I guess Donkey Kong Country sold well enough that there was room for a couple of sequels, sequels that don't really even have much Donkey Kong in them for whatever reason.

But say you're playing the second one, and you go to the screen where you select if you want one player or two. You keep pressing the Down button on the control pad over and over again and eventually will be greeted with a Music Test

Keep on pressing it and you'll be greeted with the Cheat Mode selection

With that highlighted, press

Which kind of spells out "YA SAD LAD". Done right, you'll hear a monkey holler.

Get into the game, and you'll find that you have 50 lives to play with!

And they're all over the place at the beginning of the game, so you can really stock up for the difficult bits ahead.

For most of you that work a traditional 5-day work week, your motivation can roughly be summed up by this graph.

So at about 4:00 on Friday (or whatever your equivalent of a Friday is), unless your building has caught fire, you're probably not going to get a whole lot done.

Now, your may remember that on April 1st of this year, Google replaced their logo with an interactive version of Pac-Man.

What does this have to do with 4:00 on Fridays?

Well, it happens that the logo-thing was so popular that Google made it accessible all year round. And that means that you can play a quick round of Pac-Man, legally, in your browser here.

Just don't tell the boss!

Casino Kid is one of those games where you have to take a paltry sum and gamble your way to a fortune.

I'm real bad at that, so I prefer to start with a fortune and then gamble my way down to peanuts. To do that in this game, I go to the Password screen

And tell the game that "I AM A RICHMAN" (using "FORWARD" for the spaces).

Then highlight END and hold down Start + A Button until the game starts.

The result?

I start out with $100,000 instead of $500

Which means that it takes me much longer to lose my shirt.

Bonus!

Chip's Challenge, if you've never heard of the game somehow, was packed in with a lot of computers during the 16-bit Windows heyday. It developed a kind of a strong following somehow. I stars you, as Chip, who has to run around a series of levels avoiding enemies, collecting things, and searching for the exit.

But let's say that you're playing a level and you get stuck or lazy or both. You could hold down the left CTRL + ALT buttons and type the (faux) word "QWERTY".

Done right, you'll now be able to hit CTRL + N to go to the next level!

You can only skip the first 144(!) levels this way, number 145 wants a password (which is pretty easy to find online) or you could try to finish the level to see the credits. After that, you can CTRL + N your way through the end of the game.

Making the thing last just a couple of minutes.

You're familiar with the haiku, right? A short poem where the lines have specific numbers of syllables (5, 7, and 5)?

So let's presume that you're playing through Opposing Force. You bring up the Console by hitting the "`" key (it's the same key as the "~", but without the Shift). Then you type the word "haiku" (without quotes, of course). Hit Esc to be taken back to the game and be treated to a short poem that probably won't make much sense

And you can repeat for more

You have to read fast, though, because they fade out very quickly.

It's kind of hard for me to believe that in October of 2008 I started this site with little more than a screenshot and a terrible meme. And now, just shy of two years later, we're up to 500 genuine tips, tricks, and codes.

Amazing.

So, to celebrate, I started up my copy of Bookworm Adventures Deluxe and typed the word "celebrate" (without quotes) to make Lex don a party hat and set off some fireworks.

How fun!

In Block 6 of Castlevania IV, you eventually come across a hallway where these chandeliers fall and try to crush you.

But, you'll notice that there's one archway that doesn't have one. Hit the ground there with your whip to reveal a secret staircase!

Where you'll find a ghost walking around with his ghost-dog

And if you kill off the dog

The Ghost will fall to his knees and begin to cry

Which is kind of sad, really.

But then you get to load up on powerups, which makes it OK.

Mega Man 7 is a pretty decent game, even though it expands the universe quite a bit and adds a bunch of new characters to the mix (other than the obligatory Robot Masters), like Bass, who antagonizes Mega Man throughout the game. But what if you wanted to arrange a one on one fight between Bass and Mega Man?

Well, hold on to your hat.

First, go to the Password Entry and put in this password:

But! Instead of just hitting Start to continue on, hold L + R, and then press Start. Done right, you'll be taken to the Character Select Screen

Where you can set up battles in any combination of Mega Man vs. Bass that you want

The guys are missing some of their moves, they can't slide or have more than one shot on the screen at a time, so the battles are slow and plodding. But hey, both guys are that way, so it's pretty even.

Best 2 out of 3 wins!

A while back I busted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles strategy myth, but I'm pretty sure I know what the guide was talking about.

When you finally do encounter Rocksteady at the end of Level 1, there are these crates on the right side of the screen. Jump up to the top of those and switch your Turtle to Donatello.

Rocksteady will run to the right, get stuck on the crates, and try to jump up at you. Donatello's Bo is the only thing that can reach him when he does that

But you're safely out of the way of any harm, making this battle much easier (though it really isn't that hard to start with).

In Super Mario Bros. 3, you find these multicolored blocks everywhere that look like they're part of the background, but play it long enough and you'll discover that the White ones have special powers: Jump on one and duck for a few seconds and you'll go into the background of the stage, behind the scenery. This is important for getting the warp whistle at the end of Stage 1-3.

But, it's important to note that other blocks in the game have the same effect.

For example: Make your way to Stage 5-7 and go down the first pipe which will take you down to ground level.

At the end of this section will be a White Block. Duck on it and (quickly) jump up and go through the pipe back to the clouds. Done quickly enough, you'll still be in the "background" and completely untouchable by enemies!

But you can totally hit them, so it's a one-way street.

Just be aware that this wears off as soon as you enter the pipe at the end of the stage, so enjoy it while it lasts!