Comment by bitexploder
9 years ago
I kind of agree with the sentiment. It isn't that crazy.
We do this as a matter of course all the time. Patching a small handful of instructions is pretty easy. You could learn to do it on a week or less if you are a decent programmer.
Do it well? Do it quickly? Do it idiomatically and in a short amount of time.... Takes real skill.
I used to patch games for infinite-lives, or to allow my serial numbers to be accepted. Doing this wasn't hard, as somebody who grew up writing assembly language on 8-bit machines in the 80s.
One fun self-challenge was always to make my modifications as small as possible. e.g. one-byte changes were a lot more impressive than two-byte changes.
Your own personal game genie.
It's interesting. I have observed if people learn on an 8 or 16 bit machine, like in Microcorruption, they tend to be able to pick up more complex ISAs much easier. It helps to know the first principles.