Let's say that you're playing Donkey Kong Country. You've put in the code for 50 lives, but you've burned through most of them on a particularly difficult spot.

What do you do?

Well, you could go back to the very first level of the game, where Donkey Kong bursts out of his treehouse.

Then turn right around and go back in for a free 1up!

Once you've collected it, just pause the game and hit Select to exit the stage, and you can go back in to collect it again. Do this as many times as you need for more 1ups!

Just don't go in the bottom entrance, there's nothing there but an empty Banana Horde, which will make Donkey Kong sad, and we don't want that.

Sorry it took me so long to get to Shaq-Fu. I didn't realize how popular this game was with you guys. If you've never played it, it involves everyone's favorite basketball star, Shaquille O'Neal, in a martial-arts tournament where he has to keep the Earth safe from being invaded by otherworldly forces.

Which sounds great, right? But let's say that you've played it for a bit and want to spice up the action. You could go to the Options Screen

Grab Controller One and (kind of quickly) press

Y, X, B, A, L, R

Done right, you should see the screen momentarily flash red. And that means that when you get into the game, the little white indicators that you've been hit

Will turn red

Which I have been told is supposed to be blood. It's not Mortal Kombat levels or anything, but there you go.

Take a look at this original arcade cabinet for Smash TV. You might notice that it's got four joysticks, two for each player. That's so you can move your guy around shoot the thousands of baddies that accost him in a direction independent of his movement. If I had to compare it to a less-ancient game, it's kinda like Geometry Wars.

But, like a lot of early arcade games, there was a version made for the NES, but if you've ever used a NES controller, you know that there just aren't nearly enough buttons to simulate two joysticks. Just can't be done.... with one controller.

So you definitely want to pick the second option on the Player Select screen, 1 Player 2 Controllers

That way you can move with one and fire with the other. Just be aware: you don't hold the controllers as normal, you rotate them clockwise 90° so that the Cross Pad is on top. That way it's much easier for your right hand to use it. Of course, for a better arcade-like experience, you'll want to track down two NES Advantage controllers and use them. But, you'd have to be pretty dedicated to the game to want to do that.

One of the things about Castlevania is that there are lots and lots of goodies hidden all over the place with no indication that they're there. That makes finding them by accident kind of a rare occurrence.

Like this part of Stage 6, for example. It's the hallway that leads to the second boss, a giant Flying Medusa Head.

If you make your way to the fourth arch and stand in just the right place for a few seconds...

A moneybag will rise up out of the ground for a quick 1,000 points!

A couple of things to note, though: 1. The game is really picky about where you stand to activate the moneybag, and 2. There are lots of the smaller Flying Medusa Heads attacking you in their sine-wave pattern, which makes it tough to stand still for the few seconds required to trigger it.

But, there are plenty of people who are old hands at this game that might not know about it, so it's worth perfecting your technique to impress them.

The second Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game for NES is based off the first one for the arcade, try to not think about that too much.

But, since it's based on an arcade game, it's kind of tough, and there are button codes for level select and for bonus lives to help you out. But why bother with choosing one over the other when you can have both?

First, go to the title screen

Then (kind of quickly) enter the following code:

B, A, B, A, Up, Down, B, A, Left, Right, B, A, Start

You won't get a confirmation 'ding' or anything, but hit Start and choose your Turtle

If you put the code in right, you'll then be able to choose your starting stage

And when you start playing your chosen stage, you'll have 9 lives to play with

It's totally win-win!

Ring King is a kind of tough game. You have to take your underpowered boxer up against a whole host of guys much more powerful and skilled than you are, which hardly seems fair.

So that's why I like to even the playing field a little bit.

When you're at the Training Gym screen

Grab a couple of controllers (or an NES Advantage with the snazzy switch to toggle between Controllers 1 and 2) and (quickly) press the following sequence.

Controller 2: A, Controller 1: A, Select, A, Controller 2: B, Controller 1: Select, Controller 2: A, B, Controller 1: B, B

You won't get any confirmation or anything, but when you go to the match, you'll notice that you can take all the punishment the other guy can dish out

And it won't cost you any stamina

You will actually have to land a few punches if you want to win, though, so it's not a total cakewalk.

When you go to the Character Selection screen in Killer Instinct, you have the ability to influence the stage you play on and the music that plays by holding either Up or Down on the Control Pad and pressing one of the Punch or Kick buttons.

But, what if you and a friend are playing the game and you go to the Player Select screen

Highlighted the character you wanted and then held Down on the Control Pad and pressed whatever button you designated for Medium Kick (the default is B)?

You'd be taken to the VS. screen (where you might want to take advantage of Easy Combo Breakers)

But once the fight actually starts you'll be on a platform mysteriously floating in the sky!

Which is very easy to get knocked off of

So even with Easy Combo Breakers turned on, if you get backed into a corner, you're going to be in trouble.

Have fun!

And yes, this works in the Arcade version as well.

Hatris is one of those games made by the guy that made Tetris in what I assume was an effort to recapture the magic that Tetris had. But it wasn't really that good.

But, I suppose that some people like sorting hats that fall from the heavens, so this tip is for them.

If the hats don't quite fall fast enough to give you a proper challenge, you could go to the title screen

And hold Down on the control pad and press Start.

Done right, when you start the game, you'll see the word 'TURBO' down in the bottom-right portion of the screen

Forcing you to be on top of your hat-sorting game.

When playing through Episode 3 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, I came across a manual page from one of the games within the game: Limozeen's Hot Babelien Odyssey.

Remembering yesterday's tip, I ran over to my binary to ASCII converter and plugged in the numbers and got:

Which doesn't actually mean a whole lot to me. In fact, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the code, which leads me to believe that it's just a random string of ones and zeroes.

So don't be fooled.

Back when I used to play World of Warcraft I ran through a dungeon called Gnomeregan. In it, I got all these cards with lots of ones and zeroes on them. Ones and zeroes that looked like they might have been encoded secret messages.

So I went to my favorite Binary to ASCII converter and fed it the codes. Here's what I discovered:

White punch card: "Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G"

Yellow punch card: "If you can read this, you're standing too close"

Blue punch card: "The gnome king wears night elf underwear"

Red punch card: "Help! I'm trapped in a binary punch card factory!"

Prismatic punch card: "Message to Castpipe: your laundry's ready for pickup."

These messages add a whole new insight into the fallen Gnome city.