Playing Super Puzzle Fighter and tired of playing as Dan (or one of the regular characters)?

Well, then I've got a present for you!

Start the game as Player 1

Then, hold down the Start button and press Down, Left, Down, Left, Down, Left, Down, and then press and hold Left on the Joystick (while still holding Start, remember). While holding all these down, press one of the Action Buttons to select Morrigan. Done right, she'll turn into Akuma!

Who cuts a much more imposing profile.

And should make the game a little more fun.

You remember Karnov, right? The muscular fire-breathing circus strongman? He has his very own NES game, and it's actually pretty tough. Tough enough that if you make any kind of progress that you might not want to turn off your NES when you're done because you'll have to start over from Stage 1 if you do.

Or do you?

If you go to the title screen

And on Controller 1 hold Right + Select + A + B, and while holding all those down, press A on Controller 2 one time for each stage you want to skip, and while still holding down all those buttons on Controller 1, hit Start on Controller 1 (you might want to enlist the help of another hand or a foot).

Done right, you'll be whisked away to the stage of your choice

The only problem is that you won't have the benefit of having collected the items scattered around the levels that you skipped, but that's a small price to pay, right?

You might remember some time ago that I covered a method for continuing in Super Mario Bros. But would you believe that this works or other games, too? Because it totally does.

Like Kung-Fu Heroes.

Get the Game Over screen (and you will, trust me)

Head back to the title screen

Hold A and press Start, and wham!

Back to where you were to try again!

Which is much faster than trying to work your way through the beginning stages again.

I'm pretty sure you all know about the 'All Your Base' thing. It's old and played out at this point, so I'm really not going to get too far into it here.

So I'd like to draw your attention to another game that I might not have the chops to become the next 'All Your Base', but is still loaded with weird typos and mistranslations:

Beast Wrestler is a game about big ol' monsters that you have to make wrestle each other in some kind of bizarro wrestling match. The hook, I guess, is that at certain points you can take monsters that you've defeated and combine them with your current monster to make one that is possibly stronger than before. In fact, the game can explain it better than I can:

Which seems pretty straightforward... until your monster sustains heavy damage, that is

Then you're taken to my favorite typo in the whole game

A screen where they have misspelled the word 'two'.

I still crack a grin every time.

Play James Bond Jr. long enough and you'll eventually see this screen.

It would be pretty awesome if there were some way to put off seeing that screen for as long as possible, right?

And there totally is!

If you go to the passcode screen and enter this code:

The timer will go up to 99:99 and your bullets will be maxed out!

Which should go a long way toward delaying that screen from appearing.

If you've never played Rival Turf!, it's kind of like Final Fight, you run around various cities across the country beating up wave after wave of identical twins.

And just like lots of other games, if you end up running out of lives and continues, you have to start over. But if your score is high enough, you get to enter your name in the High Score Table. If you pretend for a moment that your name is 'CHRCONF'

And then hit 'EX', you'll be taken to a secret screen

Where you get to change the names of all the characters in the game. There aren't any restrictions that I could find, so go nuts

And that should make having to repeat the first few stages a little less tedious

You remember the ol' Konami Code, right? In case you've forgotten, it's:

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

And it's used in lots of Konami-branded games.

Like the arcade game compilation Konami Collector's Series: Arcade Advanced, which has five old-school arcade games for you to test your mettle in. Complete with original graphics and sound!

But, go to the title screen of your favorite game and put in The Code and you'll hear a sound

And when you start the game, behold!

Better Graphics for you! And this works for all the games in the compilation.

Except for Rush 'n Attack, the graphics stay the same, but you get more lives to play with

Which is probably more useful in that game anyway.

I have to preface today's tip with a serious warning: Do not try this at home! Seriously, doing this glitch can corrupt your save game, costing you hours upon hours of work, or worse. I'm doing it here so you don't have to.

To find the mysterious Glitch Pokémon MissingNo (or possibly 'M), perform the following steps. You'll need to be pretty far into the game (at least far as Cinnabar Island)

1. Start in Viridian City. Find the guy that offered to teach you how to catch Pokémon

2. Take him up on his offer and watch the show

3. When he's done, immediately Fly to Cinnabar Island (yes, I know the picture says Fuchsia City, don't worry about that)

4. And begin Surfing up and down on the thin strip of terrain where the water and the land meet (remember, even encountering this thing can cause some game hiccups, don't do it)

5. Eventually a battle will start, and the Pokémon is a glitchy mass of pixels with a 'M in its name or MissingNO. It's level 0, so it shouldn't be much of a challenge to capture or defeat (extra warning catching it causes lots of glitchy and unpredictable behavior, don't do it)

6. As an added bit of fun, if you fought 'M, like I did here, the sixth item in your inventory will have inexplicably multiplied to an amount so big, that the numbers glitch out trying to display it (around 128)

If MissingNo or 'M is caught, glitches will happen (in fact, just encountering 'M will make weird things happen). But, like I said, this can have disastrous effects on your saved game, whether you save it or not.

Knight Rider is an OK game, but not one that I was ever very good at. So, I got to see this thing a lot.

After failing to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do in the game a few times, I just hold down the Select button on controller 1 and hit the Reset button on my NES

Then, the ending starts to play

Just be aware that it's one of the lamest, most unsatisfying endings you'll ever see. Which looks to be a pretty big letdown if you earned it the hard way.

Let's say that you're playing Bionic Commando. You go through Area 13 and get the intel that you need to take Flares into Area 4 so you can see.

Then you get to Area 4 and then either forget or are uncoordinated enough that you go in without them. What do you do?

Well, you could try to play the stage in the dark, but trust me, that's virtually impossible to do successfully. Or you jump into a spike-filled pit to sacrifice all your lives, then continue (if you have any) and try again. But there's a more elegant way.

Hold down the A + B buttons

And press the Start button.

Done right, you'll be taken back to the map screen!

Ready to try the stage again!