Spy Hunter is a tough game, one of the reasons is that you don't get to pause the game if you need to do something in real live not related to driving a spymobile.

Or do you?

At any point in the game, grab Controller 2 and press the A button.

Blam! Game paused.

Press it again to unpause the game.

Neat, eh?

Occasionally you'll run into instructions for a few glitches for your favorite games (typically NES games) that require you to do something that your operations manual (you totally read that, right?) expressly told you not to do: to partially remove the cartridge from the system while it's powered on. I don't like these glitches for a number of reasons.

First, removing (or inserting, for that matter) a cartridge while your system is on has the potential to damage your system, your cartridge, or both (admittedly kind of rare, but still possible). Consoles typically aren't designed for hot-swapping.

Secondly, the results are completely unpredictable. Most of the time you're just going to freeze the game and that'll be the end of it, but occasionally something will happen. Your character will gain superpowers or (more likely) your inventory of special items will be completely scrambled. And, if you can continue, you're going to have lots of in-game stuff to play around with... maybe. Which will be great, until you try to do the trick again which brings me to:

Thirdly, the trick is nigh unrepeatable. Since you're working with trying to get a moderately complex program to glitch out by partially removing it from its system while it's running, there's almost no chance that you can repeat the glitch with any kind of regularity. I'm sure that minutes after this goes live I'm going to get inundated with emails telling me how wrong I am, but the point stands. The effects are essentially random.

So, potential hardware damage combined with unreliable and unrepeatable results? Yeah, I'll stick to programming errors and easter eggs, thanks.

In the 3rd NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game you have your standard four turtles to pick from:

which you get to pick from pretty much any time you run out of health.

Now, what if you were at the 'select your turtle' screen and pressed Down on the control pad five times (ten times if you're playing a two-player game)?

You might see the words 'Auto Mode' appear up in the corner of the screen.

Which means that the game will randomly decide which turtle to give you, should you run out of health, which makes the game a bit more interesting.

Journey to Silius can be a pretty tough game.

Which means that you're going to see this screen a lot.

But there's a way to throw more lives at the game, which will give you a better shot at finishing it.

First, go to the title screen.

Then, press the B button 33 times, then press Start. You'll get a screen where you get to modify how many continues you get (from 0 to 9).

As a bonus, you get to hear all eight songs that the game has to offer without actually having to go to the stages. Pretty snazzy!

If you remember a while back, I told you about a way to vastly increase Mega Man's jump in Mega Man 3. It turns out, though, that there's more to that trick than first it seems.

First, grab controller 2, and hold down the Right arrow, just like before. You might want to recruit a friend or a rubber band to do the honors, since it's hard to do on your own.

After that, find a conveniently-placed hole, and jump in. It'll need to be a hole where an enemy will follow you.

Let the enemies hit you while you're offscreen and eventually, you'll run out of life points and hear the "you dead" sound. But, as long as you're holding down the Right arrow, you can still jump out and walk around, even with no life points.

The awesome thing is, that now enemies can't kill you off. They can hit you all they want, but you'll never explode. The downside is, though, that your Mega Buster doesn't work any more, since Mega Man's energy for that weapon is gone.

The rest of his weapons work fine, though. And since the Rush Marine is all but useless, I like to use that to fire the Mega Buster.

Just don't pick up any health powerups. If you do that, you will be able to die again if you get hit.

Oh, and spikes are still lethal. They're jerks that way.

If you're tired of the normal progression of fighters in the NES Punch-Out!! game, you can try fighting the guys completely out of order for an interesting experience.

First, start putting in this password:

Now, when you get to the zero at the end, press A + B + Select all at the same time to confirm the password. It's kind of tough to get the presses right, but if you do

You start out with all the titles, and fighting King Hippo instead of Glass Joe, and the opponents only get harder from here, too. Can you handle it?

Just like the first Ninja Gaiden game, Ninja Gaiden 2 has some pretty good music. But the game's kind of tough, so it's a little bit difficult to get to hear your favorite track any time you want to.

That's why I use the Sound Test.

At the title screen

Hold Up, Left, A, B, and Select, and press Start.

Boom! Sound Test mode!

Which is pretty awesome by itself, but if you hold down Up, Left, A, B, and Select. Then wait for the screen to fade out, then press Start to bring it back, then let it fade out again, then press Start to bring it back, then let it fade out again, then press Start to bring it back, and then press Start again to complete the code, well, then you get to the Sound Test again... but slightly different.

The Musicruise is kind of a neat little visualization for the tracks in the game. And since it looks cooler, it's my choice for a sound test.

It's Konami code time again! You know, that mysterious code that is in a ton of games, and rumored to be in a ton more?

Well here's another one.

In Contra, you take one of two shirtless commandos up against an army of alien invaders. Don't let the title screen fool you, they take those tank tops off when they head in to the field of battle.

But, while you're looking at the title screen, after it finishes sliding in from the right and before the music stops playing, put in the ol' Konami Code.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start

If you're playing with two players, you might want to press Select before you press Start, so you both get some love.

Done correctly and quickly enough and...

30 lives! Which is great since your guys are incredibly fragile. Which you would think might make them a poor choice for going up against a few thousand heavily armed (and armored) foes, but maybe they like a challenge?

In Blaster Master's Area 5 you come across a boss that is not susceptible to the pause trick, a giant crab.

Making things tougher is that this crab shoots out a ludicrous amount of bubbles that keep you from pelting its weak spot (its face) with grenades and have a side effect of killing you pretty quickly.

So what I do is exit and reenter the corridor leading up to the boss over and over again picking up gun powerups from the square enemies that litter the area. It's kind of tough since, if you get hit, you lose some of your gun power. Once your gun is fully charged, it's pretty unstoppable.

Then you can go ahead and enter the boss's room and hold down the A button (your grenade button) while wailing away on the B button (your gun button). Holding down the grenade button will ensure that you keep facing the same direction while you move back and forth, allowing you to keep up the pressure.

Eventually the crab will explode somehow and the Dive attachment will be yours!

Which will make maneuvering underwater so much easier.

You might remember some time ago I posted the fairly well known continue trick for Super Mario Bros.

But all is not lost! Once the title screen pops back up, hold down the A Button and press Start to start back up at the beginning of the world where you bought the farm.

And would you believe that this trick holds true for other games as well? Games like Kung-Fu Heroes?

First, lose all your lives

Then go back to the title screen, hold A and press Start, and you're back in action, approximately where you left off.

Pretty snazzy, eh?