Pro Tip of the Day - xbox360

Pro tip: The Ghostbusters Connection

Will — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:06:35 +0000

I was lured into buying the newest Ghostbusters game over the weekend, and I've got to say, it's a better game than the last Ghostbusters game that I played.

But, right at the beginning, I started to explore and found this interesting screen on one of the computers in the firehouse:

Which looks startingly like this screenshot of the ending sequence from the old NES game

Which doesn't seem like much, I know, but the NES game came out in 1986, so if you're younger than about 24, you might have missed the connection... until now.

Pro tip: Don't return your feet to the starting position in Dance Dance Revolution

Will — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 11:50:04 +0000

If you watch the Attract Mode of most Dance Dance Revolution machines, they will eventually go into a tutorial on how to play the game, and in it, the demo character will stomp on an arrow, and then return its feet to the center. Check it out (it starts at about 0:58 in this clip):

And I see a lot of beginners playing the game like this... and stumbling around. Why? Because the arrows in the songs are set up so that you don't return your feet to center after hitting each one, which has the side effect of reducing the number of steps you have to take to hit all the arrows. Check out the kid's feet in this video:

If he returned his feet to the center after every time he hit an arrow, he wouldn't be quick enough to hit all the arrows, and neither would you.

So don't do it!

Pro tip: Move canceling in Street Fighter II

Will — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 12:41:37 +0000

This one's a little more advanced, but nontheless very important if you want to be any good at the Street Fighter games.

The idea is to do one move, and before the animation completes, you do another move for Big Damage(tm). The easiest way to show this is with Ken. You want to lead off with a Strong Punch, then immediately press Forward, Down, Down-Forward + Strong Punch. If you do it fast enough (and it does take quick fingers) then you'll hit once with the punch, and then three times with your Dragon Punch for a four-hit combo!

Which is kind of tough to see in static picture form, so I've made an animated .gif you can check out here(2.3 MB, watch out, dial-up users!).

There are lots of moves that can be canceled like this, way too many to list here, so have fun finding them!

Oh, and this also works for Street Fighter IV.

Pro tip: You have a maximum of 9 lives in Mega Man 9

Will — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 15:53:04 +0000

If you check out Mega Man 9's pause screen, you get lots of info like how much weapon energy you have left and how many more Mega Mans you have in reserve.

[Normally a screen shot would go here, but I kind of don't have access to a working capture device, and my artist is on vacation, so use your imagination, or just consult your own status screen]

You'll notice that next to Mega Man's Mug that there's a two-digit number to indicate how many lives you have left. You might think that you can get up to 99 tries to off Wily, but you'd be mistaken.

For some reason, even though you have two digits to show how many lives you have left, the counter stops at 9. And lives don't continue to accrue, either. If you have 9 lives, pick up 4 more, lose one, you won't have 12 left in reserve, you'll have 8.

So be wary.

Pro tip: Your PS2 and Xbox 360 has more buttons than you might think

Will — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 08:00:00 +0000

At first glance, it might appear that the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 consoles have quite enough buttons, over 11 at last count (which is more digits that most people have on all of their hands combined). But, what you may not know is that the two control sticks are also buttons. Simply apply pressure to each of the sticks like you were pressing a button and, presto! You're rewarded with the clicking sound of a button freshly pressed.

Of course, what this will accomplish will be determined on the game and whether or not the developer actually knew that these were buttons that could have functions assigned to them. So give it a try and see what happens!