The Norton Disk Edit could only be used as a hex editor in this context.
So you'd guess if something is a cheat code, like maybe some text word standing out in the section clearly belonging to a code. Having experience with assembly you can see if something is a code or a data, even without disassembling it.
You'd get way better chances with Hiew for this, getting hex editor and a disassembler/assembler, nested jumps on jmp's, locations bookmarks.

I see, I though one moment it was a tool which could be abused to scan for key codes. And yes HIEW would be my first choice for a DOS hex editor

I was a subscriber to a gaming magazine. They bundled CDs, later DVDs with at least one full game, some shareware software and games, game demos, patches, trailers, drivers, mods for certain games and various other things including cheat databases.

vstrakh wrote on 2026-01-08, 10:24:

The Norton Disk Edit could only be used as a hex editor in this context.
So you'd guess if something is a cheat code, like maybe some text word standing out in the section clearly belonging to a code. Having experience with assembly you can see if something is a code or a data, even without disassembling it.

I used to just look for strange-looking words, without knowing if they were in a code or data section, for example "goobers" in Wolfenstein 3-D seems out-of-place. I'm not sure if I ever had success with that scheme though, given that often you need to hit some key sequence which isn't going to appear in ASCII.

Jonas-fr wrote on 2026-01-08, 09:11:

And while we're at it if anyone have info on how to discover cheats and make trainers for DOS games with the tools of the era just post there also, this is a general DOS/Win3x/Win9x cheat making/reverse engineering topic : )

I used to use "GAMETOOLS" ("G3X.EXE" might be a useful search term for it), which was basically a TSR debugger which included a feature where you could search memory for a byte or word that increased or decreased each time you popped the TSR up. If you were playing DOOM for example (not sure I ever actually used it on DOOM) you might pick up some bullets, tell the TSR that the value increased, then shoot, tell it the value decreased, etc. Each time you tell the TSR the value changed it, it will tell you how many locations in memory it narrowed the search down to. Sometimes it would say zero, and you'd have to try a different memory location size or something. Once you figure out where something is stored in memory, you could use the TSR to edit that location. Fortunately in DOS if you boot with the same configuration the same absolute memory addresses will normally be used every time you start the game.

It also comes with a program called "TSRCRACK", which I never tried using. It looks like a TSR which can be scripted to edit memory when certain conditions are true.

I remember columns at back of magazines with cheats or "pokes" listed fot 8bits. Then I guess there were some lists and databases on bulletin boards, which in the land of high phone rates we picked up on public domain disks for a buck or two. Some of the stuff for popular games you could get a tip from a buddy at school. Sometimes the game had a hint line and you could wheedle a cheat out of the operator.

Oh yeah, when it came to getting trainers someone else wrote - as opposed to making your own - I certainly remember BBSes having huge numbers of them in their file lists.

I always liked such cheats and the process of discovery. For instance if you search a value, say 75, you find it all over and can methodically analyse where it is and change it to see what happens, a mix of know how, luck and patience and you can change the value. Using a debugger is possible in some cases, trying to follow values as they change or what logic is applied. I think trainers use memory pointers to "find" where a value is being stored in this game session and then change it, and other technique include things like altering dlls that get used and more. And the result is all those interesting little cheat applications, was fun back in the day to find them, now they seem to be in large, advert flooded and possibly dubious locations

doshea wrote on 2026-01-13, 03:00:

I used to use "GAMETOOLS" ("G3X.EXE" might be a useful search term for it), which was basically a TSR debugger which included a feature where you could search memory for a byte or word that increased or decreased each time you popped the TSR up. If you were playing DOOM for example (not sure I ever actually used it on DOOM) you might pick up some bullets, tell the TSR that the value increased, then shoot, tell it the value decreased, etc. Each time you tell the TSR the value changed it, it will tell you how many locations in memory it narrowed the search down to. Sometimes it would say zero, and you'd have to try a different memory location size or something. Once you figure out where something is stored in memory, you could use the TSR to edit that location. Fortunately in DOS if you boot with the same configuration the same absolute memory addresses will normally be used every time you start the game.

It also comes with a program called "TSRCRACK", which I never tried using. It looks like a TSR which can be scripted to edit memory when certain conditions are true.

these sound good!

Back when GameSpot was a Ziff-Davis/ZDNet thing, they used to provide hints and cheat codes for games. Here is an example from 1998 courtesy of the Wayback Machine. The URL for GameSpot was http://www.gamespot.com, and then you would click the Hints link on the left side panel to take you to the appropriate place in the ZDNet hierarchy.

