Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream in later versions) is waiting for you at the end of Punch-Out!!

You have to fight a gaggle of other boxers to even get to him. You have passwords to save your progress, but the best one you can get will still stick you with several guys to go through before facing the champ.

That's why I like to put in this password:

This will take you straight to whoever's at the end of your cartridge, Tyson or Dream.

Unfortunately, he's kind of tough. Way tougher than anyone else in the game.

And if you lose, you don't get another chance, you get booted to the game over screen.

Which boots you to the title screen, where you can put the password in again, so no big setback.

I mentioned the other day that Double Dragon had its fair share of glitches and oddities, I wasn't kidding, the game's chock full of them. Here's another one.

Toward the end of Mission 1 you see this screen.

You see those vertical... things on the right-hand side? Position yourself between them and press Up on the control pad. Then, behold!

You start moving up the wall!

To get down, you can climb back down by pressing Down (duh), you can press Left or Right to magically reappear back at the bottom, or you can press an attack button to fall down in a comically tragic fashion.

The third choice is my preference.

There's really no other way to say it, Adventure Island is tough. Due in no small part to the enemies that are placed in the most inconvenient spots imaginable. Though, you do get a skateboard (with helmet!)

Even worse is that you get a really small amount of lives to work your way through eight islands, each tougher than the last. Use them all up and...

It'd be pretty sweet, then, if you could continue somehow.

And you can! But not without some effort.

First, make your way to the end of Stage One. Specifically here.

Then walk over to the edge of the cliff and jump. Done right, you'll make an egg appear.

Crack open the egg (being careful to not knock it off into the abyss) and you'll find the Hudson Bee.

Collect the bee and when you get to the Game Over screen and are booted back to the title screen hold Right and press Start.

Boom! Continue!

And this works until you forget to do it and accidentally start the game over or you turn the game off.

Mega Man's jump in Mega Man 3 is pretty much the same as it is in all of the Mega Man games, pretty pathetic:

This is pretty inconvenient since the boss robots, and most of the other robots in the game for that matter, are far more maneuverable than you are and can jump to nearly the top of the screen. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could do the same?

Well, hang on to your headwear.

If you plug in a second controller and have someone hold down Right on the control pad, suddenly Mega Man can jump much higher. How high? This high!

Even better is that if you fall into a pit, as long as the Right arrow is being held you can just jump back out.

Just a note, I couldn't get this to work in the Mega Man Anniversary Collection version of the game. It's old-school NES version only, I'm afraid.

I'm not very good at Captain Skyhawk. I'd like to say that it's because I could never find it at my local video game store, and thus wasn't able to spend much time with it... So I will.

But, assuming you do find it and decide to play it, you have to take the good Captain through a series of missions, each more impossible than the last.

But if you get bored doing the same mission over and over again because you're too poor of a pilot for this game, you do have one recourse... other than turning off the game.

Just plug in a second controller and press Up + B. Once that happens, you win the mission!

You don't get any points or money to purchase armaments, but if you planned on skipping the next stage anyway, who cares?

Since it's not the 90s any more, I don't know if it's still time for Klax, but I still enjoy it on occasion. You have a bin and have to sort colored tiles into it in such a way that three or more of the same color line up horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. You get bonuses for chain reactions and such, and for clearing more than three tiles at once.

The biggest clear, it would stand to reason, would be one that was diagonal from each corner and meeting in the middle, hence the 'Big X'.

It's actually kind of tough to set up one of these things, since you pretty much have to work on it from the beginning of a wave, and then not mess things up by getting a clear that collapses one side of the X, but it's worth lots of points if you can pull it off.

And once you get so far in the game, you'll have to create one to proceed anyway, so might as well get some practice in early.

For such a small, short game, Double Dragon sure has its share of glitches and oddities.

Like this drum in Mission 1.

If you pick it up

Walk over to the nearest building (before it's been scrolled off the screen) and walk diagonally-up-right at the corner, you kind of go 'inside' it.

Once there, toss your drum and behold!

It glitches out and flies up and off the screen, possibly into space.

Too bad that's the only drum in the whole game.

In Double Dragon's Mission 2, right after you get all your hearts, you probably want to continue on with the game. Go a little further in, and you fight Chin.

Now, you could just beat on him until he flashes and disappears like normal, or you could go back down the ladders. Go down two ladders and he dies somehow... I don't think I'm up to rationalizing it.

Or you could use one of your new abilities to grab his hair and toss him off the side.

Either way and you'll be well on your way to the next Mission.

In the NES version of Double Dragon, you have this weird Heart System to deal with that earns your moves. Essentially, as you beat up bad guys you get heart points, get 1000 heart points and you get another heart and another fighting move.

It's kind of tedious to earn moves this way, I'd much rather have all my moves up front for maximum face-smashing potential.

So, to speed the process along, go to Mission 2, right past the big pit. Go just far enough to make the two Williams appear. Let the top one get to about the end of the girders in the background and then hop back on the fence, they'll freeze in place.

Go all the way back to the left as far as you can. You don't have to fall off the ledge like I did here, but I think Billy's face is pretty funny if you do.

Then go back to where the upper William was and start attacking. You'll hit him over and over again, even though he's not there.

Keep going until you have 7 hearts, the maximum.

Then you'll have your entire martial arts toolbox available to use.

Good luck!

In Super Mario Bros. 2, you get these potions. Which you can toss down to make doors. Go through the doors and you find all kinds of stuff, but probably one of the more important changes is that the plants that hold vegetables now hold coins. Coins that you use at the end of the stages to gamble for extra lives.

Now, if you try to get coins more than twice in a level, you start picking up vegetables instead of coins, probably to prevent you from abusing the system.

But, what happens if you go to, say, 5-1?

You notice how the potion is near some plants and a pit?

Grab the potion, toss it down, and go into Subspace. Grab the coins and while you're in subspace, jump down the hole.

It'll cost you a life, but you gain five coins (six if you're quick). Then, do it all again, grab the coins and jump down the hole. As long as you don't actually exit to the 'real world', then it doesn't count toward your two-trip limit.

Once you have all the coins you want, go on to the end of the stage. Then check out your coin total.

Depending on how many lives you sacrificed for the coins, you might be here for a while using the slot machine.

Enjoy!