In the main Pokémon games you capture and train creatures to build your ultimate fighting team, and when certain conditions are met, they change into more powerful forms, called 'evolution' in-game.

A few have the rather unusual condition that you have to find someone to trade them with, and as a result of the trading process they will evolve into their more powerful forms.

So, you had to track down someone who had a copy of the game and negotiate a trade where you likely traded monsters, let them evolve, and then traded back so you could have your original creature, now powered up.

But! There's a better way!

Pokémon Diamond and Pearl have introduced the ability to trade over the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. You put up something and what you'll take for it and then wait for someone else to take your offer, kind of like a Pokémon trading post. If what you put up there doesn't get taken, then you can withdraw your request and try again.

But! What if you put up one of the Pokémon that evolve via trading? Then request something that's impossible to get via normal means (such as a Level 1 Blastoise) to ensure that nobody will actually be able to trade with you? Then immediately take your original Pokémon back?

It evolves! Just like you had traded it with someone.

And you have, sort of. You've traded with yourself.

In Galaga you have these enemy bugs that take two hits to destroy.

They're the only ones in the game with a tertiary attack, instead of shooting or running into you, they can fire a tractor beam.

If they hit you with the beam, they'll capture your ship, and then attack you with it, it's dirty pool.

But!

If you can shoot down the enemy bug without damaging your ship, then you get yours back, and it's grafted onto your ship, doubling your firepower.

The downside is that now you're a much bigger target, and have two of your ships in play at the same time.

Is the tradeoff worth it? You'll have to decide that.

Just make sure that you don't let your last ship get tractored. That's a pretty lame way to lose the game.

In the Super NES Mario Paint, you have three pens to work with, each a varying thickness.

But sometimes you just need something a little finer, for detail work.

In that case, you go into the Stamp Editor and create a stamp that's a single pixel of whatever color pen you need.

Then save, exit, and go back to drawing.

You then select the Stamp tool and pick your newly created stamp and drag it around like it's a pen. The result?

Extra fine lines!

Which artists tell me is a Good Thing(tm), so I believe them.

If you play Super Mario Kart enough, you're going to get better, that's pretty much a given. But, what if you get so good at the game that you have nothing left to do? Nothing left to unlock, and the game's just not challenging any more?

Well, you could go to your driver select screen

Then hold Y and press A

Your driver shrinks! Just like he hit a poison mushroom or was hit by lightning. Start the race and:

You retain shrinky status, which means that not only is your top speed lower, but if you get hit by another kart you get flattened and immobilized for a few seconds

You can temporarily cancel the effects by grabbing a poison mushroom, but you'll shrink again when it wears off

How's that for a challenge?

Super Mario World stages are just full of alternate exits, all of which you'll have to find if you want to achieve full completion. (There are 96 exits total to find).

One of them is particularly useful, it leads to something called the Top Secret Area.

Start out by making your way to the Donut Ghost House while you have a Cape

Immediately fly up and toward the left

Follow the path to the right and down toward the door. There's only one way to go. You can grab the 1ups if you want.

Break the tape at the end of the stage and a new path will open to the North of the Ghost House, the Top Secret Area!

This is a really nice little stage. There's a Yoshi and four powerup blocks (two feathers and two fire flowers)

Letting you get prepared for any stage that might be coming up.

And it all resets once you leave, letting you collect everything again.

Take a look at this screen shot from Pac-Man.

Specifically look up at the pink monster, you'll notice that its eyes (which indicate which direction it's moving) are angled down when it's not quite to the intersection yet. Now, take a closer look at the game boundaries.

The boundaries are rounded, which might just seem like an aesthetic choice on the part of the designers, but it's also a tool you can use. Taking a cue from the monsters you should try to press the direction you want to go before you get to the intersections. That way you can round the corner a fraction of a second faster than you would if you waited until you were in the middle of the intersection.

And in those higher levels, a fraction of a second can mean the difference between clearing the maze and putting in another quarter to start over from the beginning.

In the NES Punch-Out!! the password entry allows for some interesting hidden tidbits.

Take this set of numbers for example:

Put that code in and the game gives you a busy signal.

Why?

Apparently that used to be Nintendo's Customer Service number, which was notorious for being difficult to get through.

What fun!

Some of the bosses (and some of the regular characters for that matter) can be a real pain in Mickey Mousecapade, but with a little prep they're pushovers.

In the very first stage, you're going to want to take the time to get the second Star, which goes to Minnie.

Then, carefully using ladders you can actually get the two mice separated

And, since Minnie's invulnerable, you can use her to attack enemies while Mickey hangs out at a safe distance

And if you didn't bother getting that star at the beginning, well then you're out of luck.

At the end of each stage in Super Mario Bros. you get 50 points for each unit of time that you have left on the clock when you finish a stage.

But, let's say that you go to your favorite X-4 stage (the big castles)

You make your way to Bowser and bide your time a little bit (this works best if you're fiery and can get him out of the way)

And then hit the axe then the timer hits 000 seconds.

The result? When you visit the mushroom retainer the clock starts counting down from 999 time units back down to zero.

Giving you 49950 points instead of whatever amount you would have had, had you just gone for it.

And this trick is arcade only, I'm afraid.

Back to the Future 2 and 3 are decent movies, but the NES video game is completely bizarre.

In the Back to the Future 2 part, you have to guide Marty around 1985, 1955, and 2015 to find secret rooms, then clear out all the stuff in said rooms to get key items, then put the key items in other secret rooms all to get access to the second half of the game, Back to the Future 3.

And, assuming you did all of that, you get to go to Back to the Future 3 to do it all again.

But! What if you go to the title screen.

Hold down the B button and press Select

You get a scrambled password screen!

Rearrange the letters like so:

And you'll be able to jump right to the Back to the Future 3 part, which is a little bit shorter, and features Marty wearing a cowboy hat.

Fun times!