system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do video game cheat code devices (Action Replay / Gameshark) work?

What exactly does the device do to create a cheat code environment?
gpt
Games (and any software) will load elements that it needs to use into the device's memory. These cheat devices find where that piece of code lives in memory and modifies it. So basically it looks in memory for where your number of lives are stored and changes it to whatever you tell it to. In the case of setting something to unlimited the cheat device prevents the game from changing what is stored in memory.