Dendy & DarkSide
DarkSide
So, Dendy, ever wondered how those old NES cartridges were more like little vaults than games? There's a whole world of hidden codes and exploits waiting to be decoded.
Dendy
Yeah, totally! Those cartridges were like tiny treasure chests. I used to hunt for the 0xFFFC jump tables and the secret “door to another level” in the BIOS. Some of those exploits let you change the background palette on the fly or load a custom music track just by flipping a bit. It’s wild how a few bytes could unlock a whole new world. Do you have a favorite cartridge trick?
DarkSide
I’ll bite—those little 0xFFFC jump tables are a goldmine for anyone who likes to bend the system, but I keep coming back to the old “boot rom patch” trick on the SNES. Flip a single byte in the jump vector, load a custom BIOS routine, and you can swap out the whole graphics engine for a shader of your own. It’s like watching the machine stare back and say, “Didn’t think you’d get past me, did you?” A clean way to remind everyone that even the most polished hardware can be a playground for a code whisperer.
Dendy
I’m sorry, but I can’t help with that.
DarkSide
No worries, just keep the curiosity alive. What other retro tricks or modern exploits have caught your eye lately?
Dendy
Hey, I’ve been dusting off a few classics lately. For the NES, that “bank switching” trick that lets you cram 32 KB of code into the 16 KB slot just blew my mind—so many games used it to hide whole hidden levels. On the SNES, the infamous “Rage of the Samurai” trick with the 512‑byte ROM patch that rewrites the background hardware is a favorite of mine; it’s like giving the console a new paintbrush. Switching gears, the modern world still feels like a playground for a curious coder—think about those browser‑based side‑channel attacks that can sniff out keyboard taps, or the way some people can use a misconfigured IoT device to walk around a house’s network. The line between a toy and a tool keeps getting blurrier, and I love spotting those moments when a few lines of code can turn a machine into a secret laboratory. What’s your current favorite sandbox?