The How To Win at Nintendo Games series was indispensable to me for a long time. Mostly because for $4 I could get a guide to a couple dozen video games, written out in fantastic detail. This saved me a few hundred dollars on cartridges and let me vicariously experience some games that I might not otherwise have gotten to. They're kind of like a dead-tree edition of GameFAQs before there was a GameFAQs.

This week, I'm going to take a look at the How To Win At Nintendo Games series and some of the other series of these hint books and pull out some of the tips, tricks, and strategies that just don't sound right for one reason or another and verify their accuracy.

On page 127 How To Win At Nintendo Games #3 you see this nugget in the Mega Man 2 chapter:

[Heat Man] is most susceptible to the Air Shooter (which you've already collected, right?).

So, I tested it by collecting the Air Shooter, going to Heat Man's stage and facing off with him.

Hitting him with the Air Shooter is kind of tough, but if you do, you damage him slightly. Here's his energy meter after one shot.

I tried out some of the other weapons on him and when I got to the Bubble Lead, one shot did this much damage to his energy meter

and three shots did him in.

So, I'd have to say that Heat Man is most susceptible to the Bubble Lead. Sorry, Jeff.

Make it far enough in Super Castlevania IV and you'll see this stage, affectionately known as 'the treasury' by some... well, by me anyway.

Along the way through the stage, you see these treasure chests pretty much everywhere.

What might not be immediately obvious is that each one contains a hidden porkchop, you just have to work real hard for it.

Pick any chest you like, and then jump on it 255 times. Yes, two hundred fifty five times. Then, a large pork chop will appear right over your head!

The problem is that it takes so much time to pull this off that you eat up a lot of time on the old clock, so you probably don't want to do it unless you're in the direst of straits. You also might consider not doing it on the chest that I did, you're probably going to want your food to appear in a place where you can actually collect it.

You've very likely heard about Tetris, so I won't bother explaining how it works to you.

One of the things that you'll notice, though, is that over on the right side of the screen there's a preview of what piece is coming next, which is very useful information.

However, by just pressing the Select button you can make that box clear.

Supposedly this is to make the game more challenging. Which it does, but only by destroying some of the strategy, so I'm not really sure why you'd want to do it. You can press Select button again to make the piece reappear.

This also works in the original Game Boy version.

The original Metroid game is pretty tough. You have to take your bounty hunter through the bowels of a planet to find powerups and defeat the Metroids that lie within.

But the problem is that you start out super-weak, which means that you're going to be seeing this a lot

Though you do get passwords to help maintain your progress. And just like Kid Icarus, you can put in some really easy to remember passwords for some neat effects.

For example, try putting in this password:

Is Justin Bailey a real person or is this just a quirk of the password system? I have no idea, but it's a very useful password either way.

Then you start with Samus's suit off, the Wave Beam, five energy tanks, 255 missiles (which is more than you are normally allowed to carry, it rolls back to 205 if you pick any up), and both minibosses defeated. The only thing left to do is go find the ice beam and then fight the last boss.

Plus it's super-easy to remember, which is also a plus.

The Adventures of Lolo is a game where you have to take your guy through a series of rooms in a tower to rescue his girlfriend. Each room is a puzzle that must be solved to proceed, get it wrong and

You dead.

But you get a password that keeps your place, so you can try the room you failed in over and over again until you succeed.

But what happens if you get stuck, really stuck?

Well, take a look at this sample of the level codes for the game:

Notice anything? Several of the codes are the same, they just have the 2nd and 4th letters swapped. So, you might want to go back and play with some of the codes you already have. Swapping some letters around might let you skip ahead. Although the puzzle's going to be harder, so good luck with it!

