Hacking: Amazing — the Action Replay cartridge is still around!
To be honest, I’m quite surprised that the PS2 hardware platform allows any of this stuff without some mod-chip-style soldering… but then, it’s pretty clear Datel have the technology to figure these things out. Impressive.
Aside: in my teens, I wrote demos on the Commodore 64 entirely in the Action
Replay’s built-in monitor. I tried using compilers that supported such
luxuries as symbolic labels, variable names, etc., but the ability to halt
the entire machine and debug extensively, with a single button press, was
just too nifty ;)