Action Replayy 2010 · Exclusive Deal

For the uninitiated, Action Replayy (stylized with that dramatic double ‘Y’) was a cheat device. But calling it just a "cheat device" is like calling a Swiss Army knife "just a pointy thing." In 2010, it was a key to a parallel universe where the rules of the game didn’t apply to you. Let’s talk about the interface. If you used the 2010 firmware, you remember it vividly. It was a brutalist, neon nightmare. Black background. Neon green, cyan, or pink text. A loading bar that felt like it took an eternity.

Posted by: RetroReload | Filed under: Hardware, Nostalgia, Handheld History

It was janky. It was unstable. It crashed your game three times out of ten. action replayy 2010

You’d boot up your DS. The top screen would flash white. Then, bam . You were in the code manager.

That cartridge wasn’t New Super Mario Bros . It wasn’t Mario Kart DS . It was —specifically, the 2010 edition. For the uninitiated, Action Replayy (stylized with that

But that one time it worked? When you walked through the gym door without beating the trainers? When you caught the opponent’s Pokémon with a Master Ball?

Action Replayy didn't just cheat the game. It cheated boredom. And in the winter of 2010, curled up under a blanket with a DS light blinking red, that was the most powerful feeling in the world. If you used the 2010 firmware, you remember it vividly

If you were a kid in the late 2000s or early 2010s, your backpack had three essential items: a sticky bag of gummy candies, a cracked iPod Touch with a dodgy headphone jack, and a Nintendo DS Lite with a small, grey cartridge sticking out of Slot-1.