At the end of each stage in Super Mario Bros. you get 50 points for each unit of time that you have left on the clock when you finish a stage.

But, let's say that you go to your favorite X-4 stage (the big castles)

You make your way to Bowser and bide your time a little bit (this works best if you're fiery and can get him out of the way)

And then hit the axe then the timer hits 000 seconds.

The result? When you visit the mushroom retainer the clock starts counting down from 999 time units back down to zero.

Giving you 49950 points instead of whatever amount you would have had, had you just gone for it.

And this trick is arcade only, I'm afraid.

Back to the Future 2 and 3 are decent movies, but the NES video game is completely bizarre.

In the Back to the Future 2 part, you have to guide Marty around 1985, 1955, and 2015 to find secret rooms, then clear out all the stuff in said rooms to get key items, then put the key items in other secret rooms all to get access to the second half of the game, Back to the Future 3.

And, assuming you did all of that, you get to go to Back to the Future 3 to do it all again.

But! What if you go to the title screen.

Hold down the B button and press Select

You get a scrambled password screen!

Rearrange the letters like so:

And you'll be able to jump right to the Back to the Future 3 part, which is a little bit shorter, and features Marty wearing a cowboy hat.

Fun times!

Have you ever been playing Whomp 'Em and thought to yourself that you'd really like to hear all the music that this game has to offer without having to slog though the game proper?

Me either.

But! You totally can anyway.

First, go to the title screen.

Then hold A + B on Controller 2. Press Start on Controller 1 and keep holding A + B on Controller 2 until you get this screen

Now you can listen to all the sounds this game makes to your heart's content.

Demon Sword is a tough game, which means that you're going to be seeing this a lot:

Which means that you're going to have to start the whole thing over... or does it?

Instead of just pressing Start to go back to the title screen, what if you held Down on the D-Pad and pressed B, A, B, A?

A password? And the option to continue? Awesome!

And to put in your passwords?

Go to the title screen

Hold Up on the D-Pad, press A, B, A, B

And you're back at the password entry screen!

Makes progressing so much easier.

In the NES Adventure Island game, your powerups are hidden in eggs for some reason. The trouble is, though, that some of them are invisible. So how do you find them? Excellent question!

Check out the range you get on these stone axes.

You're going to want to throw them absolutely everywhere because occasionally

They disappear short of where they should go.

So you go to that spot

Jump

And collect whatever was in your Secret Egg

Happy hunting!

Remember a while back that I told you how to get lots of 1ups in the original Super Mario Bros.? Turns out that you can pull off a similar feat in its super-hard sequel, too.

At the very beginning of the game you see this thing.

Which houses a hidden mushroom. Hit it from underneath to pop it out of there.

Then get the koopa over on the right-most block and strategically break the rest like so:

Then, wait until the koopa is about halfway off its platform and jump straight down on it. Done right, you'll start bouncing.

And just like before, you'll eventually start racking up the 1ups!

And the best part is that on the Super NES version, the counter actually stops correctly at 127 lives, so there's no danger of going over and losing them all.

And you're going to need every one of those lives, trust me.

All over the populated areas of the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past you find these chickens.

They don't do much except cluck and run away if you hit them with your sword, so you might get bored and just start hacking away at them. They never run out of health, so you can keep it up for a while, until...

The distressed chicken calls in the cavalry and they swarm the screen! These chickens are invulnerable and dangerous to touch. I just hope you were near a doorway so you can run and hide. If not, the onslaught will stop eventually.

Oh, and this works on the skeleton chickens in the Dark World, too.

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys is one of those games that I played and really liked the music to (bonus pro tip, the game name, "Ys" is pronounced very similar to "Ease"), so wouldn't it be great if you could listen to the music any time you wanted?

Well, then, good news!

First, bring up your menu by hitting Select on controller 1

Then press Select on controller 2

Ta da!

Now you can listen to all the sounds and music that the game has to offer.

And as a bonus, the song you pick will continue to play after you close the menu and until you change areas.

Pretty awesome!

The NES Legend of Zelda holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of people, even the title screen is enough to bring back a flood of fond (and maybe not so fond) memories. Check it out:

Now, if that image didn't bring back floods of memories, then I have a tip you might be interested in.

Normally, after you finish the game once, a new, slightly harder, version of the game is presented to you. Stuff's moved all around, so your maps that you might have made the first time around will be all but useless. Which makes for a new experience.

But, what if you've finished the game before and just want to jump straight to the second quest without having to bother with the first one?

Easy!

Go to the Name Registration screen and enter your name as ZELDA.

You'll see Link holding the telltale sword that shows that he's ready to tackle the second quest.

Good luck. You'll need it.

It should probably come as no surprise by now that I like video game music. Especially from games that have good music, like Castlevania III.

You probably recognize the title screen if you've ever played this game:

But, hold down A and B while you press Start and:

Ta da!

You use Up and Down to choose your song, B to play it, and A to stop it. Perfect for making your own mix CD.

Which we'll have to talk about another day.