At the end of some of the stages in Super Mario Land 2, you get to play a kind of skill crane game where the claw moves left and right over a conveyor belt and you have to time when it tries to grab a thing.

But, if you wait for it to go right and then all the way back to the left once, and press the A button

You'll grab the 3UP every time!

Which is definitely the most useful of the items in there.

In the Gradius series of games (which Life Force is one of), you get these things called Options, which are kind of like little invincible drone ships that follow you everywhere.

But, lose concentration for a moment, and your ship explodes, costing you all your powerups. But you might notice that your Options just kind of slowly drift off to the rear edge of the screen.

Which means all you have to do is to swoop in and grab them, and you can immediately double or triple your firepower again!

Which will come in handy during some of those boss fights.

At the very beginning of Faxanadu, the King gives you some money to start your quest to save everyone.

So you go out, buy some provisions, and get to work. But, if you spend all 1500 of your golds (so you have none left), you can go back to the King and he'll give you some more

Making it real easy to stock up on stuff at the beginning.

Even though you get unlimited continues, Wizards and Warriors 2 is a pretty tough game, mostly because Kuros starts out pretty weak, and the powerups are hidden in pretty obscure places. But, you can give yourself an early advantage.

Just go to the Password Entry screen and put in what I like to call "Q with a bunch of Ks"

Once that's in, you get plopped into the first stage with a shield, a helmet, 10 keys

and a full compliment of spells

Plus, the password is super-easy to remember. How could you go wrong?

The music in Warcraft 3's expansion is pretty good, but play through it a couple of times and you might start to wonder if there's anything else you can listen to.

So you might hit the Enter button to open up the chat console, then you could type the phrase 'TenthLevelTaurenChieftain' (without quotes)

Then once you hit Enter, you'll be treated to a (kinda lengthy) song called 'The Power of the Horde' by a band called (shockingly) 'Tenth Level Tauren Chieftain'.

The song is pretty cheesy, but it's a nice distraction for a few minutes.

In the middle-to-late 80's the 'Spot' in the 7-Up logo became a kind-of popular mascot.

Which, naturally, spawned a couple of video games. A couple of kind-of-tough video games.

But you have a way to tip the scales to your favor, and make one of the slightly less tough.

In the Super NES version, you get a couple of title screens, including this one with the Virgin logo

From here, if you hold down the L and R buttons and press the Select button 30 times (!), you get taken to a Secret Menu

Where you get to try out any of the levels that you want.

Just be aware of 2 things, the option 'Lives' gives you unlimited life, so you can take all the hits you want in a level, and the 'Press Start to Begin' message means that you'll leave the screen and start the game proper. You'll want to press Select to try out the stages.

In Final Fantasy 6 (released on the Super NES as Final Fantasy 3), elixirs are handy because they fully restore a character's HP and MP.

But, they're kind of hard to come by, especially at the beginning of the game, when resources are limited.

So let's turn our attention to the clocks that litter the game. If you find one, walk up to it

and "check" it with the A button.

The result? One free elixir!

Now, this doesn't work on every clock in the game, but it does work on most of them. So make sure you check them all out when you see them.

Rockin' Kats isn't really that tough, but it does have its moments that are slightly frustrating.

But you can give yourself an advantage.

Any time you want, you can pause the game

Then hold Down on the control pad + A + B, and while holding those, press Start to unpause. Done right, you'll be rewarded

With six lives and a full life meter!

I was able to do this a half-dozen times in the course of the stage, so you can go nuts doing it as often as you like.

Just be aware that if you have more than six lives, they'll roll back to six when you do this trick.

But odds are that won't bother you too much.

Like a lot of shooting games, Super R-Type hates you. And that means that you'll be seeing this a lot.

So, if you want to see the later stages, you either have to spend some time practicing or...

You could go to the Difficulty Select Screen

Hold down the R button and press Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up, Up. Done right you'll hear a confirmation sound.

Then, start the game, and pause. While paused press Select, R, and A all at the same time. If you're successful, you'll see a number appear in the lower-left corner.

Letting you select whichever level you want.

Just be aware that levels 00-07 are the Easy difficulty and 11-17 are the same levels on Normal difficulty.

Also, good luck!

In Mega Man 9, you have to do a bit of collecting. Mostly these Bolts that you use as a kind of currency to buy upgrades to make the game slightly easier. But collecting them is a pain, since they're kind of rare.

But you can tip the scales to your advantage (slightly).

First, you have to have completed Jewel Man's stage, so you have the Jewel Satellite.

Then go to Concrete Man's stage and stand right here (it's pretty close to the beginning), face left, and activate the Satellite

Now, birds will fly by and drop boulders which will break on the upper platform, and a chunk will fall into your shield. If a goodie falls out, it'll drop right on you for collection!

You'll get all kinds of drops here, and it just keeps going for as long as you want to stand around.

So how long you should stand there really just depends on how much stuff you want.