GameShark

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GameShark is the brand name of a line of video game enhancers and other products for a variety of console video game systems and Windows based computers. Currently, the brand name is owned by Mad Catz, Inc. who is actively marketing GameShark products for the Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation Portable, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Game Boy Advance including the SP and Micro models. The GameShark products never have been licensed or endorsed by the manufacturers of the products that they work with.

1 Active and Recent GameShark products
2 Brand history
3 All platforms
4 Coding Format
5 See also
6 References

[edit] Active and Recent GameShark products

The active product line owned and marketed by Mad Catz, Inc. primarily includes game enhancer and game save transfer devices. In addition there are several other products which bear the GameShark logo including some clothing items, a USB keyboard and a media management system for the Sony PSP.

Presently, a disc based GameShark game enhancer is sold for the PlayStation 2 as well as a hardware device which is compatible with all three versions of the Game Boy Advance. Interestingly, there is also a newer hybrid hardware unit for the Nintendo DS and the GBA Micro and SP models which work with both DS and GBA games as appropriate. As with similar devices and products, the GameShark game enhancers use hexadecimal codes to modify the RAM memory of their respective host systems to affect the operation of game software primarily for the purposes of cheating.

In addition the GameShark line also includes a number of "GameSaves" devices for the Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube consoles. These devices allow game saves to be transferred between the memory cards used by their respective consoles and a Windows based personal computer. The use of these devices, as well as similar competing products, opens up nearly infinite storage capacity for game save data as the saves can be easily archived on hard drives or various types of removal media once transferred to a desktop or laptop computer. Another common use is the transfer of saves over the internet. In this way, saves can be posted to websites and traded online among players who would otherwise not have access to each others saved game data. The GameShark GameSaves products also come with a pre-built archive of game saves.

The GameShark devices are not unique in that there are competing product lines offering products with comparable functionality. Currently the Code Breaker and Action Replay are the GameShark's major competitors.

[edit] Brand history

GameShark Pro V3.3 for the N64

The GameShark brand was originally owned by InterAct Accessories, now defunct, which marketed the first products under that name in 1995. The original GameSharks were actually a rebranding of the Action Replay game enhancer devices for the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation for sale in the American market. The products themselves were manufactured by Datel which sold them under the name Action Replay in Europe. As the time progressed, the GameShark product line expanded to include game enhancers for the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy consoles as well other video game related products. Later on, redesigned versions of the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy GameSharks were produced with included more advanced features including a utility which allowed users to hack (or "train") their own cheat codes. The improved GameSharks for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were known as the GameShark Pro where as the improved GameBoy version was still simply called the GameShark.

The PlayStation versions originally connected to the I/O port on the back of the game deck. This original design is not compatible with later versions of the hardware which do not have this port as there is no way to connect the device to the console. In response to this, a disc based GameShark was introduced, known as the GameShark CDX, which had no need to interface with any external hardware devices. Legal disputes with Sony over these earlier unlicensed devices may have contributed to elimination of the I/O port.

The popularity of GameShark products slowly waned in the coming years and InterAct finally faded into oblivion in 2002^{[citation needed]}. Following the firm's demise^{[citation needed]}, its parent company, Recoton, auctioned off the rights to the GameShark brand name to highest bidder. Mad Catz, Inc. won the bid paying $5 million and formally acquired the GameShark brand and domain names in 2003.

Although the brand name had legally belonged to InterAct, the technology which powered the GameShark game enhancers was firmly the property of Datel and so was not acquired by Mad Catz along with the name. To power their GameSharks, Mad Catz instead obtained software from the same UK company which was providing Pelican Accessories with the software that drove the competing Code Breaker enhancers and this has resulted in an on going legal dispute. In the meanwhile, Datel began selling their products in the American market under the Action Replay brand directly meaning, perhaps ironically, that the technology which first helped to establish the GameShark had become one of its two primary competitors.

Finally, and adding insult to injury, the most popular independent GameShark codes website known as the GameShark Code Creators Club eventually transferred its loyalties to Pelican Accessories' Code Breaker format and became its official website. To this day the three firms remain in direct competition trying to sell similar products under their respective brand names.

Codes for the defunct InterAct Gameshark for Game Boy Advance can no longer be found online. Neither GameShark.com nor other "Cheat Code" sites list the older codes. This is odd, as Gameshark.com does list codes that work with the InterAct GameShark for Game Boy. Because of the encryption technologies used by subsequent devices, "endien" codes (see below) from competing devices do not work on the older GameShark. While software exists to convert codes from one device to another, these programs are designed to convert Playstation 2 codes, and fail to create usable Game Boy Advance Codes for the InterAct Gameshark.

[edit] All platforms

The GameShark is currently available for these platforms:

A version of the GameShark was also released for the PC. However, because a user could just download a trainer from the Internet for the game he or she wanted to cheat on, GameShark for the PC is not necessary.

[edit] Coding Format

Fundamentally, all GameSharks accept a sequence of codes that instruct it how to change the original information in some way. The specifics of the code format vary from platform to platform, though all involve a sequence of hexadecimal digits. For example, all Nintendo64/PSX GameShark codes have this format:

XXYYYYYY ZZZZ

While all GameBoy (original) GameShark codes have this format (called "endian"):

XXZZYY-YY

GameBoy Advance "Codebreaker" codes are in this format:

XYYYYYYY ZZZZ

Regardless of the specific format, there are three kinds of information encoded in each code, as follows:

The prefix X, used to tell the GameShark what kind of code is being used. E.G., on a Nintendo 64, prefix "81" means "continuously write 16-bit number Z to memory location Y", and prefix "80" means "continously write 8-bit number Z to memory location Y". In contrast, on a GameBoy Advance using "CodeBreaker" format, prefix "8" means "continuously write 16-bit number Z to memory location Y". The prefix values vary between platforms.
The offset Y, used to locate what is to be changed (e.g., what memory location).
The quantity Z, the value used (e.g., what the new value is to be).

For some platforms, such as the GameBoy Advance, these codes can or must be encrypted before use. On those platforms, the unencrypted format is called the "RAW" format.