In the classic Castlevania games, you get the very useful sub-weapons. You can only throw one at a time until you find the Double-Shot and the Triple-Shot powerups, which let you throw two and three of them at a time (obviously).

But, aside from certain blocks that always have shot upgrades, finding them is pretty random, right?

Wrong!

You can make the Shot powerups appear simply by using your sub-weapon to hit things.

You can hit candles, enemies, whatever, as long as you actually hit something. Hit about ten somethings and you'll make the Double-Shot appear

Hit about ten more for the triple shot.

Just make sure you actually hit things, if you just throw your sub-weapons off a cliff, you won't accomplish anything other than wasting Hearts.

Part of the fun of the Mega Man games is getting the special weapons from the rogue robots and then finding out which weapon does the most damage to each one. Mega Man 2 takes that to the extreme.

Toward the end of the game you have to fight all of the Robot Masters again, even though you've already beaten them once. And that means that you could use their own weapons against them. This doesn't usually do a whole lot... until you get to Metal Man.

Once the battle starts, throw one of his own Metal Blades back at him.

If it connects, BOOM!

Easiest fight in the whole game! Heck, easiest fight in the whole series!

Which is a pretty big reprieve after you've battled your way this far into the game.

This one's a little more advanced, but nontheless very important if you want to be any good at the Street Fighter games.

The idea is to do one move, and before the animation completes, you do another move for Big Damage(tm). The easiest way to show this is with Ken. You want to lead off with a Strong Punch, then immediately press Forward, Down, Down-Forward + Strong Punch. If you do it fast enough (and it does take quick fingers) then you'll hit once with the punch, and then three times with your Dragon Punch for a four-hit combo!

Which is kind of tough to see in static picture form, so I've made an animated .gif you can check out here(2.3 MB, watch out, dial-up users!).

There are lots of moves that can be canceled like this, way too many to list here, so have fun finding them!

Oh, and this also works for Street Fighter IV.

If you're inexperienced at it, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a tough game, made worse by the fact that after you lose your meager 5 lives all the progress you made in each World is negated, and you have to do it over again.

So, like a lot of games, it's very helpful to throw more lives at the problem.

My favorite spot to do that is in World 3-9.

First, stomp on the Koopa Paratroopa and grab its shell.

Then run over to the right, being very careful not to hit the Goomba or the Bob-Omb that's hiding over there. Make your way to the Bullet Bill cannon and kick the shell over to the other side of it.

Then quickly make your way to the platform above.

And wait.

Bullet Bills will continuously be fired from both of the cannons, and the ricocheting shell will take out each one.

Until eventually

1UPs! And you can stand there in safety until the time runs out, which will cost you one life, but you've got plenty to burn at this point.

And, if you're playing a two-player game, it's good form to allow the second player the chance to do this trick also, so that you both have a ton of lives to play around with.

The New Tetris is one of the many, many versions of Tetris to have been released that just barely tweaks the basic formula. This one introduces the concept of Squares.

As you're playing this game, you're going to want to create 4x4 squares of blocks. You can do this by using different pieces, which will yield a silver Multisquare

Or you can do it with all of the same shape piece, which will yield a gold Monosquare

Now, why would you want to do such a thing?

Every line that you clear that includes one of these squares will give you Bonus Lines. And since Lines is the only way to keep track of what your score is, that becomes fairly important fairly quickly to get one of those really high scores.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is a Role-Playing game for beginners, so most of the game is a pushover. But when you get to the last boss, the game ramps up the difficulty significantly.

Spoilers continue below this line

The second RC Pro-Am game is a little bit more in-depth than the first one. You still have to race radio-controlled cars around a series of tracks, but this time you get prize money to purchase upgrades for your vehicle.

And just like real life, you start out with zero dollars and have to work your way up from there...

Unless...

On the Name Entry screen if you put your initials in as "NES"

You start the game with a few extra dollars in your pocket, $5,000 to be exact

So you can immediately buy some upgrades to give yourself an early advantage.

And who doesn't love free money?

Mendel Palace is an odd little game. You have to manipulate the tiles on the floor around in such a way that you slide the enemies into the walls.

But, what if you've played the original set of levels to death and want a different challenge?

You could hold Start and Select and then press Reset on your console. You might then notice that the title screen is a little bit different.

You now have some more levels to challenge your tile-sliding fingers, known as the Extra Stages by... well, just me, really.

But no matter what you call them, they start out slightly tougher than the main game does, so good luck!

If you're playing any one of the remakes of Super Mario Bros. 2, then you know that occasionally a powerup, like a heart or a Starman, will appear, completely at random.

But, did you know that it's not completely random? Heck, it's not even partially random. Those powerups appear based on your actions.

Like if you kill five enemies, you'll make a heart appear to replenish one dot on your life meter.

Likewise, if you collect five cherries, a Starman will appear, which will make you temporarily invincible when you collect it.

And pulling five fully-grown vegetables out of the ground (the ones with the face on them) will get you a stopwatch.

Which will freeze everything in place for a few seconds.

And since everything resets when you go in the nearest door, you can totally manipulate the game to your advantage, so go to it!

The NES Duck Hunt is a staple of the system. It and Super Mario Bros. was bundled with a ton of the systems, mostly to show off the Zapper.

There's not much to it, either, dog jumps into field, flushes out ducks, and you have to shoot them down.

But! According to manual (which you probably won't have access to at this point in the game's life), a second player can join in the fun.

Just plug in a controller along with the Zapper, and a second player can control the directions that the Ducks fly.

And unlike some other games, this actually works.