Greetings and welcome to LGR Oddware, where we're taking a look at hardware and software
there's odd, forgotten, and obsolete.
And this little thing right here, this is the Datel Action Replay for Windows 95.
Yeah, this is a PC compatible cheat device, and it's not just a device it comes with a
whole package of stuff we're gonna be taking a look at.
But yeah this is “the ultimate cheat system” for PCs, oddly enough.
Kind of similar in theory to the stuff that you would see especially for consoles back
in the 1990's, but this one plugs into your printer port of all things.
And yeah, let's just see what all this does.
So this is the Datel PC Action Replay for Windows 95, which sold for £29 or about 40
US dollars when it hit store shelves in December of 1998.
“Action Replay: Play to win, never to lose!”
“Extra characters, extra vehicles, infinite lives and health!”
Yeah all these cheat devices promised the same things back in the day, whether it was
Action Replay, GameShark, Game Genie, Blaze Xploder, or whatever else.
I dunno about you though, but I always associate cheating hardware with consoles, not computers.
After all, game consoles are typically pretty closed down and don’t have access to mods
or trainer programs.
But with PCs, I mean, modifying games to work how you want them to is practically a way of life.
So when I saw that Datel made Action Replay kits for personal computers I was instantly intrigued.
Turns out these devices go way back, with some of their first products being for the
Commodore 64 and Amiga systems during the mid-1980s.
Then in the first half of the ‘90s a couple of PC-compatible devices were released, including
the PC Comms Link Package: a half-size ISA card interface that allowed you to connect
your Sega Saturn or PlayStation Action Replay to a PC and directly address your console’s memory.
Followed by the first PC Action Replay, consisting of another ISA card, software for MS-DOS,
and a little breakout box they called the freezer paddle, allowing you to activate cheats,
take screenshots, and enable slow motion.
That brings us to our 1998 version of the PC Action Replay, updated for Windows 95 and
98, and replacing the internal 8-bit ISA card with an external dongle that plugs into the parallel port.
It also comes with the PC Action Replay software itself on a single CD-ROM, and even a freakin’ VHS tape.
Hehe, yeah this is pretty much the entire reason the box is as big as it is, because
otherwise all you get is the CD and that little parallel port device.
Speaking of which, what is that thing anyway?
Is it even necessary?
I mean, just going into this project I assumed that the software would do most of the work,
acting as a kind of paid-for trainer program that’s updated online every so often.
And according to the old Datel website that’s kinda what it looks like, with patches and
downloadable cheat code lists to update functionality for the latest games.
So yeah, I had to open it up and see what’s inside.
Which, it turns out is not much.
You get the expected resistors and traces to pass-through a parallel device, usually
a printer or external storage.
But there’s also a PIC 12C508 chip, interesting.
I’ve seen these used as mod chips for consoles like the original PlayStation, but they can
be programmed to do all sorts of things so as for what exactly it’s doing to a Windows 9x PC?
Well, let’s go ahead and see what we can find out.
But first, I had to try that VHS tape.
[tape insertion and chunky VCR sounds]
[tape plays fast and garbled]
Ahh I was afraid of that.
Being that this is the UK version the tape is in PAL format, so it’s not only playing
too fast but my NTSC VCR and TV doesn’t know what to do with the visuals either.
While there was also a North American version rebadged and sold under the GameShark brand,
I haven’t been able to find one of those yet.
Thankfully though, the CD-ROM comes with digitized,
albeit highly compressed, video files of what’s on the tape.
So let’s take a moment to enjoy the late ‘90s radicalness!
-”Action Replay is the ultimate game enhancer for the PC.”
-”Now you can rewrite the rules. Action Replay takes the”
”latest and greatest brain-busting games and blows them apart.”
-”If you’ve experience the humiliation of crashing out at level 4”
“of your favorite action-adventure game, then Action Replay”
“is the only tool you’ll ever need to even the odds.”
Yeah we’ll see about that.
Let’s go ahead and get to cheatin’ like a dirty cheater!
We’ll just get the dongle plugged into the parallel port on the back of the Lazy Green
Giant running Windows 98, and get the software installed and ready to go.
And now it’s time for yet more high-energy nonsense in compressed video form.
[INTRO MOVIE IS INTENSE]
[techno continues]
Yeah that just keeps going for a while, so let’s move onto the main menu.
We’ll get to the cheats in a moment, but real quick here I was kinda surprised to see
an options menu with such granular detail settings.
It uses animated 3D transitions between menus, customizable down to the individual number of frames.
Anyway onto the cheats menu itself, which uh. Is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be.
Compared to the number of games that often came with the console Action Replays, I figured
you’d get more than 20 on PC. Nope!
Though you could download more from the website twenty years ago, but even then they only
added about another dozen titles from what I could find on the Wayback Machine.
And considering how few codes are actually included for many of these titles?
Yeah the only way I can describe this is underwhelming.
Ah well, let’s just try Quake 2 here, turning on all the infinite ammo cheats.
