Ever been digging around on your computer's hard drive, in the directories where the games or other programs are installed to see what you can find?

No?

Well you should! (Just be mindful to not actually delete or modify anything) You might find all kinds of goodies.

For instance, check out this partial listing of the Videos folder in my Neverwinter Nights install.

Doesn't look like much, I know. And it's kind of hard to tell from this shot, but they all have a .bik extension. What does that mean?

Glad you asked!

It means that these movies were created with the RAD video tools. And that means that if you have the right player, you can watch them.

Even better, the company responsible for the format has also released a standalone player that you can download here that can play those videos and a whole lot more video conversioney stuff. It's a pretty good deal for a free tool.

You're familiar with the haiku, right? A short poem where the lines have specific numbers of syllables (5, 7, and 5)?

So let's presume that you're playing through Opposing Force. You bring up the Console by hitting the "`" key (it's the same key as the "~", but without the Shift). Then you type the word "haiku" (without quotes, of course). Hit Esc to be taken back to the game and be treated to a short poem that probably won't make much sense

And you can repeat for more

You have to read fast, though, because they fade out very quickly.

It's kind of hard for me to believe that in October of 2008 I started this site with little more than a screenshot and a terrible meme. And now, just shy of two years later, we're up to 500 genuine tips, tricks, and codes.

Amazing.

So, to celebrate, I started up my copy of Bookworm Adventures Deluxe and typed the word "celebrate" (without quotes) to make Lex don a party hat and set off some fireworks.

How fun!

If you've played through Neverwinter Nights enough to have gotten bored with the combat, you might consider spicing it up a little bit.

First, make sure that DebugMode is activated by hitting the "~" key and typing "DebugMode 1"

Then type "dm_cowsfromhell"

And you will summon... Cows from Hell to attack your enemies!

They don't do a lot of damage, but it is kind of neat to watch them spawn on the battlefield and then viciously attack your foes.

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.

If you're like me (and, you probably wouldn't be reading this site if you weren't at least a little like me), then you probably will occasionally play a game part way through, forget about it, and then pick it up again months (or sometimes years) later. So what do you do when you go back to a game like, say, Quake 4, and just want to get through the rest of the story?

Well, you could press the Left CTRL + the Left ALT + the "~" keys all at the same time to bring down the Console. You could then type the word "Undying" (without quotes, natch).

Done right, you'll get a confirmation message, and the result?

Your health will take a beating (like normal), but can't ever dip down past 1 (not like normal). Which effectively makes you immortal. You should be able to finish the game now, no problem.

Space Siege is a whole lot like Dungeon Siege, but in Space.

Obviously.

But if you take some damage and there are no healing items around, you could hit 'enter' to bring up a chat box and type the word 'heal' (without quotes)

For a quick refill of your life bar!

Which is incredibly handy for making progress.

If you're playing through Dungeon Siege II and just can't find any awesome fingerwear, you do have the option of just making some.

If you hit the Enter button and type:

You get a confirmation message

And a ring with fairly good stats will drop at your feet

Of course you'll probably find something else better pretty much right away with the amount of loot that drops in this game, but hey, it's pretty good for the beginning of the game, and for free.

When playing through Episode 3 of Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People, I came across a manual page from one of the games within the game: Limozeen's Hot Babelien Odyssey.

Remembering yesterday's tip, I ran over to my binary to ASCII converter and plugged in the numbers and got:

Which doesn't actually mean a whole lot to me. In fact, I couldn't make heads or tails out of the code, which leads me to believe that it's just a random string of ones and zeroes.

So don't be fooled.

Back when I used to play World of Warcraft I ran through a dungeon called Gnomeregan. In it, I got all these cards with lots of ones and zeroes on them. Ones and zeroes that looked like they might have been encoded secret messages.

So I went to my favorite Binary to ASCII converter and fed it the codes. Here's what I discovered:

White punch card: "Thrall and Jaina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G"

Yellow punch card: "If you can read this, you're standing too close"

Blue punch card: "The gnome king wears night elf underwear"

Red punch card: "Help! I'm trapped in a binary punch card factory!"

Prismatic punch card: "Message to Castpipe: your laundry's ready for pickup."

These messages add a whole new insight into the fallen Gnome city.