Lazy Bastard: Among many other things, you hacked the Super Spinner for Twilight Princess (GCN and Wii- all regions), and hacked a code for TimeSplitters 2 that let players individually walk around in the air and out of bounds, both of which received a lot of attention. What was your inspiration for these? James0x57: When I play through a game, I'm constantly thinking of what I'd change or how I could add something new to it - even on the systems I don't/can't hack. So playing through Twilight Princess on the GCN, I thought, of all the items, the Spinner had the most potential for modification... Speed up, last forever, jump higher, etc etc. So once I beat the game I went to town searching for those values. The air walk code for TimeSplitters 2 came up the same way- I was in the Siberia level in Multi Player and just had to know how much of the level was there. Hence, walk in air. Bit of programming got it to work for all 4 players individually. My brother and I spent hours ducking out of bounds, flying into the air, destroying each other. Fun fun! Lazy Bastard: What is your favorite code/hack that you hacked? James0x57: Probably the Air Walk one for TS2.. or the All Guns code for it. That was fun too. Lazy Bastard: What is your favorite code/hack of all time? James0x57: That's a tough one to answer.. I think the code I had the most fun with was probably the walk through doors code for GoldenEye 007. There have been many impressive and inspirational codes since then, of course.. but that one gave me hours and hours of replay value. Lazy Bastard: Who would you say influenced you the most in the video game hacking scene? Who did you 'look up to' when you first entered the scene? (doesn't have to be the same person for both) James0x57: JaytheHam was a huge influence for me. Him and I exchanged info and hacked together quite a bit, he even helped me get started with ASM hacking. He lives in NZ, I'm in the US - gotta love the internet. And for father-figure type guy; Parasyte. I'm sure a lot of hackers would answer that way. He's just done so much for the scene and who knows how long before, or even if, GCN hacking would have started without him. Cheers mate. Lazy Bastard: What was your first code/hack? James0x57: Infinite Jumps for the original Smash Bros. for Link on Hyrule Castle. I then did most of the rest only to find out that they ALL just got posted on GSCentral.com. I was going to enter the scene with those codes but it was years later when I came back as GCN Hacker87 posting an item code for Wind Waker. Lazy Bastard: What do you think is the most difficult type of code/hack to hack, and why? James0x57: Haha, I might be the only one to say this but: Debug codes. I just haven't had any luck at all with them! Maybe someday though. haha Lazy Bastard: What is your favorite type of code/hack? James0x57: Anything that adds or drastically increases an ability the game character might have. Color mods are fun too. :P Lazy Bastard: What is your least favorite aspect of hacking? James0x57: Freezing the game sucks. Gotta reset and start all over. Lazy Bastard: What do you like least about the hacking scene? James0x57: Seeing discredited codes irks me; the hacker deserves recognition for his/her work. Lazy Bastard: Which game did you find the most fun to hack, and why? James0x57: TimeSplitters 2 was great because I found a lot of things that didn't make it into the final game like weapons and an entire map maker skin! It's kind of exciting to find those kind of things. Lazy Bastard: Did you ever hack an awesome code, or find an address in memory that would've yielded an awesome code, but then lost it somehow? James0x57: Fortunately, no, that never happened to me. I did lose a few simple codes at the beginning of GCN hacking though. Lazy Bastard: What was the most difficult, 'hair-pulling' hack you've ever accomplished? James0x57: I had to port the Super Spinner from NTSC-US to PAL without a memory dump or access to a hacker from that region. And that code is scattered all over the RAM. What I wound up doing was using information from existing Twilight Princess PAL codes (a specific infinite rupies code and an ASM hack that used unused memory) along with a willing tester from that region. I wrote this 30 line ASM hack that would change the value of the rupies to a specific 8 bits of the PAL region's memory from about 12 different places. And it all depended on what buttons the tester was holding when they walked through a door.. I typed up specific sequences and instructions and after a game crash and a fix, I received all the results from the tester and managed to use the information to calculate the offset between the regions for each piece of the Super Spinner code. I was thrilled when it worked. hahah Lazy Bastard: Was there ever a code you just couldn't get to work quite correctly (something you hacked/attempted to hack)? James0x57: I was working on a drive-in-air code for RoadKill that never came to be. Got really far but just couldn't get it to work correctly. Also, the walk on water code for Wind Waker has an issue with waves that I never managed to work out. Lazy Bastard: Aside from hacking and gaming, how do you like to spend your time? James0x57: I like working out - running, sit-ups, push-ups, that kinda thing. Lazy Bastard: What do you think must happen for the video game hacking scene to continue to thrive? James0x57: I'd have to say community unity. It's pretty scattered right now. Lazy Bastard: One last question: if you had one thing to say to current, aspiring, and future hackers, what would it be? James0x57: Share your knowledge, have no secrets with hacking.