The Game Genie Experiment

As a child I was a huge fan of the Game Genie peripheral, so much so that I now own almost all of the variants that were officially produced, almost. After doing a bit of research I've found there was also one released for the Famicom, or perhaps more accurately Famiclones but it works on Famicom as well. Sadly these seem to be exceedingly hard to get a hold of.

After seeing the Famicom Game Genie my mind was racing, so I decided to try an experiment. At the center of the madness is a normal NES Game Genie which I plugged that into my NES to Famicom adapter. Now many people may or may not know that the thickness of the Game Genie board is quite a bit bigger than any official NES, Famicom or Famiclone cartridge, so it took a bit of shoving to get the Game Genie into the adapter.

Once it was shoved in good and tight I took one of my homemade Famicom to NES adapters and plugged that into the cartridge end of the Game Genie. Then I plugged the newly formed Megazord of sorts it into my Dream Station, because it has the clearest video output, and popped a Famicom game into the other end. At first things were garbled up, but after taking it all apart and giving it a cleaning it fired right up with the code input screen.

What a beautiful mess!

Not all the codes worked, but I'm used to that being the case on the NES as well, but I did manage to get some codes to work! It's tall, ugly and a long way around to get a Game Genie for the Famicom, but it does work. The overall joy of the experiment being a success was only multiplied by playing some games with codes and having some silly fun.

I know the adapters aren't available everywhere, but they should all be fairly easy to find online, as should be an NES Game Genie, if you don't have one already. Maybe someday I'll get a Famicom Game Genie, but if not I've tested a theory and proven that an NES version, with the right adapters, works perfectly fine.