Rom Hacking/Game Genie

[Ryanfaescotland]

I'm getting quite good at rom hacking now (at least I like to think I am) and I'm wondering if you guys no if it is possible to convert rom hacks to work on proper carts using a Game Genie or similar device?

As far as I can tell it should because I no the reverse is true (taking Game Genie codes and converting them to hex addresses and making the changes on the rom file) so surely this would work the other way, wouldn't it?

Sadly I don't (yet) have a Game Genie so that I can just try it and find out hence I'm looking for someone to tell me.

[alcoatjez]

An interesting theory, but I don't think it's possible.
The only option would be to buy a copybox/flashcard or something like that.
For which system are your hacks?

[Ryanfaescotland]

I only have 2 so far but they aren't complete hacks and infact they are edited Save States so not really rom hacks at all but I don't think it would be too hard to find where the corisponding rom data is compared to the savestate data.

Anyways they are on Toejam and Earl 1 and Mega Lo Mania both on the Sega MegaDrive

[alcoatjez]

Copiers don't support savestates, so if you want to play them on a real MegaDrive, you will have to edit the ROM itself.

[Ryanfaescotland]

Yeah I thought working out where the information on the Savestate came from on the ROM would be a relitevly easy task. Sadly it isn't since a savestate stores what is in RAM, VRAM and so on and has near on nothing to do with the ROM so I dare say it is impossible to work out.

Working on assembly and trackers just now so that should lead to more useful reasults.

I think, theoreticly, it is 100% possible since (simple) ROM hacking does is make changes using hex editors that's ultamitly what Game Genies do. Sure it may mean manually entering 100's of lines of code what no-one is going to do but in theory...

EDIT - - Just re-read my post after posting and I notice all the bad grammar/spelling but can't be bothered fixing it cause I'm too tired so please forgive...

[Zach]

If you want a perman hack you're gonna have to find a way to modify the actual game code, hands down. Hacking volatile memory is useless unless you have a method of applying that hack every time; like you mentioned with a game genie, etc..

Seems like GG is kind of limited though, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to just build a better interface for hacking memory states, than some line/character restricted code system.