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GameShark is the brand name of a line of video game enhancers and other products for a variety of console video game systems and Windows based computers. Currently, the brand name is owned by Mad Catz, Inc. who is actively marketing GameShark products for the Sony PlayStation 2, Sony PlayStation Portable, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Game Boy Advance including the SP and Micro models. The GameShark products never have been licensed or endorsed by the manufacturers of the products that they work with.

History

The GameShark brand was originally owned by InterAct Accessories, now defunct, which marketed the first products under that name in 1995. The original GameSharks were actually a rebranding of the Action Replay game enhancer devices for the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation for sale in the American market. The products themselves were manufactured by Datel which sold them under the name Action Replay in Europe. As the time progressed, the GameShark product line expanded to include game enhancers for the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy consoles as well other video game related products. Later on, redesigned versions of the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy GameSharks were produced with included more advanced features including a utility which allowed users to hack (or "train") their own cheat codes. The improved GameSharks for the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 were known as the GameShark Pro where as the improved GameBoy version was still simply called the GameShark.

The PlayStation versions originally connected to the I/O port on the back of the game deck. This original design is not compatible with later versions of the hardware which do not have this port as there is no way to connect the device to the console. In response to this, a disc based GameShark was introduced, known as the GameShark CDX, which had no need to interface with any external hardware devices. Legal disputes with Sony over these earlier unlicensed devices may have contributed to elimination of the I/O port.

The popularity of GameShark products slowly waned in the coming years and InterAct finally faded into oblivion in 2002[citation needed]. Following the firm's demise[citation needed], its parent company, Recoton, auctioned off the rights to the GameShark brand name to highest bidder. Mad Catz, Inc. won the bid paying $5 million and formally acquired the GameShark brand and domain names in 2003.

Although the brand name had legally belonged to InterAct, the technology which powered the GameShark game enhancers was firmly the property of Datel and so was not acquired by Mad Catz along with the name. To power their GameSharks, Mad Catz instead obtained software from the same UK company which was providing Pelican Accessories with the software that drove the competing Code Breaker enhancers and this has resulted in an on going legal dispute. In the meanwhile, Datel began selling their products in the American market under the Action Replay brand directly meaning, perhaps ironically, that the technology which first helped to establish the GameShark had become one of its two primary competitors.

Finally, and adding insult to injury, the most popular independent GameShark codes website known as the GameShark Code Creators Club eventually transferred its loyalties to Pelican Accessories' Code Breaker format and became its official website. To this day the three firms remain in direct competition trying to sell similar products under their respective brand names.

Codes for the defunct InterAct Gameshark for Game Boy Advance can no longer be found online. Neither GameShark.com nor other "Cheat Code" sites list the older codes. This is odd, as Gameshark.com does list codes that work with the InterAct GameShark for Game Boy. Because of the encryption technologies used by subsequent devices, "endien" codes (see below) from competing devices do not work on the older GameShark. While software exists to convert codes from one device to another, these programs are designed to convert Playstation 2 codes, and fail to create usable Game Boy Advance Codes for the InterAct Gameshark.

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