Pro Tip of the Day

Super Mario World is chock full of these bonus rooms. Like this one that has rows and rows of ?-Blocks.

If you can hit them in the correct order (which is random), a 1-Up will pop out, but if you hit them in the wrong order

You get nothin'.

That's why it's recommended to enter these rooms with a Cape.

If you can manage to hit the bottom-left corner of the blocks, you'll be correct every time!

Which will allow you to get a few free 1-Ups for your troubles

And timing is key. If you hit the side of the blocks, it might not work (but, since it's pretty much random anyway, it might).

Good luck!

Kid Niki is full of hidden passages and bonus stages, some of which are... different.

Like take this spot in Stage 4, for example. It's the platform directly after the second moving platform.

Jump up a few times and the next platform will turn into a fish!

Walk off the platform, directly into the fish's mouth and...

You're in!

You traverse the length of the fish (there's nothing in it but bones), and you come to the exit

Well, how else did you expect to get out of a fish?

Marble Madness is tough, probably to make up for it also being kinda short, so you're going to be running out of time frequently, until you've mastered the game... which might take some time.

In the meantime you could start up a two-player game (even though you're only going to be playing single player)

Then race normally, letting Player 2 just sit there for a little bit

As you race to the finish line, the second player will be scrolled off the screen, and brought back closer to where you are, incurring a 5 second penalty each time. But if you can get it across the finish line before its time runs out (which should be totally doable on the first race), whichever marble crossed the line first will get a five-second bonus at the beginning of the next race

Which doesn't sound like much, but trust me, you're going to need all the help you can get.

The first few boxers in the Punch-Out!! games have techniques that teach you how to play the game better.

Like Don Flamenco, for example.

The first time you fight him, you have to throw a punch (which he'll block), so he can counter it (he's kind of a showoff)

Dodge that and he'll be vulnerable to taking punches (like everyone else in the game).

But, unlike everyone else in the game, if you keep alternating left and right punches Don will never recover, letting you pummel him until he runs out of stamina and crashes to the mat.

Even better is that each time he gets up he gets a little more aggressive and throws the first punch, which you dodge, and then you can immediately start with the alternating jabs again.

Which means that you're going to win in record time.

Just be aware that this doesn't work the second time you have to face him.

One of the games I used to play a lot was Hero of the Golden Talisman for the Commodore 64.

But, as much as I played it, I never really got very far. Lots of the passages look alike, and it's real easy to get lost.

For some reason, it never dawned on me that I should have made a map, like this one (drawn by Michael Lambert and available here).

Which would have helped me figure out where I was, where to go, and how big the game actually is.

Any time you play a game with a moderately complex, maze-like layout (Metroid, I'm looking at you), drawing a map is a great way to keep track of where things are. And, no, they don't have to look great, they just need to be good enough that you can read and interpret them.

Once you finally make it to the end of Nightshade, you have to deal with the evil mastermind who's responsible for starting the mess, Waldo P. Schmeer, a.k.a. Sutekh. He really likes to hear himself talk.

You can use this to your advantage. Before you engage him, TALK to him

to ask him the question you're probably asking yourself in real life.

Which he'll actually answer

Though, to be honest, I found the Staff of Ra to be all but useless when I was fighting him. A better technique was to duck in the center of the room and punch him when he teleports in close.

Today's Pro Tip has some pretty big .gif files, hit 'Read More' if you want to read the rest of it

In Fester's Quest you have red and blue Gun powerups. The blue ones increase your gun's level and the red ones decrease it. And, while most of the levels of shots you get look kind of neat, you'll quickly discover that most of them are completely useless when you get into close quarters.

Occasionally, while you're slinging Root Beers around in Tapper, you'll notice that occasionally a patron will drop a tip on the counter.

If you grab it, you get a 1500 point bonus, and some 'entertainment' plays

But I typically avoid picking them up for 3 reasons:

1. Grabbing it takes you away from slinging root beers, which means that your patrons get closer to the end of their bars and tougher to get out
2. Some of the patrons quit paying attention to the drinks being slung at them, and when they start to overlap with each other, it can be tough to tell who wants a drink and who's watching the show (check out the bottom bar in the second picture, for example)
3. While patrons are watching the show, more patrons file in, filling the bar, and making it tougher to clear the level

This doesn't mean that you should necessarily avoid grabbing all of them, but I'd avoid them until you're ready to increase the game's difficulty.

In Mega Man 4, one of the weapons you get is the Pharaoh Shot, which, if you hold down the B button, produces a big ol' bubble of energy above Mega Man's head.

One of the interesting things about it is that if a particularly weak enemy collides with it the enemy is destroyed but the bubble stays up and you don't lose any weapon energy.

So, if you find a place where weak enemies come down at you from the same angle in a steady stream, like this spot in Skull Man's stage

You can stand there, B button held in, and and when the enemies plow into your charged shot, the goodies fall right onto your head. Stand there long enough and you'll not only refill your energy pretty quickly, but you'll also max out your lives.

Which might be better than having full energy.

Oh, and if you think that this is similar to the technique I described for Mega Man 9, you'd be right.

If you play Bubble Bobble enough, you might begin to suspect that the collectible items that appear are essentially random.

But you'd be wrong.

Some of the more useful items are the bubbles that hold the letters that spell the word EXTEND. To get them, all you have to do is encase a lot of enemies in bubbles and maneuver them so that they all pop at the same time.

If you popped enough, when the next stage starts you'll notice that the lettered bubbles start pouring in!

In fact, you get two less than the number of enemies that you popped at once (pop 3 enemies, get 1 bubble; pop 5, get 3 bubbles; etc.)

And this works on every version of Bubble Bobble that I tried it on.