Emulator like NESten for Mac os?

September 28, 2013 9:06 AM

My favorite NES emulator is NESten because it has an amazing "cheat finder". I loved finding cheats for old games but I only have a Mac now. If anyone is familiar with the cheat finder in NESten can you recommend a similar emulator for Mac os?

For those who are not familiar with the cheat finder in NESten this is how it works: You have two options, one to search for a known value, the other is to search for a value based on it incrementing and decrementing. There is also an option for no-change in value. This lets you find the place in the rom's memory where, for example, the amount of gold it stored and then change that value or freeze it.

I can see how it would be fun to find "cheats" in other software as well. For example finding a "cheat" in a standalone mac game. If this type of "cheat finding" software called something more generic?

posted by Infernarl to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Ah, I remember this from the old mac NES emulator GreyBox! The term you are looking for is 'watchpoint' and it's a function of the debugger. Your best bet is to find an emulator with an included debugger, and see if it has the feature you are looking for.

I just checked OpenEmu on mac, and it has cheat functionality, but it's more like entering a Game Genie code. Good luck! I'm pretty sure MAME has a built-in debugger.
posted by destructive cactus at 1:09 PM on September 28, 2013

FCEUX can be built for Macs, though it's annoyingly difficult. I think there's a homebrew package. It does have a Cheat Search tool, though again it's not the easiest thing. It looks like by default you have to press F1 and then 3 to get to the search capability.
posted by vasi at 1:41 PM on September 28, 2013

Also BizHawk apparently has a "RAM Watch" functionality, but it seems crashy on my ancient Mac.
posted by vasi at 2:00 PM on September 28, 2013