This is what I was talking about before. I wonder how many of you remember these? If you do, please let me know!

These ones in particular are for the NES, back when cheating was actually fun. I enjoyed inputting the codes almost as much as I did using them, especially when I would type in a bunch of useless letters and make them explode by pressing B. The book on the far left was a 1990-91 release, Volume 3. I adored these little booklets. They made the games more enjoyable, and they allowed me to complete them if I needed the assistance. Come the Playstation era, I stopped cheating to complete games after a horrible experience with Final Fantasy VIII. I used GameShark (not nearly as cool) to max out my HP and such, and I made it to the last bit of the game, and even with the cheats I wasn’t able to complete it. After that, I vowed never to cheat again to help beat a game, and I restarted and played it properly. The time I stopped using codes period, however, was when I used the crazy ones they had for GTA3, which ended up wrecking my memory card along with erasing all of my fantastic Metal Gear Solid 2 photos. That was my fault for saving though. I would still use them on the GTA games every once in a while, but I turned off the system straight afterwards.

The new generation of systems has seemingly made codes (on a widespread scale) a complete thing of the past. Now if they released a cool device like the Game Genie again (don’t ever see that happening), then maybe they could make a comeback, but games are so different nowadays that I don’t think that experience could ever be brought back. In a world of autosaves, achievements, and hard drives, there are too many risks involved that ward off many players from doing so. Or maybe it is just me, but just from scanning forums I see a lot of people sharing my views.

Back to the Game Genie and the booklets themselves, it was rare for me to load up an NES game without one of these beside me. As you can see in the pictures above, this book in particular had plenty of codes for a ton of different games. My brother and I would highlight the ones we used most, as shown below. Games in particular include Alien Syndrome, Batman, Battletoads, Dr. Mario, Godzilla, Platoon, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game. I now find it humorous scanning the games that I never played until I was much older. This includes titles like Metal Gear, The Legend of Zelda, Joust, and Paper Boy (the last three thanks to the Wii and 360). If only I knew about them then…

The smaller booklets came in the mail via subscription, a fact I either never knew or forgot about until I looked at the back of one of them to discover our old Georgia address, a place I have not lived for 14 years. As you can tell by the Volume 1 booklet, it had plenty of codes for us to use. The Volume 2 booklet, however, is in much better condition. Some of the inner pages are damn near mint, with no highlights or anything. Some booklets were a hit or miss based on our collection, and this one was obviously the latter. Some of the booklets also had an “Ask The Genie” section, where you could submit questions for publication and receive an answer from the team. Check below for a question about the Game Genie for the Sega Genesis before it was released.

As you can also see in the last couple of pics, each booklet had an explanation for the code symbols at the beginning, so a person could easily skim the book for something specific, like codes to make the game more challenging, or codes involving infinite ammo. I never really used codes to make the game more challenging, I was more into infinite ammo and lives, as evidenced by the highlights in the large booklet.

We purchased the Game Genie for the Sega Genesis when it came out too, although I don’t believe I have it anymore. I do know for certain that I have more of these booklets, and I’ll post them up once they are rediscovered. For now, I leave you with the final picture: the order form located at the end of the booklets for those wanting back issues or wanting to renew their subscription. I hope I’m not the only one who remembers/has these.