This is a work-in-progress, and everyone is encouraged to contribute their piece(s) of the puzzle.
-['Pre-Golden-Age' - 1997 and earlier]
-['Golden Age' - 1998-2000]
[By KingEdgar0 (from the rough draft of his section of the Final PSX Hacking FAQ)]:
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A brief history of the ultimate method
Let us take a journey back to the later half of 1999. The PSX Hacking scene was at it's peak. Many different people from many different places were coming together to create original and interesting codes to extend the playability of the games we loved. As the number of hackers increased, so did the number of new people. In order to teach the new people how to hack, many websites and FAQs were started to give them information on how to hack various types of codes. This seemed to work for a short time, but a major problem would become apparent shortly.
Method hackers and abaxialism
The problem was a simple one to understand. As more people learned to hack using different single methods to hack different types of codes, they shifted away from the old method of hacking. That is, they shifted away from the old center of hacking knowledge, and altered the axis of the hacking world itself. These "Method hackers" were good at what they did, but that was the end of their abilities. To hack a new kind of code they had to be taught the "method" for that particular type of code. This greatly restricted their hacking ability, and in time helped bring about the so called dark ages of console hacking.
Nachos, egg roll bandits, and the ultimate method
Now we have entered the very early days of the year 2000. Method hackers run rampant, the golden age of the gameshark.com ubb is drawing to a close, and old style hackers are searching for a way to teach method hackers how to let go of their restraints and hack without methods. The older hackers had been doing it since the beginning of the scene, it seemed natural to them. However it was not so with the newer hackers (with a few exceptions). The new hackers needed a method for everything. Without methods they couldn't do anything. It was an understanding of this that made the answer simple. Disguise the lack of methods as a method itself. On January 16th 2000 I took the next logical step and gave the new "method" a name, while adding it to the "Dope RPG hacking faq" that Heh[]Heh and I were working on at the time.
(That faq was well known for it's lighthearted approach at hacking, using a good deal of the space to talk about the best hacking snacks, and how to "steal" egg rolls from Chinese buffets).
Naming and birth of the ultimate method
There I sat, pondering what name would be proper for a method/non-method of this sort. It would be 2 plates of nachos and 4 IM discussions later before I would arrive at the decision name it the "ultimate method". I used this name for a few reasons. First and foremost, it would attract the attention of method hackers. After all, how could someone who relies on methods pass up the ultimate method? Secondly, it was quite true. Because the ultimate method is a lack of methods it is nothing.. but the name implies that it is everything. Look at it this way... The ultimate method replaces all other methods, it takes up every ounce of space in the "hacking universe". Therefore there are no other "methods" left to compare it with. Since there is no way to compare or measure this ultimate method, it can be seen as either everything or nothing. Which works out perfectly. Even though the ultimate method DOES cover everything, it is a complete lack of methods. Everything and nothing at the same time.
Now that I look back upon that day I wish I would have had the insight to call it the Zero method. It carries the same implications as the ultimate method (although reversed), and because the last character in my nickname is "0" it is even more interesting.
The dark ages and incompleteness
Now the ultimate method was out in the open. Although many hackers had used it for years, it lacked a name until the first release of the Dope RPG hacking FAQ. Unfortunately all that the faq included was an introduction to the ultimate method. If a method hacker wanted to walk down the road of the ultimate method, he or she only had a very general sense of where that road was, and no directions when it came to what turns to make. Even to this day the ultimate method hasn't been fully explained. One possible reason is that perhaps it can't really be explained. Everyone learns differently, so is it that strange to assume that the road to the ultimate method is different depending on who you are? Unfortunately the sand had run from the hourglass, and console hacking was about to enter it's dark ages.
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-['Dark Age' - 2001-2006]
[By KingEdgar0 (from the rough draft of his section of the Final PSX Hacking FAQ)]:
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They came quick, and they hit hard. The gameshark.com UBB was merged with the DexDrive UBB and the resulting mess drove most of the hackers away from gameshark.com for good. Most of those that didn't quit hacking migrated to the GSCCC. It seemed that the method hacker problem was worse than ever. It was hard to find people that used the ultimate method, most seemed to cling to method hacking because it was easy for them. During this time the mindset of the entire hacking community seemed to change. There were less and less group projects. Interesting codes were becoming a rarity. Many bad things came together to become 1 horrible thing: The dark ages of console hacking. When you compare the dark ages of console hacking to the wonderful days of late 1999, you can see a drastic decrease in the amount of interesting non-cheat codes being produced by the community. In the golden days of late 1999 you could see many interesting codes produced in 1 day, and from only one hacker. Sometimes a hacker would hack for 5 hours straight and each hour head over to the UBB to report his or her progress and post codes. Perhaps even seek a little help or turn the work into a group project so even more could be discovered from his or her initial discovery. However in the dark ages of console hacking it was not uncommon to see 2 or 3 weeks go by without an interesting code being made available to the public. With that simple comparison it is easy to see why the thought of the golden days of late 1999 brings up a lot of nostalgia in older hackers.
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What caused the Dark Age of VG hacking to be so prolonged, even after people saw the inherent problems of the day, was the fact that no hacking systems or devices were released for the coming consoles. Playstation 2 and XBOX360 (and the original XBOX, for that matter) were completely without hacking capabilities, other than those of static disassembly. Nintendo GameCube was as well, until Parasyte created GCNrd.
-['??? Age' - 2007-20XX]