Most of you have probably heard of the Game Genie, if not – well then you’ve probably been living under a rock or maybe just wasn’t around in the 1990’s. Some of us are old, but not old enough to have forgotten about the Game Genie, yet this article is not at all about the Game Genie, but in fact the Action Replay, and the Action Replay for the original Gameboy at that.

Like the Game Genie though, the Action Replay is a device that lets you modify game data, to allow you to have infinite lives, coins, skip levels and more, stuff that you were not supposed to have or do, or in other words, it’s a game cheat device.

The Action Replay first saw the light of day in 1990, for the Commodore64, a creation by the UK company, Datel Electronics, who actually later became quite famous for their cheat devices for various systems.  On a side note, the first Game Genie, invented by Codemasters, also based in the UK, was released for the NES that same year, 1990, however it is unknown who of the two company came up with the idea for a cheat device first.

A year after the release of the Commodore64 version, the Pro Action Replay for the original Gameboy hit store shelves in 1991. While it was sold through a lot of major retailers throughout the UK, and some of Europe, Datel mainly made use of portal orders, and ran big two side adverts in most, if not all, of the major UK game magazines with a retail price of Price £34,99.

While the original Action Replay “only” allowed you to insert already generated codes, the Pro Action Replay stood out, and differentiated itself from the Game Genie by featuring a full blown so-called “Game Trainer”, meaning it could help you find/make your own cheat codes.

The device sits, in this case, between the Gameboy and the Game cartridge, allowing you to modify the data flowing between the cartridge and the handheld as mentioned. It allows you to enter up to 4 codes, which could be a mix of unlimited lives, unlimited ammo and maybe even a level select.

Taking a closer look at the device itself, you will find a switch and a button at the top of the cart. The switch allows you to toggle cheat codes on or off (right position), while pressing the red button boots the cartridge into the cheat trainer.

Action Replay codes are made in HEX format, and now it might get a little technical, maybe even for me to understand. Well each code is made up of 4 bytes and consists of 3 parts. The first byte is the cheat type, the second byte is the value you want, the final two bytes is the value of the address that needs to be changed and it is this part of the code that is stored in HEX format.

Wait, I am already lost. If you would like to read more about creating codes, which can be quite tedious, I suggest that you read the manual. Unfortunately my second hand Pro Action Replay did not come with one, but as almost always these days, Archive.org comes to the rescue - someone uploaded a great scan of both the instruction booklet and the initial cheat code book.

If the manual is too much reading, then youtuber “GouldFish on Games” has created a video about the Gameboy Pro Action Replay that is well worth a watch.

Unfortunately the codebook that came with the Pro Action Replay did not include a whole lot of titles, compared to the Gameboy Game Genie, the codebook for the Pro Action Replay was laughably bad. 

To compensate for this though, Datel had set up a Game Busters hotline for consumers to call, to get the latest codes, although only aimed for customers in the UK. But that was not all, not only was the Pro Action Replay devices heavily advertised in UK magazines such as Super XS, an awesome mammoth of a magazine by the way.

Super XS also had a section of the magazine dedicated to offering codes for the Pro Action Replay, as well as small removable “Datel Code Cards” for various systems.

That's all I had for you this time around, thanks for reading :-)
Oh I almost forgot, there is also an article available covering the NES version of the Pro Action Replay and it can be found here.

/Martin