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.

The Moon Level in Duck Tales is kind of long and sort of annoying, unless...

If you go all the way to the right, there's a pillar that you have to spend the whole stage getting rid of.

But if you lure one of those flying Space Ducks over, stand next to the pillar, and let it hit you...

You go right through the thing and almost directly into the Boss's lair!

Which cuts down the stage to just a minute or so.

In the original Super Mario Bros. game, once Mario gets Fire Power, all kinds of weird things become possible.

For instance, find a pipe or the beginning of a stage that isn't a water stage or underground, and before the stage starts or you come out of the pipe, hold a direction (either one will work) + Fire + Jump. Done right, you'll jump up and then hit the ground sliding on one foot.

This will wear off after a few seconds, or if you shoot another fireball. And I haven't really been able to find much of a use for it, other than making Mario look foolish for a few seconds. But maybe you can.

The Adventures of Dino Riki is a pretty tough game, so you're going to be seeing this a lot.

But all is not lost!

If you hold Up on the Control Pad and press Start, you'll start at the last checkpoint you passed, even if it was partway through a stage!

Which, aside from having your score reset, is just like having infinite lives.

And you'll need them.

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.

In Nightshade you have two meters, Health and Popularity.

You gain popularity by beating up villains and doing generally superhero-type things, and you lose it by being defeated in battle. There are certain events where you need to have your popularity built up pretty high to trigger. so what would you do if your popularity dipped too low, there was no more crime to fight, and you got stuck?

So what I do is, once my popularity is maxed out and I see some kind of thing that needs doing

I just pass it by until I need the popularity boost. Which doesn't sound like a Superheroic thing to do, but, hey, I'm a pragmatist when it comes to this stuff.

There's really no way around it, Blaster Master's a hard game. And when you get through Area 7, the controls start to change and mess with you.

In Area 6 you acquire Wall 1, which lets your tank go up walls, and in Area 7 you acquire Wall 2, which lets your tank roll across ceilings.

Which is pretty great until you try to jump off a platform. Since you have these great new Wall attachments, your tank will go down the ledge instead of flying through the air.

Meaning that when you jump, you jump off the side of the ledge, potentially into Doom(tm).

So, instead, what you have to to is, right before your tank hits the edge of the platform, briefly let go of the direction that you're holding, then jump. Once in the air, you can start holding the direction again. Done right, you'll jump pretty much as far as you did before.

Yeah, and it's kind of annoying that you have to relearn how your tank handles 7/8 of the way through the game, but at least it's not in impossible feat.

So let's say that you're playing through The Adventures of Lolo and you accidentally make a puzzle unsolvable

There's no time limit, so what do you do? Reset your NES and use the last password that you got to start over?

Well, yeah, you could do that, but there's a better way.

If you press the Select button, Lolo will do... something, and lose a life, resetting the level

You can do this as many times as you want... until you run out of lives, but since continues are unlimited, it's not a huge deal.

Just be aware that you're going to be applying this liberally as you progress through the game, it gets kind of tough.

One of the annoying parts about the first NES Ghostbusters game is the driving portion (the everything else is also pretty bad), but if you absolutely must play it, there is a way to cut down on the amount of time you have to play this game.

On the driving segments, you can press Up on the Control Pad to drive as fast as possible. Then hang out in one of the corners of the screen.

Due to a glitch, you'll actually use slightly less gas at full speed and most of the other cars on the road will sail right by you.

Just remember that this isn't foolproof

But it's close enough for me.

The Guardian Legend is a kind of weird game. You have stages that alternate between spaceship shooting (kind of like Gradius) and foot-based action adventure (kind of like The Legend of Zelda).

But what if you don't have time to (or just don't want to) play the adventure stages?

Well, you could go to the Password Entry screen and enter the super-hard-to-remember password, "TGL"

And hit 'END'

Then start the game as normal. After making your way through the first stage and beating the boss

Instead of going to the Adventure Mode stage, you'll just mosey on to Stage 2

Greatly speeding up this game!

Thanks to reader J for this tip!