Yeah, back in junior high I had not enough friends and too much time, and discovered that keying in random Game Genie codes would sometimes cause a NES game to (harmlessly) glitch out in interesting ways. :-p Some codes just locked up the game (drat!), while others caused screen glitches, messed with colors, and rearranged levels. Still others would screw up the game music or sound effects. I was always strangely mesmerized by the bleepy sonic barf of a good sound loop crash.

Of course, now that I’m all old and exposed to the Internets, I come to find out there are entire groups devoted to pretty much exactly this–glitching out electronic toys to produce interesting sound effects (circuit bending). So for those folks, here is some info and samples from codebending on the original NES. Hardcore circuit benders might consider this software-bending stuff cheating since the case never comes off ;-)
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