amos and i started playing mechwarrior 3050 a while back, and after hearing the news of a crysis total conversion mechwarrior mod we figured the time was right to complete this 95 snes title. the co-op mode for this game is kind of strange… one player (amos) controls the legs of your mech while the other (myself) controls the guns, each rotating independently. an interesting game dynamic, but i digress. we loaded it up tonight to finally play through the last (fifth) level, and unfortunately find ourselves caught between a thunderbolt mech and a dead-end canyon. needless to say, the level leading up to this last guy is really long and our savestate has little health and no 1ups. what are a couple of battlemech pilots to do?

we came to the consensus that cheating in order to beat this final “enemy mech” falls within our ethical boundaries as gamers, but alas! the built-in password-based code system is only available at the start screen, and we can’t find a game genie code that works!

here is where i pays off to be a total nerd. the thing about emulators is that you can read/write anything in the game’s memory (this is how game genies work, only they do it using hardware - a different kind of cool). since i’ve previously taught myself a bit of rom hacking back when i was playing dragon warrior monsters (pokèmon + breeding. good times), i decided to make us an invincibility code.

the process is actually almost simple. you search through the game’s ram (using the tools build into the emulator) for the values of the variables you’re looking to edit, resume the game so that the values are updated (or not), and search again to reduce the number of matches. lather, rinse, repeat. once you know the memory address of your desired variable, append the 2-digit hex value you want to set it to to get a pro action replay code (similar to game genie). booya.

(note: you can hack in-game constants too, but they’re harder to find. search the game’s rom for sets of related values that would appear sequentially. eg: rpg player initial stats etc)

so, for anyone who thinks mechwarrior 3050 is too hard, here’s the invincibility code:

7E2ABE00

and if you don’t like the look of that dissipating yellow overheat meter, kill it with this:

7E2ACC00

while we’re at it, set your ammo so you never run dry with these bad boys:

7E2AE402
7E2AE602
7E2AE802

for the record tho, the ending to this game is very disappointing. boo activision, boooooo.

this post is brought to you by: pocari sweat - ion supply drink. pocari sweat is to gatorade as sake is to wine. mm-mmmm sweat