Gaming Hacks

Hack Xbox Game Saves

Change game state and variables by changing your saved games.

The Xbox is very different from the PS2 when it comes to cheats and codes. There is no in-game variable hacking as there is with the PlayStation 2 ( [Hack #73] ). There’s no code to allow you to change memory-resident values in the Action Replay-style “insert CD, then insert game style” shuffle. Even though there is an Xbox Action Replay device, it’s not really a cheat code device in the conventional sense of the phrase; all memory-changing devices since the NES have used a code-entering approach. Not the Xbox device.

There’s good news, though. You can still cheat and explore Xbox games using hacked game saves. It’s easy to find USB memory card transfer devices that allow you to download game saves to your PC, modify them, and copy them back to your Xbox’s hard drive. Boot the game, and load the modified save to unlock secret content, change game features in certain circumstances, and achieve other wacky effects.

The disadvantage is that it’s difficult to find saves that actually change game variables without further, more illicit hacking. Microsoft digitally signs all saved game files, so if you change values around willy-nilly, chances are the signature check will fail. That’s game over.

Xbox Memory Devices

When it comes to Xbox memory devices, there are only two particularly famous ones: the Action Replay from Mad Catz (read a so-so review at http://gear.ign.com/articles/432/432888p1.html) and the ...