In Super Mario Bros. 2, you can skip large amounts of the game if you're so inclined by using the jumping abilities of The Princess and Luigi.

Take Stage 1-2, for example. Instead of going down the Jar to grab a key, unlock a door, and go through a cave, you could choose Luigi and head for the Ninjis that are standing near the door.

Pick one up and chuck it so it lands somewhere underneath the real high green mesa.

It will start jumping

Hop on its head and begin charging for a Super Jump (by holding Down) and hit the Jump button when the Ninji is at the apex of its jump. Done right, you'll be on top of the hill!

And ready to run right to the end of the stage!

Cutting this stage down to just a couple of minutes.

In the Underground portions of Super Mario Bros. it's real tempting to try and get up to the ceiling, that way you can just kind of run to the right as fast as you can without worrying about trying to avoid the obstacles in front of you. But usually it's kind of hard to get up there.

Unless...

I alluded to this earlier, but if you scroll the screen so that one column of bricks is halfway scrolled off the screen and then start breaking them

You'll notice that Mario (or Luigi) can fit in the gap, and he'll kinda get stuck

Keep on jumping until you're at the top of the screen!

Making it much easier to pass these stages.

In Super Mario Bros. 3, every time you score 80,000 points, you get to play the card matching game

Ignoring the grammar error, you are presented with a grid of 18 cards and have to try to match pairs of cards to get the powerups they contain.

If you fail twice, you have to stop and try again when you get another 80,000 points. But! The layouts aren't random. There are eight possible ways that they could be laid out.

And maybe you have a better memory than I do, but I can't remember eight layouts of 18 cards each. Sure, you could write them down, but then you'd have to make sure that you had your notes handy every time you played, which might be OK.

But, take a closer look at the second picture. Notice how the last 3 cards in the bottom row are Mushroom, Fire Flower, Starman? It turns out that those three cards are the same cards in the same order on all eight of the variations! Making it really easy to remember at least the three of them.

In Super Mario Bros. 3, you come across tons of shelled enemies, which you can pick up and carry around. Throw them at question blocks, and they reveal their contents for you.

But, if you take your favorite shell up to a block, and get real close to it (without touching it)

And then let go of your shell, it'll hit the block, and then bounce back toward you

but it'll sail right through you without causing any damage!

And you might be saying "So what? I could just throw the shell at the block from further away and achieve basically the same thing." And you'd be right, you could do that. But this way, you don't have to dodge anything when it ricochets off your target.

In Super Mario Bros 3, getting maxed out on 1UPs on that one stage is pretty great, but what about the rest of the game?

Well, every time you finish a stage, you get a Card, which sits down at the bottom-right of the screen.

Collect three cards and you get a 1UP. Collect three matching cards, though, and you get more. Three mushrooms nets 2UP, Fire Flowers nets 3UP, and Starmen get you the pretty awesome 5UP.

So, if you know how to manipulate the cards, you can slowly build up a pretty good stockpile of extra lives.

You start by running into the dark area at the end of the stage at full speed (or pretty close to). Then jump up and hit the goal at 45 degree angle.

Done right you'll get a Star. Every time! Which will lead to

5 extra lives, every three stages or so.

Not a bad ROI, I'd say.

If you're inexperienced at it, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a tough game, made worse by the fact that after you lose your meager 5 lives all the progress you made in each World is negated, and you have to do it over again.

So, like a lot of games, it's very helpful to throw more lives at the problem.

My favorite spot to do that is in World 3-9.

First, stomp on the Koopa Paratroopa and grab its shell.

Then run over to the right, being very careful not to hit the Goomba or the Bob-Omb that's hiding over there. Make your way to the Bullet Bill cannon and kick the shell over to the other side of it.

Then quickly make your way to the platform above.

And wait.

Bullet Bills will continuously be fired from both of the cannons, and the ricocheting shell will take out each one.

Until eventually

1UPs! And you can stand there in safety until the time runs out, which will cost you one life, but you've got plenty to burn at this point.

And, if you're playing a two-player game, it's good form to allow the second player the chance to do this trick also, so that you both have a ton of lives to play around with.

If you're playing any one of the remakes of Super Mario Bros. 2, then you know that occasionally a powerup, like a heart or a Starman, will appear, completely at random.

But, did you know that it's not completely random? Heck, it's not even partially random. Those powerups appear based on your actions.

Like if you kill five enemies, you'll make a heart appear to replenish one dot on your life meter.

Likewise, if you collect five cherries, a Starman will appear, which will make you temporarily invincible when you collect it.

And pulling five fully-grown vegetables out of the ground (the ones with the face on them) will get you a stopwatch.

Which will freeze everything in place for a few seconds.

And since everything resets when you go in the nearest door, you can totally manipulate the game to your advantage, so go to it!

The Warp Zone in Super Mario Bros. 3 is a little different from the one in the first game, it's its own separate World, World 9.

What determines which row of pipes you have access to is what World you were in when you used your Whistle. Anything that's 7 or higher will take you to the bottom row, which leads to World 8. And since we're in World 9, we can use the whistle while in the Warp Zone to...

Go straight to the shortcut to World 8!

Which means that you can do this from pretty much anywhere you want, so long as you've collected at least two of the three Warp Whistles.

Just be aware that World 8 is pretty tough, and if you haven't spent time in the earlier Worlds preparing (i.e. gathering supplies) you're going to have a pretty hard time of it.