RetroShark

The retro console that reads what you're playing, then helps you beat it.

We're building RetroShark to read the game as you play (your health, your inventory, the boss's pattern) so it can surface the code or tip the moment you need it. Like the strategy guide always open to the right page.

Concept render of an early prototype. Illustrative only; not the final product design.

What we're building

• Game-state awareness

  Designed to read emulator memory for your inventory, stats, and position, surfaced live in an Inspect view.

  Reads emulator memory, not your inputs.

• Codes

  GameShark and Action Replay codes, flipped on from the pause menu. No menus to dig through mid-run.

• Speedup

  Adjustable emulation speed with audio pitch correction, so fast-forward still sounds right.

• Wide system support

  NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA, Genesis, and more, running on open-source libretro emulator cores.

• Turnkey hardware

  Designed as a turnkey appliance: full GUI, controller support, sensible defaults out of the box, fully configurable when you want it.

• SharkVault companion

  Per-game guides and metadata, pulled in alongside play.

  sharkvault.gamesharklabs.com (opens in a new tab)

How it works

A libretro core handles emulation; a C++/SDL2 frontend handles the experience. Between them sits an embedded Lua memory-inspection layer that decodes a game's data structures live (inventory, stats, position) so the rest of the system can reason about what's actually happening on screen. The AI we're building watches the game state, not your keystrokes.