I, at the ripe old age of 3, was one of many children to discover the joys of playing video games… well at this point, I mostly watched my brother play but still made a few attempts (Primarily The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. 3, and Faxanadu). Our parents worked a lot, and someone needed to keep an eye on us.

Each day my brother and I would stay at my Grandma and Grandpa's home, at least for the early half, and sometimes overnight. We were lucky that, much like at home, there was an NES hooked up in the basement. Our uncle was still living at home at the time and had many cool things for us to mess around with, as well as some things we weren’t quite ready for (DOOM on PC for example). There were many of the same cartridges here for us to play, including a couple that was… not exactly licensed by Nintendo. We had a copy of Quattro Sports published by Code Masters, which had a hardware switch on the back that allowed you to bypass the built-in copy protection on the NES that checked if it was licensed hardware.

At my young age, I had no idea what that switch was meant for, aside from the game only functioning when it was in a particular position… These days I would disassemble the cartridge to find out, but alas I do not have it in my possession any longer (the above image was posted to a Reddit thread inquiring about the nature of said switch).

I did not know it at the time, but this was my first brush with hacking…

I don’t mean to be hyperbolic, seriously here it is:

(noun: hacking

Hacking is often seen as a very negative term, often synonymous in many eyes with illegal or criminal activity. While some do commit criminal actions in the name of “hacking” those are simply criminals and not true “hackers”. A more accurate definition would be achieving results through novel means (hacking), and individuals that achieve results through novel means (hackers).

Nintendo did not want unlicensed software to run on their consoles and effectively acted as a gatekeeper for what got published. This worked for them in many cases, and others (looking at you Custer’s Revenge) not so much. This did not deter developers of a few notable games, Wisdom Tree (authors of Bible Adventures and even Super Noahs Ark 3D), with their infamous blue cartridges.

One unfortunate consequence of this copy-protection scheme was the misdetection of the “NES10” or “CIC Chip”. On the main console, itself was a “locking” chip that would keep unlicensed games from running, but if the corresponding “key” chip on the cartridge was detected, the game could boot. In several anecdotal cases (my own included), legitimate cartridges would not properly communicate with the console and repeatedly reset the system. This unfortunately led to the trashing of several consoles (I shiver to think how many could have been saved.) While Atari was able to make their own reverse-engineered chip to sell games, which Code Masters and Wisdom Tree took advantage of, it was possible to disable the CIC by desoldering the reset line on the chip itself. For a more detailed history of the defeat of NES Copy protection, check out this excellent documentary by Modern Vintage Gamer.

Aside from Quattro Sports was one particularly strange cartridge… it looked unlike any other that I’d ever seen. It had a strange black plastic protrusion that would latch onto another cartridge. It had a strange mystical quality to it with a Bald Red Man claiming to enhance your games… and I could not for the life of me figure it out. The cartridge was made by Galoob, and it was called…

This is a story all about how my life got fli… sorry I gotta keep that guy’s lyrics outta my mouth. This is the tale of how I came to identify as a Hacker, from my humble beginnings knowing next to nothing, to my misadventures in Jailbreaking and even… redistributing imports and the ability to run them.

As a child, I still knew nothing, but in the fall of 2006 is where everything changed.