Lately there seems to be a lot of bad things happening around the world. Be it wars, starvation, disease or even high gas prices, the world needs a superhero that can swoop in and save the day. Unfortunately there's no such thing as a superhero, so we're going to have to come up with a more realistic strategy. We could band together to tackle each of these problems individually or do what we can to elect the right people this November, but all that takes too long. So I suggest we do what we do when things get too tough and there seems to be no other way out. WE CHEAT! I'm here to tell you that this world needs a Game Genie.

Don't worry, I haven't completely lost my mind. Obviously a Game Genie isn't going to fix the genocide in Darfur or the war in Iraq, but it does make for a good article title. And that got me thinking, if the Game Genie actually worked how would we use it? And if we did use it, would it make things worse in the long run? These are the pointless thoughts that keep me up at night. And that's why I'm proud to introduce you to another hard-pressing investigative piece. I'm proud to introduce you to This World Needs the Game Genie, the article that will make me a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Problem: With all of the housing problems, bad unemployment numbers and poor consumer confidence, this country is in economic trouble. And to make matters worse the value of the dollar has plummeted, the banking system is in a downturn and we're in a full blown recession. The economy sucks, and that's why poll after poll shows that it's the number one issue on voter's minds. Perhaps the power of the Game Genie can help relieve some of these economic woes.

Code Summary: Your money does not decrease for most types of spending. In other words, you basically have unlimited cash to spend. Now don't get too excited, you will be docked money if you spend this unlimited cash on stupid things (like food and clothing), but that shouldn't stop you from buying as many parks, railroad tracks or power plants as you want. Just watch out for the fallout.

Likely Outcome: Now that money is unlimited, it will suddenly become completely useless and all currency will cease to exist. Sure it would be nice to be able to buy whatever you want without going into debt, but it won't be long before something else will take the place of currency and we'll be back in the same terrible situation we currently find ourselves in. The one benefit would be that for a short while nobody would know who is rich and who is poor. For that short period everybody would be equal. That is, everybody would be equal until somebody figures out the next currency. And chances are the things people want and need will be controlled by those rich men and women who run the world's major businesses. In other words, as tempting as it is, this is one code that should not be considered for a real world application.

The Problem: For the past five years, the United States has been locked in a struggle with the nation of Iraq. Despite the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and there was no evidence that they were planning on attacking us, President Bush decided to go into Iraq, arrest Saddam Hussein and "liberate" the Iraqi people. Five years later we're stuck in a civil war where very few political advancements are taking place and nothing seems to be getting better. Polling shows that a majority of our citizens want the troops home, even if that means cutting our losses and leaving the Iraqis to fend for themselves. With no easy answers it's clear that we need the Game Genie to help resolve this war in Iraq!

Code Summary: This code makes it so you don't take any damage from anything. In other words the brave men and women in the military will be invulnerable to, well, everything. That means that CNN will never report another story about a troop being killed by a road-side car bomb. Our soldiers will be able to go into any situation without armor or worry about taking damage, because he's invulnerable to bullets, fire, explosions and other terrible things they'll run into in Iraq.

Likely Outcome: On the surface this sounds great, but giving our soldiers a code to make them invincible is the last thing we want to do. Let's look at this logically for a second; we're talking about a group of young men and women who are trained to be killing machines. Obviously that's a good thing on the battlefield, but what happens when they invincible killing machines find themselves mixed in with all of us non-invincible people? Now don't get me wrong, I certainly don't think the majority of our soldiers would come back and hurt anybody, even if they were given this Game Genie code. But with an army this size all it takes is one or two bad apples to really cause some damage. How do you go about fighting somebody who can't take damage from anything? We've already seen how this ends in comic books, so wise up and realize that there's a difference between giving our soldiers a technical advantage and making them invulnerable to any kind of attack. Like it or not, this code could be the end of us all.

The Problem: Although the cause may be controversial, few are going to argue that this planet we live on is undergoing a warming period. If you believe Al Gore then that means that in the next 100 years or so we may start losing some of our most famous coastlines, and the damage to some of our port cities would be immeasurable. But we don't need to look 100 years into the future, all you need to see is the decline of everything from icebergs to polar bears. Global warming is definitely happening, but is there anything we can actually do about it at this point? Could the Game Genie help? Well, it couldn't hurt to try ... right?

Code Summary: This code stops the timer. In other words, when you input this code everything stops right where it was. Not the humans and animals, but everything else. If this code works properly then the Earth would be affected by this time stop, giving us some much-needed time to figure out how to reverse this global warming thing. Sounds like a code made specifically for the Al Gores of the world ... ironic that it was found in a violent war-based G.I. Joe game.

Likely Outcome: Let's say that stopping time has the desired results and our planet just kind of stalls until we figure something out. The first problem with this is that just because we've stopped time, that doesn't mean we've stopped pollution. Heck, we're still going to be polluting the world as much after this code as we did before, only now we won't have the wind and atmosphere to distribute it. Instead the pollution will just rise up and linger above industrial cities. If this is our future then it won't take 100 years before some of our biggest cities are deemed unlivable. Worse yet, half of the planet will always be in the dark. With the Earth in standby mode there will be no seasons and life will become uncomfortably bad for just about everybody on the planet. And did I mention that we're going to have to relocate millions (perhaps even billions) of people until we figure this out? And how long are we going to spend trying to reverse this thing? Stopping time may sound good, but it's not the solution to our global warming problem!