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LGR Oddware - PC Action Replay ISA Card (Patreon)

Published:
2020-02-17 22:09:44
Edited:
2020-02-18 04:08:22
Imported:
2021-03

Content

Got an early edit of the next Oddware episode for ya! Gonna be headed out on a trip tomorrow, still got a tiny bit left to add when I get back, but it's 99% done.

This is the 1993 Action Replay cheat device for PCs from Datel. And yep, it's a predecessor to the lackluster parallel port PC Action Replay I covered a while back in 2018. Thankfully though, this thing works a whole lot better than that and the PC GameShark did!

Unfortunately I only had this on loan to make this video so it's en-route back to its owner, but still, I was lucky to have access to it at all and mess around with it on video. Really didn't expect the "infinite cheat generator" and "game freezing" stuff to work quite how it did, so I hope you enjoy seeing this rarity in action.

Files

LGR Oddware - Action Replay ISA Card

an LGR thing.

Comments

Anonymous

I love oddware! Thank you for releasing another one :)

Anonymous

Hurray for more obscure retro pc awesomeness....

_Maki

So this is basically the predecessor to Cheat Engine? Damn, the possibilities this thing has!

Anonymous

I love your "Doink" sound effect on the button presses!

Anonymous

Seems like it would be a good debugging tool, or even a way to reverse engineer other company's software.

Anonymous

So it's basically what Cheat Engine does now, but as an ISA card with a cool button. I'm down!

Anonymous

What a nifty device. It may be a bit cumbersome to use and to get stuff working. But at least it works. Save stating with DOS games. Truly, the greatest dream.

Anonymous

Wow, this thing is damn cool! I wonder if developers were the main market for these things? It seems like it was designed as a dev tool first, w/ a cheat engine slapped on top! Either way I want one!

Anonymous

That memory freeze is so cool. I know I would have used those save states so much back in the day... Amazing piece of tech this is; do you know if that manual has been digitalized? Would love to take a look at it. Thanks for such a wonderful Oddware ep.!

LazyGameReviews
>>32601929

Yep, I've uploaded everything to archive.org as usual! https://archive.org/details/PCactionreplay1993

LazyGameReviews
>>32601884

I imagine a bit of both, but it seems they couldn't help but include tons of niche stuff on top! They certainly sold it as a cheat device first, like they did with the Action Replay products for Commodore machines before this.

Anonymous

That was cool 😀 *doink*

Akselmo

This is impressive for teaching kids about stuff like memory addresses. Very cool.

Kris Asick

I get the impression that the limit on two digits is because it's hexadecimal and limited to a single byte, so 00 to FF would be the range... That's still pretty wild to see a PC device capable of doing all of that! :o

Joon Choi

Worth the price of admission for the save states alone. Wonder why they moved on from something so useful as this to the crap they sold later. Maybe not enough profit, even at $89, given all the cost of manufacturing the cards and printing the instruction manuals?

LazyGameReviews
>>32607866

That'd make sense! There's more about how it manipulates hexadecimal values in the manual and readme files.

LazyGameReviews
>>32608277

Ah, one can only wonder. Seems the core of their business moved away from computers and more into consoles not long after this.

Seth C

Great video as always LGR! Can you and David make one of these for DOS Duke Nukem??? I'd buy that tomorrow!!! Save state is amazing to see on a legacy machine :-)

Uncleawesome

This is more like it :) This is more like how Action Replay works on Amiga. Very nice!

BastetFurry

I had GameWizard32 back in the DOS days, never got a full version and always used the shareware that only let you freeze one memory location. At least it let you mess with memory in the memory editor. But that AR debugger looks intriguing, i bet you can find codes trough disassembling, setting breakpoints and following what the program is doing, great if you want to learn reverse engineering. ;)

Ezydenias

Is that a box of soap on your shelf behind you?

Anonymous

Who you gonna call? Game buster 😁

Vladimir Vyun

Wow, it is surprising to see how well this thing works considering the negative review shown in the video and how bad the previous Action Replay thing worked. And with the phrasing in the post "unfortunately I only had this on loan" and what Clint said in the end of the video, I have an impression that he reaaaaly did not want to give the device back to the owner :)

Robert Butler

haha you for an OS nerd, you know exactly why it won't run in Protected Mode, the processor would have an absolute FIT if you scribbled on RAM that was page-protected.

Anonymous

I heard music from early LGR Foods episodes!

LazyGameReviews
>>32624450

Yep! I actually have the rights to use it on LGR, all those early Foods videos are struck with copyright claims because of that music.

LazyGameReviews
>>32624256

Heh, yeah it just completely screws up the system if you try to turn on the AR trainer in protected mode. Hard reset required!

Anonymous

I can't believe I never heard of this at the time - not that it mattered since I was a console peasant in 93, but this is super interesting. Great video as always.

Anonymous

Clint, with the way you say out loud the marketing blurbs on game and hardware packages, have you ever been asked to be a spoke-person for a company?

Anonymous

Of course this works better in DOS games than Windows 98 games because Windows 98 had protected memory which prevented programs from modifying another program's memory.

LazyGameReviews
>>32745033

True! Although the Version 4.0 release of this card claims to work even with protected mode programs, including those for Windows. Curious how that'd function.

LazyGameReviews
>>32662224

Heh, can't say I have. Lots of offers for other random voicework, but it's not really something I'm looking to pursue.

LazyGameReviews
>>32640290

Thank you! I never heard of it either, and I was PC-only back then. Sure doesn't seem to have received too much mainstream attention, at least here in the US.