alt Hacker News> I've been hoping there exist techniques more systematic than "see what values change between memory snapshots".
FWIW this is pretty much the standard method for locating value locations in RAM. It actually works pretty well. Some emulators have tools built in for that, like Dolphin for example. Even old game hacking tools like the Gameshark for N64 used the technique, with an on-console UI. I don't know if any Dreamcast emulators have tools for it or not.
I wrote about the technique in Dolphin here (and the followup article is also about console game hacking with Ghidra): https://www.smokingonabike.com/2021/01/17/hacking-super-monk...
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Incidentally, Skies of Arcadia Legends on Dolphin is fantastic:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwH1xJhcXG0dBlmWL_DTu...
And old skool 'trainer' tools on PC. Someone more familiar that myself could give better information but I remember trying them out in the early 2000s and remarking how they reminded me of GameShark for PC
> Some emulators have tools built in for that, like Dolphin for example.
This was an advertised feature of some DS flashcarts back in the day, too. I can't remember if it was the R4, the DSTwo, or what...but I recall an example video for their "Make your own cheats!" feature, which involved playing something like Super Mario Bros, turning on the "Cheats Finder" feature, then grabbing a coin, and maybe doing it a few times. The manager would then figure out the value that's changing in memory (presumably the sector that stores your coin amount), create the "cheat", and then you would enable it and watch your coin value go up.