12th March 2013, 6:18 AM
The gameshark does require special software. Mine still had the CD (and a silly little video tape of instructions done in a painfully 90's style). I went online and found some repositories for the newest version of the software, but it'll still require some doing. USB adapters don't seem to work with the program, so you need a native built in old school printer port. Once it is all set up, you just plug the device into your computer and start the program. The cheats are essentially stored in one huge file, so every time you make additions or changes, it has to reupload the whole block back onto the device. It is still more convenient than doing it manually through the device's own interface though. Keep in mind there's space limitations. Flash memory at that time was still very low, so there's not much space to work with at all. Oh, and the program can also update the device firmware.
You wanted a power adapter with your portable device? Hah! They didn't start doing that until rechargeable batteries became the norm, necessitating it. And of course the VB is portable! Why recall with fondness resting the legs of the VB on my own legs during long car trips. I could get in 5-10 minutes of very shaky hard to balance gameplay before my neck hurt and I went back to playing Gameboy!
You wanted a power adapter with your portable device? Hah! They didn't start doing that until rechargeable batteries became the norm, necessitating it. And of course the VB is portable! Why recall with fondness resting the legs of the VB on my own legs during long car trips. I could get in 5-10 minutes of very shaky hard to balance gameplay before my neck hurt and I went back to playing Gameboy!
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)