> After all, given 2 Game Genie codes, one that granted 5 lives on startup and another code that granted 9 lives, and the only difference between the 2 codes was one character, even a novice player could probably figure out that modifying that one character to any of the acceptable letter characters would grant between 1 and 16 lives on startup.
I fail to see why that was an outcome they wanted to avoid.
I bought some as a kid, and the real value wasn't additional codes for games already covered, but codes for new games that didn't have any yet.
I would have felt pretty ripped off if I had spent what little money I could get on the newest Super Mario Bros. 3 codes only to discover it was six extra lives when I already had a code for three.
At least some of those code books also included instructions for that kind of experimentation though. I very clearly remember my dad using those instructions to change Mario's jump height in SMB1 to just bypass whole levels by modifying the existing jump height codes.
I also remember being able to do something like this with the Sega genesis game genie… you could modify some of the codes with simple changes to change the number of free lives given, for example.
I fail to see why that was an outcome they wanted to avoid.