The starting pistol’s ammo is unlimited already, so lemme play ahead here till we
get to the machine gun.
[machine gun sounds]
Hrm, well the ammo is still counting down.
Annnnd yep, I’m out of ammo.
So much for Action Replay being the only cheat tool I’ll ever need.
Exiting the game you can see a trainer program open that shows every cheat is activated,
but it seems it’s entirely dependent on the version of the game you have.
Guess I’m using a different version of Quake 2 than it expected so yeah, that’s a problem.
Again the downloadable cheat updates could address this, but it’s still a notable limitation
compared to consoles at least in the 90s where games usually didn’t change after release.
On the other hand, this is a PC game, so you can just open the command console and type
in your own dang cheats.
Aw yeah, all the weapons and infinite ammo, no Action Replay required.
Let’s move on though and try Tomb Raider 2
which also has infinite ammo cheats that can be enabled. In theory.
Again the pistol ammo is unlimited by default, but the shotgun isn’t so let’s try that.
[takes two measly shots]
Welp. Okay maybe the infinite health cheat works, let’s go up against the first tiger and see.
[tiger roars, Lara dies] Yeeeaaah.
Another case where it seems the version I’m playing is incompatible.
Which is too bad because the game doesn’t have any cheats you can just type in that
I’m aware of, instead relying on the classic method of performing obscure sets of moves
to unlock stuff.
Like stepping back and forth, spinning around three times, and jumping backwards while holding
a flare, which unlocks every weapon in the game.
[menu sound effects]
[mows down tiger]
Yeah, suck it tiger, how do you like that? No thanks to the Action Replay.
All right, let’s give the original Age of Empires a shot this time, which the Action
Replay only provides a single cheat for: unlimited resources.
Should be simple enough right?
And eh, you’d think.
I mean, it kind of works, but only for placing buildings and spawning units.
Anything else that requires resources, like upgrading technology or advancing ages, will
still eat into your resources as usual.
And once again, the built-in cheat codes typed into the chat window are all way better than
what the Action Replay provides anyway.
Can you win the game using nuclear sports cars with the Action Replay? I think not.
So even if it did work with this version of the game, who cares?
What it comes with is much better.
Okay, one more game here even though I don’t have much hope for it: Forsaken.
Again it comes with cheats for unlimited things like ammo and time.
Again, it doesn’t work whatsoever.
And again, the codes you can just type into the menus without the Action Replay are all
way better than what the Action Replay comes with.
So what’s going on?
I mean I assume this thing worked at some point.
Well yeah, so I have a theory.
After looking through the archives of the old Datel website, it seems that the UK version
of the PC Action Replay is strictly meant for UK versions of these games.
Which is probably why there was that PC GameShark released here in the US with its own distinct
set of cheats.
So yeah, I guess it’s not surprising that my North American releases aren’t working
properly, but it’s still quite the disappointment regardless.
There’s just the lack of cheats in general.
It doesn’t come with very many, even with all the updates applied, and since most PC
games had their own, better codes you could type in or access through simple modifications?
The PC Action Replay just seems silly.
Oh and in case you’re wondering, the Action Replay application does actually look for
the parallel port dongle, and mine’s working fine.
If it’s unplugged or there’s some problem with it, the cheat software will refuse to
work or even open up a game at all.
Now, I’m still not 100% certain that the dongle is necessary for enabling the cheats
themselves since it seems to be completely relying on trainer software to do that.
But it is required as a form of copy protection,
which just makes this entire kit all the more irksome to use.
Well that's about it for the Action Replay for PCs, at least this one.
I think that the other one, the older one, like the full ISA card version might have
been a little more useful than this.
Just because you know, it did things like screenshots and not fall over on my table.
And it had a memory manager and all sorts of extra things, you know, that little box
that came out of the back. But,
this, I mean. The more I thought about it the more I just don't know exactly who this was targeted towards.
Like at first I thought well, maybe this is for people that just want to play their PC
games and don't know that they can just type them in like cheat codes or use the dev console
or command line stuff or anything like that.
I don't know, maybe this is just me assuming here.
But if somebody is into PC games enough that they want to, you know, modify them to some
degree with software and you know cheat and add things to them.
And they're willing to spend 30 pounds on something, plug this into there and get it
working and get the software going.
And use a trainer and then go on the internet to download stuff to update it.
It just, it boggles my mind who this is for.
It doesn't make sense on a PC when you have a keyboard that can do all sorts of things
for built-in commands.
And then you also have all sorts of other software that's for free and doesn't rely
on a copy protected little dongle thing!
Anyway, if you had any experience with this back in the day do please let me know, I'd be curious.
Or even the older ones because I -- again, I think those might be a little more useful.
And if you enjoyed this episode of LGR Oddware then thanks!
I'm sure you'd find some other stuff enjoyable that I've made in the past on this series
and many others that I have going on LGR.
It's pretty much all focused on retro tech and computers and games and stuff, so if that's
your thing then you're in the right place.
Regardless though, thank you very much for watching LGR!