Video Game Hacking

by Moral Grey Area Cat

Game hacking is not an area that's been tackled in 2600 before, so I aim to give a brief overview in this article on how and why games are hacked.

Of course, current-generation consoles such as the PlayStation 3 have only recently been hacked, but this has brought down the full wrath of Sony on the hacker concerned.¹  So be careful what you do.  You can turn your console into a brick or break your game by poking about the entrails.  This article is for instructional purposes only.

Why Hack Games?

There is a view that people only hack games to cheat, especially in online gaming.

You only have to look at the boards on GameFAQs to read reports of light-saber-wielding droids running amuck in some of the online Star Wars games.²  If caught, such individuals are usually banned.

Of course, hacking games is used to cheat because the player does not have the skills to complete the game in the usual way.  Others look for a quick way to gain prestige among their peers.  But then there are those who do not have the time to spend the required hours to complete a game, and so use the cheats to get past specific levels so they can progress onwards.

Hacking can actually extend the life of the game, with different ways of playing becoming available.  Certain characters may become available.  These are usually Non-Player Characters (NPC) but ones which can now be controlled by the player.  New ships or vehicle may also become available, or the player may gain skills or abilities not usually associated with their character.

Hacking access to the game levels is an easy way to complete many games, but these can often open up other areas.  Sometimes, a level only available in single player mode can be used in a multiplayer game.  Demo levels are also of interest, as they may only be used in a rolling demo before the game starts, rather than in the game itself.

Perhaps of most interest to some hackers is the potential access to unused or beta material.  Many games retain elements that were used for the game's development, but which are made inaccessible in the released game.  The Legacy of Kain series is a good example of this, detailed at the Lost Worlds website.³  The second game, Soul Reaver, has a number of versions of the Soul Reaver weapon that are only available through cheat codes.

One very specialized area of hacking is the translation patch, where games only released in one country (usually Japan) are translated into English or some other language.  While this has usually been aimed at role-playing games such as Final Fantasy,⁴ there is a growing industry in converting game menus and text from English to other languages such as Russian.⁵

Finally, there is the rebuilding of unreleased games.  Some games are not released at all for a variety of reasons, but get leaked onto the net, or are available in demo form.  Star Fox 2 for the Super Nintendo was abandoned at a very late stage of development, but a leaked ROM was not only translated from Japanese to English, but also hacked so that it resembled the final game as much as possible.

The PlayStation 1 demo of Titan A.E. was released, but John Doom managed to hack into the game so that at least some further levels were made playable.⁶  Without these kinds of restorations, many games would be unavailable to gamers, or lost completely.

Types of Game Hacking

There are many ways of getting into the guts of any particular game, but they tend to be divided into two areas: hardware and software hacks.

Let's have at look at the first.  Hardware hacks have always been there, from the "60- to 72-pin connector" for importing Nintendo Entertainment System games⁷ to the PlayStation modchip.  GameShark and other cheat cartridges may also fall into this category, which alter the game's memory address values to give a desired result.  No doubt there are many other such devices.

The GameShark also allows specific codes to be used, which brings us over to the software side of things.  As noted above, these change the values at specific addresses, which may increase health for a player, or turn all enemies into morons.  Accessing different levels is pretty straightforward once you know the specific address to change, and may even get a bonus level or two while you're there.  But you do get some rather strange codes appearing, though: do we really need nude codes or cheats for the early Tomb Raider games?!!⁸

One of the best ways to alter the game in a significant way is through changing the content.  This can be along the lines of the translation patches as mentioned above, but may also be achieved using a hex editor.  Hex editors can be used to open up game files, allowing the hacker to search for specific text or information which can then be changed.  The file may be saved again and integrated back into the game, making the changes permanent.  An extension of this is the mod, used a lot in computer games to radically alter the game.

The game's content or style of play may be changed, or the graphics updated.  The strange thing about PC game mods is that a number of official game developers support such customizations, going so far as to provide tools and programs to accomplish this, and releasing some of the mods in expansion packs.⁹

Conclusion

There are a number of ways to alter a game so as to cheat, access new areas, or change the game completely.

There are many resources and guides on the net to help people with this.  And don't think that everything about a particular game has been discovered: I have found new levels, characters, and ships in the games that I have hacked.

Have fun!

References

1. "Sony Sues PS3 Hackers" by Brendan Sinclair
2. "How do you use lightsabers and force lightning when your not playing as a hero?" by l_m0nk3y_l
3. Legacy of Kain: The Lost Worlds  by Ben Lincoln
4. ROMhacking.net  by Nightcrawler
5. "Star Fox 2" by Evan Gowan
6. "The Canceled Titan A.E. Game is Almost Restored" by Unseen64staff
7. NES to Famicom Adapter
8. Nude Raider
9. Video Game Modding

Special thanks to Jedi Kitty for proofreading, etc.