Paleontologist Dr. Elizabeth Brown’s discovery of the Game Genie will be officially announced in the June issue of National Geographic, available at newsstands today. The magazine reports that the supernatural being was located inside a plastic talisman found deep within the crowded shelves of a Providence, Rhode Island Salvation Army.

The news marks a U-turn in fortune for Dr. Brown, known for spearheading the exhumation of Pharaoh Amenmesse in 2003. The “waking nightmare,” as Brown refers to that incident, culminated in the destruction of Amenmesse’s corpse when a latrine pipe burst, flooding the tomb with the crews’ waste.

As the excrement branched through the tomb’s chambers, the accident turned tragic, drowning three of Brown’s fellow archaeologists including her husband and archaeological partner, Charles.

Since then, Brown has shifted her focus from mummified kings to 8-bit relics, taking special interest in the Game Genie, the mystical being that, as popular lore states, will grant countless wishes to its possessor.

“I was determined to resurrect my dear, sweet Chaz. Even if it meant investing my life’s work to third-party hardware and a wish for infinite continues,” said Brown, who since her husband’s death has become a Professor of Dead Media at Cambridge.

But last year, after thirty-some months and nearly as many Genie-inspired research papers (many of which went unpublished), Brown found hope in an anomaly in the lower left hand corner of a grainy photograph on the back of the local Penny Saver. What to many would have been a smudge was instantly recognizable to the trained eye – the smudge, a hollowed rectangle smaller than a breadbox, was the Genie’s plastic tomb.

Five weeks later, Brown and a team of Communications graduate students had unearthed Game Genie from the shelves of the Providence Salvation Army, carefully removing it from underneath a box of lightly used flannel night gowns and a couple issues of Andy Cap.

But when coaxed from its shell, Genie revealed a surprise for Brown and her plans to cheat mortality – the gaseous being refused to grant her wish without the proper code.

“Well, first, I had to figure out the ‘Revive Dead Husband’ code.” said Brown. “And then even with my wish granted, with Charles back, life just wasn’t the same. Charles was buggy and tended to freeze up.”

In the months since the discovery, Brown has used an assortment of codes to return her life with Charles to a state of Normalcy. Brown can hardly speak when asked about her decision to ask the Genie for Infinite Ammo. “I wanted to end it,” said Brown. “I asked for my husband back, but all I got was a glitchy cadaver. And the stench. Have you ever smelt someone that drowned in shit?”