Pro Tip of the Day

Been playing the Super NES port of Mortal Kombat 3 and been getting bored with it? (And at this point the game's life, who wouldn't be?)

Well, then, let's tweak a few options, shall we?

First, go to the 'Start' Screen

And press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, A, B, A on Controller 1. Done right, a new menu option will appear, Kool Stuff

With several things to tweak.

Not enough?

Well, then go back to the 'Start' screen and press Select, A, B, Right, Left, Down, Down, Up, Up on Controller 1.

Another option will appear, Kooler Stuff

With lots more options to flip

Still not enough?

Okay, go back to the 'Start' Screen and press X, B, A, Y, Up, Left, Down, Right, Down on Controller 1 to get the final menu choice, Scott's Stuff

Which has yet more options for you to play with

Now things will start getting interesting, so go nuts flipping those options!

Thanks, reader EASY, for suggesting today's tip!

If you've never played Rival Turf!, it's kind of like Final Fight, you run around various cities across the country beating up wave after wave of identical twins.

And just like lots of other games, if you end up running out of lives and continues, you have to start over. But if your score is high enough, you get to enter your name in the High Score Table. If you pretend for a moment that your name is 'CHRCONF'

And then hit 'EX', you'll be taken to a secret screen

Where you get to change the names of all the characters in the game. There aren't any restrictions that I could find, so go nuts

And that should make having to repeat the first few stages a little less tedious

In Yoshi's Island you occasionally find a locked door that, when unlocked, will lead to a bonus game where you have to play a game against a Bandit for extra lives.

But what if you're low on lives and you haven't taken the time to stock up, and you don't want to bother going through a stage to find one of those locked doors?

Well, good news!

If you go the map screen

And on Controller 1 hold Select while pressing X, X, Y, B, A, you'll be greeted with fanfare and a new screen

Which lets you choose which of the mini games you want to play (as an added bonus, you can play a couple of them with a second player)

And if you lose, there's no penalty, so there's really no reason to not go for it.

One of the neat things about Uniracers is that you can rename any of the racers to pretty much anything you want to.

But occasionally you'll put in a perfectly fine name only to have it rejected as being 'not cool enough'

Through some testing, I was able to determine that the game uses a rudimentary check for... we'll call them 'off-color' words, and if it finds them anywhere in the name you've typed in, either for the individual unis or for teams, then it gets rejected.

I can't provide a list of all the words it rejects, though. You're on your own for that.

Play enough Super Mario World and you'll eventually make your way to the Special area where eight fairly tough levels with kind of silly names await you.

But if you sit at the map screen long enough, for several minutes, you might notice the music changes to something that sounds oddly familiar, the theme from the first game!

Don't have access to a save file close enough to the Special area? Or don't have a Super NES within arm's length? That's OK, I've prepared a sample for you right here in mp3 form.

In the 'grassy' stages of Super Mario Bros. 3 (like stage 1-2, for example) you might notice that there's a dark green patch at the bottom of the screen.

You may be thinking that was an artistic choice, but if you're properly prepared, you'll find that it's more than that.

Enter one of those stages with a P-Wing equipped and fly down the closest pit (being careful to not actually fall in, of course) and you'll find that the dark green stuff is actually a tunnel that runs most of the length of the stage!

Of course, stuff like enemy fireballs that go through the ground can still hit you if you're not careful, if you stop mashing the A button you'll fall off the bottom of the screen and lose a life, and you can't actually finish the stage from down there, you have to be above ground to hit the Card at the end.

But it's a fun novelty to do once or twice.

In Super Mario Kart's Vanilla Lake 2, the center of the field has become melted, and kind of dangerous to drive on, y'know, because it's a lake.

But you can use that to your advantage.

While you're racing, as soon as you cross the finish line, take a hard left and head straight into the water.

Then, at the last second, turn 90° to your left so that you go back behind the Start/Finish line before Lakitu picks you up. Done right, you should be on the next lap.

Which will whittle down your best lap times to well under 10 seconds!

Not bad!

Donkey Kong Country really isn't that hard of a game, but some of the maneuvers you have to pull off are a little frustrating, so it would be nice to have a few extra chances.

If you go to the File Select screen

And press

B, A, R, R, A, L

on your controller (which kind of spells 'Barrel') you'll hear a confirmation noise. Start your file and blam!

50 Donkey Kongs (or Diddy Kongs, whichever way you want to look at it)!

Now you have plenty of opportunities to try and discover the hidden goodies littered throughout the game.

You might remember a while back that we talked about getting a Ha-Do-Ken for Mega Man in the first Mega Man X game. So, it might not come as a huge surprise that there's a similar secret in the second Mega Man X game.

The conditions you have to meet are similar. You have to have found all of the E-Tanks, heart tanks, Zero parts, and sub-weapons. Basically, every collectible in the game. Then make your way to the third Fortress stage. You'll eventually find a ladder up high enough that you'll have to lure some enemies over and hit them with the Crystal Hunter to make platforms.

You'll have to then traverse a kind of treacherous path, with some pretty tough spots.

Once you get to the vertical shaft, hug the left wall to enter a hidden passageway to find a weapons capsule!

Inside is Dr. Light, who is apparently a big fan of Wayne's World.

Hop in and you get Street Fighter's Ryu's signature move, the Sho-Ryu-Ken!

Which you execute by pressing Forward, Down, and Down-Forward + Shot. It looks kind of cool, but you get it at nearly the end of the game, so you don't get to school very many bosses with it, and its range is so short that you'll probably get hit before you get a chance to actually hit something with it.

But, hey, don't worry about that!

The Super Game Boy was great, it let me, for the first time, play Game Boy games on my television via my Super NES. It also, with certain games, allowed for way more colors than the 4 that most Game Boy games supported. I mean, take a look at this Donkey Kong screenshot.

Isn't that great? Extended color palette, custom screen border, and when Pauline gets yoinked away at the end of the stages, she actually calls for help.

Now, if we take a look at the same game in the new-fangled Game Boy Player for the Game Cube

The enhanced palette is gone, the custom border is gone, and Pauline's cries are reduced to a sad little squeak (sounds kind of like a goose blowing a kazoo).

So you might want to keep your Super NES and Super Game Boy around if losing access to those things means anything to you.