The Bubsy games are a little on the tough side, so you're probably going to want to have all the help you can get going through the levels, right?

Like the second one, for instance. If you go to the title screen

And take Controller One and press:

B, Up, B, Select, y

(which conveniently can be acronymed as 'BUBSY')

And start the game up.

Done right, you should have 50 Bubsys to play with!

Making it way easier to make it through the first few stages, at least.

In several of the Castlevania games you'll find that the developers threw in remixed versions of some songs from prior titles, which is fine, lots of those songs were pretty good.

But occasionally they're a little harder to find than others. Like in Castlevania: Bloodlines.

You have to first go to the Options Screen

And play Song #5 and Sound Effect #073 (and leave those two selected as you exit the screen)

Then, start the game and progress until you get the "4th powerup" for your guy (an orb for John and a book for Eric)

Once you do, you'll be greeted with a song from a classic Castlevania game! But probably not the one you're thinking of. The song that's played is from the opening stage of Castlevania III, titled, shockingly, "Beginning".

Don't have a Genesis and a copy of this game handy? You're in luck! The remix can be downloaded here

If find an arcade cabinet of Pengo (which is going to be kind of tough these days), you might be tempted to play it. And once you do, you're going to notice that in the middle of the playfield are these blocks with diamonds on them

They've got a couple of interesting features: they're indestructible and if you line up all three of them so that they're touching...

The screen freaks out and you get 10,000 points! As an added bonus, all the Sno-Bees in the level are stunned, for a few seconds

Giving you a pretty sweet advantage (even if it is temporary).

The only problem is that in some levels the blocks are placed in such a way that it's virtually impossible to get them lined up, so if that happens, I wouldn't worry about it too much.

It's that time again! Time to discuss the ridiculously convoluted sequence required to play as another of the hidden characters in the arcade version of Marvel vs. Capcom.

First, move your cursor to Zangief and move the joystick in the following directions:

Left, Left, Down, Down, Right, Right, Down, Down, Left, Left, Up, Up, Up, Up, Right, Right, Left, Left, Down, Down, Down, Down, Right, Right, Up, Up, Left, Left, Down, Down, Right, Right, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up

Done right, your cursor should go off the top of the Selection Grid and you'll get to choose the Gold War Machine

You can try to remember the sequence by reducing it to a pattern, which looks something like this

Gold War Machine has a really terrible jump and can't block, so he's a little difficult to get a handle on

But he is pretty strong and has a couple of decent special moves to help him out

Which means he's not really for novices, more like pros...

This is going to sound very similar to something I talked about some time ago, but I assure you, it's totally different.

Totally.

So, you're playing Bad News Baseball and saying to yourself, "Gee, this is great, but I'd like to play with a team of girls rather than a team of guys." And I can understand that. The selection of games featuring women playing competitive sports is, shall we say, lacking.

But!

You totally have the option of changing everyone in Bad News Baseball into women if you perform the following steps:

1. On Controller 1, hold Down + Left
2. On Controller 2, hold Up
3. While holding all of these, turn on your NES (or reset it)

Done right, the mode selection indicator will turn from a baseball

To a heart

And when you start the game, all of the players have female names

And, unlike in Baseball Stars, the players actually look feminine, more or less

At least as much as possible on the limited hardware.

So let's say that you're playing through the G.I. Joe game for the NES and you're getting frustrated at it. But before you give up on it, you want to see the ending sequence for some reason. Maybe to complete your collection of NES game endings.

So you go to the Password screen and put in this password

Which, if you take out the Z's, says "1ST NDG", is kind of like it saying "First Ending"

Which makes it way easier to remember.

But does that mean that there are multiple endings for this game? Well, no, not that I was able to discover.

One of the things that annoyed me about A Boy and His Blob is that when the Boy is running and you let off the control pad, he slides a good eight or nine feet, usually right into Instadeath(tm). It's almost as if his shoes are made out of Crisco and the ground is slightly warmed.

But if you ever get to one of the ledges in the game (and there are lots of ledges in the Deadly Caverns portion of the game), and let got of the Cross Pad he'll slide right off the side of the ledge and be suspended in midair.

Which looks like a glitch at first until you wait a few seconds and the Boy looks over

Then looks down

Realizes he's not on solid ground any more, covers his eyes, and falls down

Or you could use that precious few seconds to try and run back over to the ledge. But this only works if you slid off the ledge. If you run off, the Boy will just fall as normal.

Sure it's a little Wile E. Coyote, but who doesn't like watching that guy fall down, too?

Castlevania 2 is a bit different from the first and the third games in the series, it was more 'RPG' than 'platformer', making it a bit of an oddball. But most of the mechanics stay the same. Like the sub-weapons that you collect. Some of them cost you some Hearts to use (which are also the currency in this game, meaning you throw away money every time you use a sub-weapon) with a few exceptions, like the Holy Water.

The Holy Water costs 0 hearts to use, so you can toss it around as much as you want. What can it do? Well, it can briefly stun enemies (it hurts them, too, but not by a whole lot)

If you enter an 'empty' room or a dead end it can make some blocks disappear

Revealing a hidden passageway or a secret item

And it can be tossed in front of you in the Mansions to see if the floor ahead of you is solid or an illusion. All for free!

Just so long as you don't mind hearing the crash of the bottles every couple of seconds for the whole time you're playing.

Oh, and the other 998 uses? Uh... I don't know, I just always wanted to use that expression.

If you've played the Punch-Out!! games enough, you've probably gotten the basic strategy down of Dodge Punch, Throw Punch. Which is great for most situations, but when you're ready to step up your game you need to master the art of counterpunching.

Throwing a counter-punch is easy... in concept. All you have to do is wait for your opponent to throw a punch

Then counter with the same punch on the same side (i.e. if he throws a Left Jab (your right) you counter with a Right Jab)

Done right he'll be stunned and ripe for a few more punches

So you can unload a little more.

Master this technique and you can shave precious seconds off your KO time in Time Trial mode, which is great, but you can also completely destroy the computer opponents and show off to your friends, which is really what Super Punch-Out!! is all about.

Darkman is another of those games based on a movie that I'll never see. But maybe you saw it and bought the game for some reason, and if so, were probably wondering to yourself, "Boy, I wish there were some way I could pick what level I started on instead of schlepping through the whole game every time."

If that's the case, today's your lucky day!

First, toss in your Darkman cartridge and on the title screen, highlight 'High Score', hold down Right and press the A Button.

Done right, you'll be whisked away to the 'Control Screen'

Enter the password DERMA (which sounds vaguely skin-related... clever, I guess) and you'll have lots more options available

Which means that you can start on any stage that you want!

Which is good for: starting a new game where you left off last time, practicing those annoying Photo Stages, or hitting 'W' and just jumping right to the ending.