As weird as it might sound, I do occasionally wonder who is responsible for the games I play, and in the case of sports games, where there might not be a logical place to put a credits sequence, that can be kind of tough to figure out without resorting to grabbing the manual.

But if you put in, say, NES Open Tournament Golf, and go to the title screen

And hold Right + Select + B on Controller 1 for a few seconds, the credits start rollin'

Okay, so maybe you don't care to see the credits, but the presentation's actually unique, which is something, right?

You might remember a while back that I told you how to get lots more points in Super Mario Bros. by waiting until the timer runs out before you clear a stage.

It turns out that you can so this in other games, too.

Like Duck Tales, for instance.

First, go to your favorite boss and defeat it, open the treasure chest, but don't grab the loot.

Then, wait around until time runs out. The moment that time runs out, grab the prize

Done right, you'll grab the treasure, and the clock will roll over and start counting down

Giving you lots of bonus dollars

I don't really recommend this, though. You have a very small window of opportunity to grab the loot before you lose a life. You have to grab it the precise moment that the clock rolls over to "TIME UP", otherwise you have to beat the boss again, and wait for the timer to count down, which takes a real long time.

But you might want to do it once, just to see it.

Make no mistake, Battletoads hates you, but there are ways you can even the field a bit.

Like in Stage 1 for instance, if you're fast enough dispatching the first two enemies (and you have to be really fast, under 10 seconds fast), you'll notice a flashing area up on the first platform on the right.

If you can touch it, you'll be warped away to level 3, a.k.a. the Speeder Bike level

The main drawback is that you will have skipped Stage 2, and will have missed the opportunity to stock up on some lives there, but you have alternate methods for that anyway.

Today's Pro Tip has some pretty big .gif files, hit 'Read More' if you want to read the rest of it

In Fester's Quest you have red and blue Gun powerups. The blue ones increase your gun's level and the red ones decrease it. And, while most of the levels of shots you get look kind of neat, you'll quickly discover that most of them are completely useless when you get into close quarters.

The Silver Surfer game is pretty tough, mostly because a being with super-galactic power can somehow be defeated incredibly easily. Which means that you'll be seeing this a lot

But there's a way around that.

If you go to the title screen

And press Up on both controllers at the same time, you'll be taken to a password screen. Enter this password

And hit Start. You'll get a confirmation noise (and can enter more passwords if you want)

Start the game, and you'll find that the Surfer is now completely unhittable!

Meaning that you can start a level, go have a sandwich, come back to fight the boss, and repeat the process to finish the game with the smallest amount of effort possible.

If you're into that kind of thing.

In the 'grassy' stages of Super Mario Bros. 3 (like stage 1-2, for example) you might notice that there's a dark green patch at the bottom of the screen.

You may be thinking that was an artistic choice, but if you're properly prepared, you'll find that it's more than that.

Enter one of those stages with a P-Wing equipped and fly down the closest pit (being careful to not actually fall in, of course) and you'll find that the dark green stuff is actually a tunnel that runs most of the length of the stage!

Of course, stuff like enemy fireballs that go through the ground can still hit you if you're not careful, if you stop mashing the A button you'll fall off the bottom of the screen and lose a life, and you can't actually finish the stage from down there, you have to be above ground to hit the Card at the end.

But it's a fun novelty to do once or twice.

I never was particularly good at Burai Fighter, and that means that I got to see this a lot

So, to lengthen the time before I had to see that screen, I would go to the Password screen and enter this password

Which would give me 99 lives to play with

And you should, too.

The first few levels of Bee 52 are pretty easy. They're intro levels to help you get to grips with the control scheme, the game mechanics, that kind of thing. But what if you're already an old hand at the game and don't want to do the super easy stuff at the beginning?

Well, good news!

All you have to do is start at Level 1, go out the Front Door

Go all the way to the end of the Field

And hop into the very last flower. You'll be rewarded with...

A level warp! Which will take you directly to Stage 4

Where the difficulty ramps up significantly.

In Gun Nac you get to visit a shop between levels to spend the money you've collected in your travels to increase your firepower. You even get to visit the shop at the beginning of the game to get a few complimentary bombs to get started.

But, if you hold down Left + Select as you're pressing A or B to dismiss the shopkeeper's text, you'll be presented with the purchasing menu

And, even though your indicator says you have $0, you actually have $10, enough to buy one thing.

Choose wisely!

In Mega Man 4, one of the weapons you get is the Pharaoh Shot, which, if you hold down the B button, produces a big ol' bubble of energy above Mega Man's head.

One of the interesting things about it is that if a particularly weak enemy collides with it the enemy is destroyed but the bubble stays up and you don't lose any weapon energy.

So, if you find a place where weak enemies come down at you from the same angle in a steady stream, like this spot in Skull Man's stage

You can stand there, B button held in, and and when the enemies plow into your charged shot, the goodies fall right onto your head. Stand there long enough and you'll not only refill your energy pretty quickly, but you'll also max out your lives.

Which might be better than having full energy.

Oh, and if you think that this is similar to the technique I described for Mega Man 9, you'd be right.