I noticed that the action-replay tag was created recently having to do with what seems to be AR code requests. I know that we've always supported cheats or various console commands (aka skyrim) but those questions usually deal with built in cheating mechanisms within the games themselves.
What are your thoughts of questions regarding asking for AR codes to do specific things?
The biggest problem I see with AR and Gameshark codes is that there are billions of variations possible for each game, and much of the point of the devices was doing amateur programming by trial and error. I think that might make some questions about them "too localised" or "off topic", but I don't think that makes the category too localised or off topic.
It's also possible for someone to ask for a code that does something that isn't possible (is that NARQ, or on-topic but answered with "Doesn't exist"?), or to ask for a code that is possible but is complicated enough that it's effectively a request for us to do freelance programming if that exact effect hasn't already been accomplished with a code published elsewhere (which would be off-topic?).
In other words, vote to close the bad questions because they're bad questions, not because they're about AR codes. There might not be many sorts of AR code questions that are good questions, but we should be able to answer such good questions just fine without going outside the site's purpose.
Action Replay codes seem like a "game specific hardware or utility" so I'm inclined to allow them.
They do seem to be an "XY Problem" type question, where the answer is already presupposed by the question. In these cases though, we tend to feel free to ignore the solution requested if there are suitable alternatives.
My view is that this falls into the same sort of category as lore does.
There's a reasonable limit of what we can help with without expending massive amounts of effort; invincibility codes, unlimited cash, that sort of thing. Even unlocking things already in the game. That's pretty easy memory manipulation.
Asking for AR codes that do extremely specific things that don't relate to these areas, though, such as hacking Waluigi into Super Mario 64, are well outside our expertise. These are far too specific to help the internet at large, and we don't have skills or knowledge to deal with them. This is the same area as lore that's not addressed in canon; we can't be reasonably expected to be able to answer these questions.
It requires a small amount of expertise to determine if what is being requested is possible or not. That's fine. If what the asker wants is to add or change something that's not within the game's assets, that requires us to create that from scratch, or modify something existing to certain specifications, that's off-topic. If it's something that's already in the game, and just needs some poking to make it show up, that's fine.
