Misc Oldies Question on N64 GameShark and patches

[OmarElsayed]

Does the N64 GameShark only allow for cheat codes, or does it also allow you to load a patch of a romhack and use it on an authentic cartridge?

 

[FAST6191]

Technically yes, practically no.

Ye boring and basic gameshark has very limited scope for editing the ROM and most of that is probably used dodging the CIC.
Consequently it is limited to RAM editing codes. The N64 is also old enough and still cartridge based so has limited amounts of code inserted into general memory to run (why simple memory edits can be so powerful on the PS1, DS and other things where the binary is in memory and thus within range of a memory edit).
You might be able to recreate a few hacks as cheats if you wanted but for the most part hacks are going to be an emulator thing (possibly PC only in the case of many N64 hacks, even excluding the obvious texture replacement approaches) or a flash cart thing.

 

[OmarElsayed]

Technically yes, practically no.

Ye boring and basic gameshark has very limited scope for editing the ROM and most of that is probably used dodging the CIC.
Consequently it is limited to RAM editing codes. The N64 is also old enough and still cartridge based so has limited amounts of code inserted into general memory to run (why simple memory edits can be so powerful on the PS1, DS and other things where the binary is in memory and thus within range of a memory edit).
You might be able to recreate a few hacks as cheats if you wanted but for the most part hacks are going to be an emulator thing (possibly PC only in the case of many N64 hacks, even excluding the obvious texture replacement approaches) or a flash cart thing.

Would a simple texture pack for example, or text hack be practical?

 

[FAST6191]

Texture packs on PC are several hundred megabytes for a reason. I could see a path to loading something else or tweaking a few pixels/texels but nothing too drastic (such that even a 5 minute session on a tile editor could easily send it over the top). Depending upon the reach of the cheat device it might also be if not impossible then very very abstract (a lot of cheat devices assume you will only be writing to the main memory, you then having to write it to main memory and alter the code in some manner to get it to video memory, save memory, CPU memory, audio memory or some other aspect that is trivial for an emulator or piece of code running on the device*).
Text hacks are probably going to be limited to menu hacks and things that have similar amounts of text (a lot of puzzle games for instance).

*again why editing some RAM which on some systems will contain the code being run (usually for speed purposes -- 2x CD/300kilobytes a second best case scenario is painfully slow when your CPU is usefully measured in megahertz (millions of instructions per second) is so powerful. Indeed ROM chips might be noted as having no/low load times but even they can be too slow -- the GBA specifically has very fast chips for the time and one reason why GBAflash carts are expensive to this day but even it kicks the occasional bit of code to RAM to get a speed boost. I don't know how often this happened for the N64 offhand though.

Or if you prefer look at something like https://doc.kodewerx.org/hacking_n64.html (the rest of the site also doing for most other consoles and handhelds up to the DS). When it says 16 bit (1 character in many Japanese games by this point, 2 in western ones in most cases) it means it. Most cheat cartridges are going to struggle to get beyond 50 lines of cheats per game (maybe even less, no idea what various flash carts have by way of limitations here and historically it can vary quite a bit between teams) and that would also have to include the IF this then write aspects so you know the correct bit of original text is in memory to in turn change it. Best you are going to get is you find a method to grab data (you can do this one boot after the other until everything you want is in there, and probably lose those save slots for this) from save memory or even a memory cartridge, or maybe even figure out how to use the expansion pack to do something useful** and possibly get some more data in there or useful in there.

**choice video at times like these

 

[OmarElsayed]

Texture packs on PC are several hundred megabytes for a reason. I could see a path to loading something else or tweaking a few pixels/texels but nothing too drastic (such that even a 5 minute session on a tile editor could easily send it over the top). Depending upon the reach of the cheat device it might also be if not impossible then very very abstract (a lot of cheat devices assume you will only be writing to the main memory, you then having to write it to main memory and alter the code in some manner to get it to video memory, save memory, CPU memory, audio memory or some other aspect that is trivial for an emulator or piece of code running on the device*).
Text hacks are probably going to be limited to menu hacks and things that have similar amounts of text (a lot of puzzle games for instance).

*again why editing some RAM which on some systems will contain the code being run (usually for speed purposes -- 2x CD/300kilobytes a second best case scenario is painfully slow when your CPU is usefully measured in megahertz (millions of instructions per second) is so powerful. Indeed ROM chips might be noted as having no/low load times but even they can be too slow -- the GBA specifically has very fast chips for the time and one reason why GBAflash carts are expensive to this day but even it kicks the occasional bit of code to RAM to get a speed boost. I don't know how often this happened for the N64 offhand though.

Or if you prefer look at something like https://doc.kodewerx.org/hacking_n64.html (the rest of the site also doing for most other consoles and handhelds up to the DS). When it says 16 bit (1 character in many Japanese games by this point, 2 in western ones in most cases) it means it. Most cheat cartridges are going to struggle to get beyond 50 lines of cheats per game (maybe even less, no idea what various flash carts have by way of limitations here and historically it can vary quite a bit between teams) and that would also have to include the IF this then write aspects so you know the correct bit of original text is in memory to in turn change it. Best you are going to get is you find a method to grab data (you can do this one boot after the other until everything you want is in there, and probably lose those save slots for this) from save memory or even a memory cartridge, or maybe even figure out how to use the expansion pack to do something useful** and possibly get some more data in there or useful in there.

**choice video at times like these

What about the old ed64 plus, the one with the cartridge slot?