LGR Oddware: Action Replay for Windows 95
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Captain
The Action Replay on the Amiga was an excellent piece of hardware. As well as cheats, you could could manipulate memory. One nice feature is the ability to search for variables that change. For example, if you have 100 energy, you tell the Action Replay trainer to search for 100 as a variable. You then return to the game, bring your energy down to 98, then have the Action Replay search for that new number. It could take a few iterations, but more often than note it would locate the variable in memory and allow you to edit it or even prevent it from being changed again. It also had a lot of copying functionality, including the ability to save the memory state to disk. This allow you to save progress in a game, and effectively copy a game, with the latter only really working if the game wouldn't be loading more content from the original disk. You could take screenshots from games and even rip music if they used a tracker to create it. Like the consoles, it looks like the PC version was more reliant on inbuilt cheats than searching for your own. I don't recall there being pre-made cheat codes in the Amiga version.
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The Action Replay on the Amiga was an excellent piece of hardware. As well as cheats, you could could manipulate memory. One nice feature is the ability to search for variables that change. For example, if you have 100 energy, you tell the Action Replay trainer to search for 100 as a variable. You then return to the game, bring your energy down to 98, then have the Action Replay search for that new number. It could take a few iterations, but more often than note it would locate the variable in memory and allow you to edit it or even prevent it from being changed again. It also had a lot of copying functionality, including the ability to save the memory state to disk. This allow you to save progress in a game, and effectively copy a game, with the latter only really working if the game wouldn't be loading more content from the original disk. You could take screenshots from games and even rip music if they used a tracker to create it. Like the consoles, it looks like the PC version was more reliant on inbuilt cheats than searching for your own. I don't recall there being pre-made cheat codes in the Amiga version.
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Michael
The Action Replay, for me, was handy for 8-bit micro computers. I had one for the Amstrad CPC, and basically, you pressed a button on an expansion peripheral, the -Freeze- button, which, as the button suggests. Froze the system. You could then dump the memory onto a disk or tape, and. And, as the name of the product goes, you could reload that snapshot back into memory later on, and there we go. Action Replay. Bloody handy for Dizzy 2! :D
Obviously, 8 bit micros were coming to the end of their life, and Datel had a product line which was going to be defunct as well, and, it looks like it tried to extend it slightly by offering this. But, it was a pointless move really as your video states. I think the term used is -flogging a dead horse-
So yeah, good for an era it was designed for. Pretty pointless for the next generation of home computing.
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The Action Replay, for me, was handy for 8-bit micro computers. I had one for the Amstrad CPC, and basically, you pressed a button on an expansion peripheral, the -Freeze- button, which, as the button suggests. Froze the system. You could then dump the memory onto a disk or tape, and. And, as the name of the product goes, you could reload that snapshot back into memory later on, and there we go. Action Replay. Bloody handy for Dizzy 2! :D
Obviously, 8 bit micros were coming to the end of their life, and Datel had a product line which was going to be defunct as well, and, it looks like it tried to extend it slightly by offering this. But, it was a pointless move really as your video states. I think the term used is -flogging a dead horse-
So yeah, good for an era it was designed for. Pretty pointless for the next generation of home computing.
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Somethingelse
I used the commodore 64 version which could be used for cheating, pausing and breaking open the game and copying it.
The PC version with the dongle, well, the dongle was ONLY to stop you from copying the Action Replay -software- and giving it to friends. So the dongle was to protect the cheat software only! Similar dongles came out at the time for high-end, expensive Amiga software. They were a horrible fad of hardware copy protection that no-one liked.
On a side note, there was also a cartridge called a -reset cartridge- for the VIC 20 / Commodore 64 to allow you to enter poke codes. However, the same thing could be achieved by shorting out one of the pins in the back of the commodores.
If you would like to know any more information about these cartridges, let me know!
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I used the commodore 64 version which could be used for cheating, pausing and breaking open the game and copying it.
The PC version with the dongle, well, the dongle was ONLY to stop you from copying the Action Replay -software- and giving it to friends. So the dongle was to protect the cheat software only! Similar dongles came out at the time for high-end, expensive Amiga software. They were a horrible fad of hardware copy protection that no-one liked.
On a side note, there was also a cartridge called a -reset cartridge- for the VIC 20 / Commodore 64 to allow you to enter poke codes. However, the same thing could be achieved by shorting out one of the pins in the back of the commodores.
If you would like to know any more information about these cartridges, let me know!
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gui
The action replay for the C64 was so much better.
Firstly, you could get unlimited lives, energy etc, but not by -pre-installed cheats-, but the module would search the RAM of the c64 for the portion of the program code, that would reduce lives/energy by one.
If that doesn't work I would search for -SBC $1-, which is 6502 assembly for -subtract 1-, and then I would change that value to $00.
But the module was great for prgrammers too. It had a fastloader, you could inspect the programmcode of a running/frozen programm, save data (sprites, music) to disk etc.
The PC version seems quite useless.
