Remember the Game Genie for NES back in the day? When you could beat just about any game you wanted to simply by entering an invincibility code or infinite lives. Well now you can do the same with your 3DO(well on games that have save files). And there is also a lot more than just codes. You can also compress those huge game save files which are just eating up the 3DO's memory and you don't want to just delete it. You can compress it and save it for a later time and then decompress when you are ready to use it.

The main thing most people know about the Game Guru is that it has codes. The codes are unique though. You don't just type them in at the title screen, you actually modify code in the saved game! Don't worry you don't need any programming experience, the GG is already chock full of codes. But if you are aching to get through a game that has a saved game, there is a hex editor mode which lets you modify lines and lines of code in a saved game. I haven't tried screwing too much with that, you can really screw your saved game up(that my be why this is a secret, but I'll get to that later). Also you can find on various sites GG codes you can input yourself and save it to the little menu with all of the codes. All in all this feature with the codes is good but could have been better if you weren't restricted to having codes for just games that have saves.

One thing which a lot of people don't know about the GG is that you can do a lot with the memory files. FZ-1 owners can delete memory files and look at their memory files. And the 3DO owner with a lot of games that use huge saves(if you have Luicienna's Quest and Virtual Stadium baseball your memory's booked!) you can compress the files you don't use very much or the ones that are big, and then uncompress them when you want to play that particular game. Compressing doesn't take very long(only about 3 or 4 seconds just for a huge game save). Uncompressing does make the file slightly larger then, but the feature is well worth the price(the file isn't made that much larger at all) Another thing that I like about the memory manager on the GG is that it tells you what game it's from. Also the files size is put into a larger form and it even gives you percentages for how full the memory is. You can even copy memory files from one 3DO to another! This could have really taken off if 3DO was more popular. You could take your 3DO to a friend's house, upload, say your Olympic Summer Games records, and boom he's got a challenge greater than the game originally slated. Also you can make a copy of your saved game so you can screw around with that one on the hex editor and not mess up your original saved game. You are also able to rename memory files. This way you could put the exact level in the name of the file.

There's a lot of things that can really screw up your 3DO, if you're not careful. Accidentally confirm formatting the NVRAM, and I'm sure some of us 3DO nuts out there would snap(there goes 20+ hours of Luicienna's Quest and an entire season of Virtual Stadium Baseball! Oh no!). Another feature, which won't screw your system up, is adding a file filler. Some of you may be looking at it wondering what it does. This option lets you add a file to a save so it won't suddenly eat all of your memory up, deleting saves. This is an especially must-have for FZ-1 and Goldstar owners, since you have no memory manager(I don't think the early Goldstars did). Some things, such as X-FER and 32-bit, I ain't even gonna mess with. Who knows what they do(Does anyone know what they do?!), but I sure don't want to screw my memory up that much. There are a few options like that which I have no clue what they do. Now for the most controversial part of the GG....the hex-editor! Did you know the original version of GG which didn't come out would have put the hex-editor on the disc from the beginning without any codes? Know why they decided to make it a secret instead? Because the United States won't promit you hacking into save files which are copyright. That kind of hacking is actually sorta illegal, but it's your save right? Nope the U.S. says it's still the property of the particular game company that made the game and save option. So instead the U.S. of A. said to make it a secret instead, I have no idea why they didn't just ban it? I am wondering if the government didn't know they put it in as a secret but the editors slipped it in there unnoticed? We'll never know. Also the hex-editor isn't a toy, that's for sure. You can do some major damage to your save files, so I'm thinking they also made it hidden to stop people from screwing things up. Anyway on to what the hex-editor does! The hex-editor lets you examine lines and lines of code in the saved game. The larger the saved game the more lines of code. Anyway the hex editor lets you change lines of code with a limit to how many you can change(I think there's a 20 limit or so). So it's pretty hard to actually use this unless you understand it, or you have a ton of free time. One line of code might be for lives, change this up, and you might continue with 9 lives in Gex instead of the 3 which you saved at. Or levels, the save may be for level 6 and you change it so you start at level 8. You get the idea? Maybe you change weapons so that you have infinite ammo. You really have to screw and look around to get the results. Once you finally found something that works the Game Guru makes a letter code and lets you save it to the code database. Pretty cool if you can figure it out. Some games are unhackable though. Most you can tell like if the save is below 100 bytes, you know there's probably no hackable information. Anyway the hex-editor is quite powerful. Don't screw with it to much, like changing 20 lines of code. If you do, make sure you create a copy of your saved game so you can just delete the one you were messing with if you screw things up too much, and don't want to change all of the code back.

Now for what I promised towards the beginning.....the codes to make you a hacker, so you can have more options, and some pretty options! Oh and let's not forget the secret hidden video of the editors! Anyways here they are:

Secret Video Scene:
At the main menu choose "Enter Code" and select the Game Guru saved file called "GameGuru.CFG" file. When the code screen appears, enter "IHAVETHEVIDEO2" and press C. You are then taken to a secret video made from the creators of the GameGuru. It's pretty long, about 3 mins. Just look at all those 3DO games he's got! Oh and the music sucks! Just kidding.


Different Music:
Hate the music that you start with. Do the same thing as above up until the enter code part. Enter "SONG2" to get a new song. You can enter "SONG2" to "SONG9". To get back to the original music, type "SONG1"


Additional Background:
Same as before, but enter code as MLGTXXF. Reset the 3DO and you get a rendered 3DO logo in the background.


Advanced Mode:
Same thing as before only this time type "IHAVETHEPOWER". You'll get a warning saying that there's no tech support for the secret area. Now you have the hex-editor along with a whole slew of other options. BE CAREFUL! If you want to disable the advanced mode, either delete the GameGuru.CFG file to restore defaults, or enter the code "IDONTWANTTHEPOWER"


You Don't Have The Power:
Enter code "IHAVETHEPOWER2" and you'll get a "NICE TRY" message, that's all this code does.

OVERALL the GG really rocks! Just to have the memory compression would be great but you also get all of those codes and you can even hack saves(with the code provided)! No 3DOer should be without one in my oppinion. Definitely pick one up, it is just incredible what you can do with it!

9.5/10

I'd pay 30 dollars for it.