And, just for your reference, here's a list of all of the correlations (with all the codes removed, can't make it too easy for you... yet)

Level 1-2 < - > Level 3-3
Level 1-3 < - > Level 3-2
Level 1-4 < - > Level 3-1
Level 1-5 < - > Level 2-5
Level 2-1 < - > Level 2-4
Level 2-2 < - > Level 2-3
Level 3-5 < - > Level 4-1
Level 4-2 < - > Level 6-5
Level 4-3 < - > Level 6-4
Level 4-4 < - > Level 6-3
Level 4-5 < - > Level 6-2
Level 5-1 < - > Level 6-1
Level 5-2 < - > Level 5-5
Level 5-3 < - > Level 5-4
Level 7-1 < - > Level 7-2
Level 7-3 < - > Level 10-1
Level 7-4 < - > Level 9-5
Level 7-5 < - > Level 9-4
Level 8-1 < - > Level 9-3
Level 8-2 < - > Level 9-2
Level 8-3 < - > Level 9-1
Level 8-4 < - > Level 8-5
Level 10-2 < - > Level 10-3

You'll notice that this trick stops working after you hit 10-3. You're just going to have to tough it out through the end of the game, I'm afraid.

Blaster Master can be kind of a tough game. You have to take your little guy up against great big monsters that are way more nimble and way stronger than you are. But you have a secret weapon at your disposal: the Pause Button.

Make your way to the boss of area 2, 4, 6, or 7 (one of the frogs or one of the crabby things) and start chucking grenades at it. A successful hit will make it flash. Then, while it's taking damage, pause the game.

While the game's paused, the boss monster will continually take damage. Leave the game paused for about 30 seconds or so and you win! Pretty awesome!

Just be aware that this works both ways. If you're getting hurt when you pause the game, you'll keep taking damage until you unpause. And then you'll have to do the whole battle over again.

Mario Paint is chock full of stuff to play around with. Even the title screen can keep you occupied for a while.

Just click on all the letters for different effects:

Click on the "P", though, and you get this tranquil scene.

Each thing wandering around on the screen has a different sound associated with them, none of them too exciting, but all of them kind of silly. Occasionally, though, you see a star fly by.

It's real hard to click on, because it moves so fast. I have the best luck if I position the pointer on its path ahead of time (it goes the same way every time), and then click as the star passes underneath. What happens if you do?

Stuff starts raining down from the sky and some kind of harp-like music starts to play.

And now you know what the star does, lucky you.

The Super NES version of Lemmings is pretty much like every other version of Lemmings. You have to make your lemmings get to the exit of the stages instead of dying a grisly death.

But take a look at the title screen.

What if you hold down Select and then press Start instead of just pressing regular Start?

Why, you get options! You can change your controller configuration, and

You can listen to the various musical pieces from throughout the game. Which doesn't sound like much, but you get to listen to a silly version of a Cancan song, so that's something, right?

Kid Icarus holds a special place in a lot of people's hearts for some reason.

But it's a pretty unforgiving game, especially at the beginning. Take one wrong step and:

I've never actually managed to make it too far without resorting to putting in cheats. Like this one:

Once you put that one in, you're given all of the treasures that you normally spend the majority of the game getting

And you get transported to the final stage with unlimited life. You can't lose!

Unless you're playing this on the Wii Virtual Console. This secret password doesn't work on that version of the game. Just on the original NES, I'm afraid.

In Super Metroid, you slowly get all these abilities to trick out your bounty hunter's abilities as she hunts down and destroys space pirates and energy-sucking globs of goo.

One of the hallmarks of the series is that there are little prizes hidden in all kinds of nooks and crannies that are steadily more accessible as you find more and more goodies.

One of the things you find early on is the morph ball.

And bombs that you can use when rolled in a ball.

The bombs have the added effect that they bump you slightly up (or slightly to the side if you're not directly on top of them).

Now, it's tough to get the timing right, but if you set a bomb so that you bounce up a little, and then set another in such a way that it explodes right before you fall all the way back down, then you bounce a little bit higher.

Keep on placing bombs and bouncing up higher until you get to someplace that you maybe weren't supposed to be yet. Who knows what you might find.