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The action replay for the C64 was so much better.
Firstly, you could get unlimited lives, energy etc, but not by -pre-installed cheats-, but the module would search the RAM of the c64 for the portion of the program code, that would reduce lives/energy by one.
If that doesn't work I would search for -SBC $1-, which is 6502 assembly for -subtract 1-, and then I would change that value to $00.
But the module was great for prgrammers too. It had a fastloader, you could inspect the programmcode of a running/frozen programm, save data (sprites, music) to disk etc.
The PC version seems quite useless.
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sonikku
i like the little advertisements on the front of the box that say what it can do, including the one that says it can unlock vehicles, but none of the included games have any unlockable vehicles afaik, and no such codes are listed by default. pretty sure even at the time of release enough outrage could have taken this thing off the market in the UK for overselling itself for how little it can do as advertisted by default. i bet they spent more on that video production than they actually made from profit on this thing, so a lawsuit would have hit them pretty bad.
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i like the little advertisements on the front of the box that say what it can do, including the one that says it can unlock vehicles, but none of the included games have any unlockable vehicles afaik, and no such codes are listed by default. pretty sure even at the time of release enough outrage could have taken this thing off the market in the UK for overselling itself for how little it can do as advertisted by default. i bet they spent more on that video production than they actually made from profit on this thing, so a lawsuit would have hit them pretty bad.
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winphreak
I bought a CD at a show as a kid called XGamer 2000. Had a nice printed cover on it and a jewel case.
When I got it home, it was literally a bunch of trainers and stuff organized by what game they were for.
Which, upon later investigation, lead me to all the sites those were hosted on and who made them.
Still worth the $10 I paid, and I learned some neat stuff about programming because of it.
Oh, and unlike Action Replay, it actually worked.
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I bought a CD at a show as a kid called XGamer 2000. Had a nice printed cover on it and a jewel case.
When I got it home, it was literally a bunch of trainers and stuff organized by what game they were for.
Which, upon later investigation, lead me to all the sites those were hosted on and who made them.
Still worth the $10 I paid, and I learned some neat stuff about programming because of it.
Oh, and unlike Action Replay, it actually worked.
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Gavin
Maybe they were just trying to continue their product line onto the PC? I think Datel started doing this kind of thing with the -Multiface- interfaces on the Spectrum and then worked onwards through other hardware until they ended up on the PC which didn't really need it. The Replay II on the Amiga was a really clever tool. It could pause your game and scan through memory searching for images or sound tracker modules and all sorts of other stuff.
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Maybe they were just trying to continue their product line onto the PC? I think Datel started doing this kind of thing with the -Multiface- interfaces on the Spectrum and then worked onwards through other hardware until they ended up on the PC which didn't really need it. The Replay II on the Amiga was a really clever tool. It could pause your game and scan through memory searching for images or sound tracker modules and all sorts of other stuff.
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fattomandeibu
Had one for C64, still have the machine and tapes, but the cartridge is missing.
It was really useful on there because for single load tape games, you could use it to compress and backup the current state of play to get quicker load times, use as an effective save state for games that didn't allow saving or, if you weren't at all totally legit like me in any way, make copies of your friends' games.
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Had one for C64, still have the machine and tapes, but the cartridge is missing.
It was really useful on there because for single load tape games, you could use it to compress and backup the current state of play to get quicker load times, use as an effective save state for games that didn't allow saving or, if you weren't at all totally legit like me in any way, make copies of your friends' games.
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L2
Those tiny PIC12C508A 8-bit microcontrollers have only 25 bytes of RAM) and 768 bytes of ROM to store a program, and they run at 4Mhz. They were extremely cheap in the 90's, 768 bytes is just about enough to perform a simple task or two but I strongly doubt it has anything to do with game hacking. It almost certainly acts only as a DRM dongle for the software, and would be easy to defeat or clone.
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Those tiny PIC12C508A 8-bit microcontrollers have only 25 bytes of RAM) and 768 bytes of ROM to store a program, and they run at 4Mhz. They were extremely cheap in the 90's, 768 bytes is just about enough to perform a simple task or two but I strongly doubt it has anything to do with game hacking. It almost certainly acts only as a DRM dongle for the software, and would be easy to defeat or clone.
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Nigel
For when you don; t want to wait for the 14. 4k modem to tie up the phone line for 4 hours at 1 English pence per minute with British telecom. Plus there was no way to find out about the cheats without spending 29. 99 on top shelf computer mags LOL
W. H. Smiths took 20% of my income most weeks. The other 80 was spent at the video arcade blowing things up for 50 pence a game. Doh, happy days.
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For when you don; t want to wait for the 14. 4k modem to tie up the phone line for 4 hours at 1 English pence per minute with British telecom. Plus there was no way to find out about the cheats without spending 29. 99 on top shelf computer mags LOL
W. H. Smiths took 20% of my income most weeks. The other 80 was spent at the video arcade blowing things up for 50 pence a game. Doh, happy days.
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