There exist games where cheats were activated via plain-text commandline arguments. E.g., megahit for Prince of Persia 1.0. Because I could find that string embedded in the EXE, when I got access to some versions where that code didn't work (like 1.3/1.4 or the "4d Prince of Persia" hack), I knew that I just have to search the EXE for a different string, and surely enough, it was there.

doshea wrote on 2026-01-13, 03:00:

I used to use "GAMETOOLS" ("G3X.EXE" might be a useful search term for it), which was basically a TSR debugger which included a feature where you could search memory for a byte or word that increased or decreased each time you popped the TSR up. If you were playing DOOM for example (not sure I ever actually used it on DOOM) you might pick up some bullets, tell the TSR that the value increased, then shoot, tell it the value decreased, etc. Each time you tell the TSR the value changed it, it will tell you how many locations in memory it narrowed the search down to. Sometimes it would say zero, and you'd have to try a different memory location size or something. Once you figure out where something is stored in memory, you could use the TSR to edit that location. Fortunately in DOS if you boot with the same configuration the same absolute memory addresses will normally be used every time you start the game.

It also comes with a program called "TSRCRACK", which I never tried using. It looks like a TSR which can be scripted to edit memory when certain conditions are true.

Don't forget the wonderful Game Wizard for MS-DOS. I think it was the best cheat TSR back in the day. It was very robust, and polished, worked with DPMI / extended memory as well as flat mode. And had three different "incremental" search options: standard based upon known values, an "incremental" search, and an advanced analysis mode. However it was extremely finicky and if you changed even slightly your system, you had to re-install it. It was so sort of system-based copy-protection which as far as I know was sadly never cracked.

This is a list of awesome personal stories and very good tools and techniques recommendations (especially techniques regarding the actual way to find cheats that weren't known/published). Thanks to all of you and to other people who will contribute hereafter!

doshea wrote on 2026-01-13, 05:27:

Oh yeah, when it came to getting trainers someone else wrote - as opposed to making your own - I certainly remember BBSes having huge numbers of them in their file lists.

Yup, certain BBS were great for downloading warez, cheats, and playboy pics back in the day.

i wrote a lot of trainers back in the day. softice was amazing for that runtime stuff. disassembling the exe also showed stuff if you knew what to look for.

Back in the late 90's, there were a few monthly magazines about computers in France.
Most of them came with a cdrom, on which there were various softwares, game demos, etc.
And often what is named ETJV (Encyclopédie des Trucs et Astuces de Jeux Vidéo).
It's a list of cheats for many games, started circa 1995.
There are archives here , but of course it's in French :
http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?t=214

It seems the last version 35.45 from 11/2014 contains the whole history, since I see there's cheats for Tomb Raider 1 from 1996, Monkey Island, etc.
It's not only for PC games, but also game consoles and some mobile phone Android / iPhone.
We could have access to it online with a Minitel, before Internet really existed 😀

nali wrote on 2026-01-19, 07:42:

And often what is named ETJV (Encyclopédie des Trucs et Astuces de Jeux Vidéo).

Nice! I don't understand French, but I can see there's stuff about editing .EXE files for some DOS games where there are no known special command line options or keys. I also see that even if I was to use some translation tool to try to make an English version, the key combinations would be for a French keyboard - I looked up DOOM and saw that A and Q were swapped in the key sequences - so it still wouldn't be too useful for me unfortunately. It looks like a very nice resource for those who can make use of it though!

I suppose it will be easy to use Google Translate or another.
I just tried with Doom, and the translation is correct.
If you really don't get a clear result, ask me. But not for the whole pdf please 😀
Quite sure the keyboard mapping doesn't matter, Q is Q whatever the physical key. Worst case compare your keyboard with a French one.
There's few differences between the US and Canadian keyboard and the French. Mainly Q and A swapped, and M moved. I remember Z too. It's been 25 years I live in Canada, I forgot 😀

Sometimes it's trivial...

nali wrote on 2026-01-19, 07:42:

Back in the late 90's, there were a few monthly magazines about computers in France. Most of them came with a cdrom, on which t […]
Show full quote

Back in the late 90's, there were a few monthly magazines about computers in France.
Most of them came with a cdrom, on which there were various softwares, game demos, etc.
And often what is named ETJV (Encyclopédie des Trucs et Astuces de Jeux Vidéo).
It's a list of cheats for many games, started circa 1995.
There are archives here , but of course it's in French :
http://www.win3x.org/win3board/viewtopic.php?t=214

It seems the last version 35.45 from 11/2014 contains the whole history, since I see there's cheats for Tomb Raider 1 from 1996, Monkey Island, etc.
It's not only for PC games, but also game consoles and some mobile phone Android / iPhone.
We could have access to it online with a Minitel, before Internet really existed 😀

I remember taking the bus for one hour to go to a cybercafé with 20 floppies and split the mighty PC and Playstation ETAJV on few of them and get back home to read them all (sometimes with a defective floppies so I had to either try to repair the split RAR archive or wait for one week to get back on the internet from the cybercafé ; whose were the days!

Also I'm posting this link I've just found which has some nice pointers to tools and techniques for cheatoing on old games : https://wiki.scummvm.org/index.php/HOWTO-Reverse_Engineering

I remember DLH(98) and other cheating databases.