When it comes to Xbox memory devices, there are only two particularly famous ones: the Action Replay from Mad Catz (read a so-so review at http://gear.ign.com/articles/432/432888p1.html) and the Mega X-Key, sold through the Hong Kong store Lik-Sang (http://www.megaxkey.com/mxkmanual/readme.html). Make sure you order from Lik-Sang, not the Mega X-Key site; there are reports of extremely slow delivery times when ordering directly from the developers. It’s interesting to note the naming: as the IGN review indicates, it appears that the Action Replay device relies on the Action Replay name without having much to do with it anymore.

The hardware is easy to compare. The Action Replay interface to the PC is designed to take Xbox memory cards, although it comes with its own special memory card. The Mega X-Key is simply a normal-looking USB stick, though it may look scarier and a bit amateurish to the casual buyer. It has its advantages, though, with 32 MB of storage to the Action Replay’s 8 MB. Tests show that the Mega X-Key transfers data noticeably faster than the Action Replay device.

In terms of save compatibility and availability, the Action Replay uses its own proprietary save format. You can’t use unconverted open save archives found online; instead, download them from CodeJunkies.com. Action Replay has dedicated employees who produce new saves with everything unlocked and near-infinite money supplies for the CodeJunkies board, which is a major plus. There are also quite a few user-contributed saves there, too. While some are great (e.g., saves from just near the multiple endings of Deus Ex: Invisible War), many are badly labeled or entirely unlabeled, so many of the archived game saves are fairly unusable.

In comparison, the Mega X-Key uses Xbox-Saves (http://www.xbox-saves.com/) as its main source of game saves. At the time of writing, the collection approached 1,500 saves. Although the site uses purely volunteer and amateur efforts, it does really well, especially on the more exotic hacks. However, hacks aren’t well-labeled in terms of which will work with vanilla hardware and which require some sort of Xbox modification. I’ll return to this thought in a bit.

One rather cool thing about the Mega X-Key is that its designers started out as hobbyists. They don’t mind giving you the instructions for making your own Xbox interface for Mega X-Key; see their web site (http://www.xbox-saves.com/MXK_HW_Guide.htm). Not only that, the instructions actually relate exactly to the Xbox-controller hacking. Start with a breakaway Xbox extension cable, add a USB-to-USB cable, and, after a little cutting and resoldering, you end up with a cable with a USB connector on one end and an Xbox controller connector on the other. ( [Hack #37] )

When that’s done, all you need is a 32-MB USB drive to plug into the end of the USB connector. Beware: it must be exactly 32 MB, not lacking sectors or cylinders, as some (likely no-name brand) memory cards do. If the number of bytes on the card isn’t exactly divisible by 16,384, bad things may happen due to the Xbox’s FATX formatting for memory cards. The site notes:

After all that, download the Mega X-Key software from the official project page (http://www.megaxkey.com/index.php?section=product), and you’re good to go.

Having explained the homebrew process, however, it may be simpler to buy a Mega X-Key itself. They’re competitively priced, and you’re really just buying a USB drive from them that you’d have to find yourself (and might get wrong!) anyhow.

If you register on the Code Junkies site, you may notice that most of the official codes are fairly vanilla. That’s because the most you can usually do without altering the digital signature is change your character’s money value to 9999999—still within the original game limits, so it won’t affect the signature!

Even this modest hacking requires some particularly complex (and perhaps not-so-legit) disassembly. An example at http://www.xbox-saves.com/deathrler/ shows how to modify a Sega GT 2002 to produce the maximum amounts of money in an in-game save that still passes the signature test.

The page makes the point that you have to fool the Xbox only once:

The XBox Game Save Re-signer, available from http://www.xbox-saves.com/, helps these problems by resigning hacked saves. Thus, if you use a software or hardware modification to transfer data to and from your Xbox, you can perform more exotic and interesting hacks.

In either case, here are some freely downloadable examples from the Xbox Saves site:

Whether you’re just using a save device or trying something crazier still, there’s plenty of interesting saved game hacking you can do using the Xbox.

As previously mentioned, I’m being a little coy about some of these. However, I’d be remiss in not pointing to Andrew “bunnie” Huang’s fabulous Hacking the Xbox (http://hackingthexbox.com/) site and book from No Starch Press.

Also, be sure to check out the marvelous Xbox-Scene (http://www.xbox-scene.com/). Though it’s not the only Xbox hacking site, Xbox-Scene has the latest information on hardware hacks (chips and other such shenanigans) and software hacks (overflow exploits, media players), all of which are tremendously useful. Even though I don’t explicitly cover them here, that doesn’t mean they’re difficult or ineffective. Go forth and multiply your knowledge and your Xbox hacks; just don’t tell Microsoft about it!