their process," said Brevik.

"I didn't miss them until doing this interview," admitted Amrich. "I see them differently now; I understand the role they played in making that player/developer connection. Gaming culture has properly elevated the past and respects retro gaming at a level I did not expect to see, so I would like to see them reappear from time to time. There could be no greater tribute than to make a thoroughly modern game with an old-school wink and smile."

@kyleforrester87

I appreciate your link and timely response. I enjoyed reading the link you attached. I had never seen it before.

I honestly didn't expect a reply to such a lengthy first post that I opened up with. You make a very valid point about many things pertaining to codes; however, it still doesn't sit right with me that if developers of games don't leave the back-doors open anymore, then why does the Save Wizard still have the ability to add codes?

The answer to my above question may seem elusive at first; however, I believe those back-doors still exist only as floating memory instead of a fixed address as in the PSOne and PS2.

I use to reverse engineer codes because memory addresses were easy to locate with the SharkLink and it was easy to find values that pertained to the parameters that I wanted to alter in a game. Mind you, I did all this without having to open up my consoles and soldering a modified chip to the motherboard to accomplish what I wanted.

I don't see any talk of adding modified chips to the PS4 for cheating purposes, although there are chips that allow modifications to how the PS4 wireless controller performs with the console. Allowing rapid fire among other turbo features. There is even a mod-chip that allows you to move your downloaded games to your hard drive for the PS4.

With all of that in mind, it still does not make any sense why a Save Wizard exists if back doors are shut by developers in the final release of the game version to the public.

We could go on and on about cheat systems, but even with "floating memory" in the PS4, it is still possible to crack the games open to allow the player to at least have a chance to play. Take Crash Bandicoot N' Sane Trilogy for example. Try to play that game on the PS4 without any cheats active and you will find yourself wanting to do things you normally never thought of doing! I mean like picking up your PS4 and throwing it through your $5000 dollar 4K Flat Screen television.

I'm just simply trying to imply that cheating is still possible on the PS4; but, it makes no sense why advanced cheating systems are not available yet or at least the on-line posting of additional codes for the Save Wizard.

I guess there are just not enough people willing to share their exploits of PS4 games like people use to do in the past for PSOne and PS2.

So when it may be the general consensus that coding is dying, I disagree because games would not exist without it and someone out there must surely understand how "Floating Memory" works on the PS4 to crack new codes because Save Wizard is proof that it can be done.

@Juxtaposition sorry if it wasn’t clear, but I had just copied some of the article in - still, there seems to be multiple valid reasons for the decline of game genie/action replay cartridges and cheats in general

No apologies are needed and yes you were very clear on why the decline of cheat devices happened. I just don't understand why the Save Wizard exists if games cannot be exploited further on the PS4 than what is currently offered by Save Wizard.

In other words, whoever came up with the idea of the Save Wizard, has an understanding of how "Floating Memory" works in the PS4 and I just don't understand why customers of the Save Wizard have to be limited to only what is posted on the Save Wizard site. In other terms: "Modified Saves" since it is not a cheat engine.

Modified saves still have to contain written code that can be altered but I can't grasp the fact that no sites exist so far to accommodate the Save Wizards "Advanced Mode". I can find links all day long on how to use the "Advanced Mode" in Save Wizard, but where are the codes listed that people shared on-line like back in the days of the PSOne and PS2?

They are non-existent or there are just not enough experts to share with us how "Floating Memory" works at this point in time.

The PS4 still operates off the ROM on a disc and the disc should contain the information needed to isolate specific instances in a game. Even digital downloads contain that information but are encrypted out the Wazoo unlike the raw data on a hard disc DVD, BluRay, or CD.

On a side note worth mentioning also:

You are the only one that has replied which conveys to me that no one else is interested in the possibility of further exploiting their games to level the playing handicap forced upon us by such difficult games even when they are set to the easy option.

I'd like to see someone play Crash Bandicoot N' Sane Trilogy with only four lives and make it through the whole game - heck, I can't make it through the whole game with 99 lives and I've been playing Crash Bandicoot ever since its' inception.