Mickey Mousecapade is a pretty short and relatively easy game, punctuated by unusually tough boss fights. The final one in particular is maddeningly tough.

Unless you know how to beat her with hardly any effort, which I do.

Okay, first, make your way to the last room of the last level (make sure you have the key first, otherwise that door won't open)

Next, shoot approximately the area that I've circled

There's a hidden thing there, it could be an enemy that steals Minnie away, but there's an equally good chance that it's an invincibility fairy.

Once you get it, just hold Right. Your fairy will start to leave as soon as you get into the boss room.

But as long as she's still on the screen, you're still invulnerable, so walk right into the boss before your fairy makes it off the screen.

And you win! Without shooting anything or taking any damage.

Pretty snazzy.

In the original Super Mario Bros, if you get to Bowser while you're Super or Fiery, and you time it so that you hit the axe and Bowser at the same time, you'll hear the noise like you've gotten hit and shrunk, but you stay Super Sized.

Then, the next powerup block you hit will contain a mushroom, even though you already are Super. Collect it, and Mario turns small.

The next powerup block after that will have a fireflower in it (assuming you didn't get hit).

Collect that and Mario will turn Fiery, even though he's still small.

Shooting a fireball will make Mario's torso briefly turn big, but his feet will stay small if he's moving, which looks kind of silly.

A drawback to this is that you can't break any blocks while in this small-yet-fiery state. You'll have to get hit to revert back to Super Mario to do that. And if you get hit while Super, you lose a life.

But then the glitch resets itself, so you'll have to do it again should you want to.

If you're on the Internet long enough, you'll eventually come across this guy, Strong Bad:

He's part of a kind of popular web site.

Now, armed with that information, you could throw in a copy of Tag Team Wrestling for the NES and take a closer look at the teams.

Anyone look familiar?

How 'bout now?

Similar name, similar attire... I think we might have found where the inspiration for his design lies.

The NES version of Kid Niki has secret rooms all over the place. They're pretty well hidden, though, and I probably wouldn't have found them without the help of an old tips and tricks video I got a long time ago.

Like this one on the first stage.

Make your way to 1-9 and position yourself like so:

Then duck for a bit. Maybe hit the B button a few times to spin your sword around.

After a few seconds (and usually right after pressing B a couple of times) you'll be transported to a secret room!

Unfortunately, there's not a lot in this one

But there are a few others later on that have lots of bonuses, which we'll talk about another day.

Gradius 3 is a whole lot like the first Gradius game. So you might think that you can use the old Konami Code to get a munitions boost like you did in the earlier game. So you pause the game, put in the code

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

and notice how you get all the powerups, just like before, only when you unpause the game:

Your ship explodes!

Harsh.

I guess it's kind of an acknowledgment of the old code or something.

But, you can slightly modify the code. Instead of pressing Left and Right on the control pad, you can press the L and R shoulder buttons on the controller.

Up, Up, Down, Down, L, R, L, R, B, A

Which will have a similar effect as the original code did for the original game.

And, just like the original code, you can only do it once per credit, so choose wisely.

Gradius is pretty tough, mostly because your ship can only take one hit before it explodes. You can collect these orangey powerup things, though, and make your ship more maneuverable, get extra firepower, and get some shielding up.

But there's an easier way.

Just pause the game anywhere

Then put in the Konami Code:

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

Then unpause the game and you'll have some speed powerups, some Options (those orange things following you around), missiles, and a shield.

Just make sure you don't lose once you put the code in, since you can only do it once per game.

You might think that 3D Worldrunner is called '3D Worldrunner' because the worlds that the Worldrunner runs on are presented in a pseudo-3D.

But you'd only be partially right.

If you press the select button, you'll notice that the screen kind of freaks out and displays most of the game in red:

and Blue

It's what's known as a 3D Anaglyph. If you have those funky glasses with the film for the lenses, you'll see the images in glorious 3D!

Well, kind of. The 3D isn't really all that good in this game, but, hey, they tried.

In Deja Vu, you play an amnesiac detective who's been framed for murder. You have to clear your name and implicate the bad guys. You do this by going around the city and searching for clues, both real and planted.

Eventually, you have to go to the police with what you find to clear your name. But if you have any incriminating evidence against you, you go to jail.

So, you have to get rid of the incriminating evidence. You do this by going down to the sewer.

You can throw anything you want into the waters down here and it'll disappear forever. So all you have to do is throw away the stuff that incriminates you and you're home-free.

How do you know what you should throw in?

Easy, just throw everything you have in. Your character is a good enough detective that he won't let you toss anything that you'll need to clear up the mess. So just throw in everything you can, walk to the police station, and win the game.

You'll probably want to wait until you've gathered all the evidence first, though. Otherwise you might get stuck.

These creepy things are Bling Gnomes:

They have two purposes in life: to pick up the gold that drops from enemies that you kill, and to convert unwanted items into gold. They do the latter by doing a little dance and anything on the ground of a certain quality or lower will disappear and the gnome will defecate a stack of gold coins.

No, really.

But, he has a little quirk... well, several, but we're only going to talk about one today.

You can't use your little gnome friend to clear out your inventory on the middle of a dungeon run.

Anything that's been in your inventory, or that you tried to pick up, but wouldn't fit in your backpack and then dropped back on the ground he won't consume. I don't really know why, maybe your hands are dirty?

Any of those items that you've sullied with your contact have to be lugged back to town to sell, so you have to decide if you want them before picking them up.

There's no way around it, Battletoads is a tough game. Those three lives you get at the beginning of the game start to look insufficient pretty early on.

But, you can give yourself a slight edge.

At the 'press start' screen you can hold Down on the control pad + A + B and press Start. Then you'll have five Toads at your disposal instead of three.

And, yeah, this works for the Super NES version also.