GameShark Labs · Built by players
The cheat-code canon, kept by the people who never put the controller down.
Game Genie codes copied by hand into the back of a Trapper Keeper. The Konami Code burned into your thumbs. The glitch your cousin swore was real — and turned out to be. That whole universe of player ingenuity never had a real home. We’re building it one: a living canon of cheat-code culture, kept by people who actually finished the games.
01 · What we’re preserving
Every other retro-game archive sorts by genre, or by whatever the crowd upvoted that week. None of them treat player ingenuity — cheat codes, controller exploits, glitches, easter eggs, design oversights, schoolyard lore — as a single culture worth keeping. We do. We call it the Enhancer Canon: the definitive record of every clever, ridiculous, game-breaking thing players ever pulled off, Atari through the PS2.
No code is too obscure. No rumor is too weird to run down. If a nine-year-old in 1998 swore it worked, it earns a real entry — verified, sourced, and kept for good.
02 · Three things we’re making
One canon, three ways to hold it — a vault, a device, and a book, each built by players who finished the games.
The vault
SharkVault
The living archive: every game, every code, every exploit, curated by hand one editorial pass at a time. You're standing in it.
The device
RetroShark
The codes, back on the metal: original hardware, modern firmware, none of the emulation asterisks. Enter a code, watch it fire on a real console.
The book
The Compendium
The canon in print: a coffee-table hardcover with original backdrop art for every game. The one you'll actually leave on the table.
03 · The Founders
None of this would exist without the people who funded it. 1,126 Kickstarter backers put real money behind a cheat-code book before a single page shipped — and they became our Founders.
Every Founder gets a permanent number — Founder #1 through the last backer, in the exact order you pledged. It’s yours forever: on your profile, on the Supporters Wall, and stamped on anything you share.
And to settle the question everyone asks: every guide is drafted against a curated facts file, sourced and cross-checked, and every section clears automated citation and code checks before it can publish. A person decides what opens. The research is grounded and the sources are on the page, and where our record falls short of proving a human read a given line, we say so rather than round it up. Full method: how we write this, and the short version is in the FAQ.
Become a Founder04 · Who’s building it
A small crew of players, engineers, and lifers who finished the games and never got over them.
05 · Get in
- The Road to GTA VI — the membership, and the fastest way into the beta.
- Sample the Compendium — a free look at the book, no signup.
- The Backdrop Gallery — original art, one backdrop per game. Open to everyone; the full-resolution files are a member perk.
- The Roadmap — what we build next, and the Founder vote that decides it.
- The FAQ — how guides get written, what beta means, how to report an error.
- Already a Founder? Sign in with your backer email.