In Donkey Kong Country you have these animal helpers that you can ride, which kind of give a little variety to Donkey Kong's banana-hunting exploits. And each of those animals has their own bonus stage where you have to collect lots of emblems that look like the animal that you're riding.

But getting there takes a lot of work, and they're kind of rare. So you may not be as practiced as you want to be when it's Game Time(tm).

So what do you do?

Well, you could go to the Intro sequence.

Grab Controller 1 and press Down, Y, Down, Down, Y (which, if you write 'D' instead of 'Down' spells 'DYDDY', which kind of looks like 'Diddy')

Done right, you'll be taken to a cave full of complete sets of the Animal Emblems

From there you just collect the complete set and begin your bonus stage!

And you can do this as often as you want, so practice away!

Let's say that you're playing Donkey Kong Country. You've put in the code for 50 lives, but you've burned through most of them on a particularly difficult spot.

What do you do?

Well, you could go back to the very first level of the game, where Donkey Kong bursts out of his treehouse.

Then turn right around and go back in for a free 1up!

Once you've collected it, just pause the game and hit Select to exit the stage, and you can go back in to collect it again. Do this as many times as you need for more 1ups!

Just don't go in the bottom entrance, there's nothing there but an empty Banana Horde, which will make Donkey Kong sad, and we don't want that.

Donkey Kong Country really isn't that hard of a game, but some of the maneuvers you have to pull off are a little frustrating, so it would be nice to have a few extra chances.

If you go to the File Select screen

And press

B, A, R, R, A, L

on your controller (which kind of spells 'Barrel') you'll hear a confirmation noise. Start your file and blam!

50 Donkey Kongs (or Diddy Kongs, whichever way you want to look at it)!

Now you have plenty of opportunities to try and discover the hidden goodies littered throughout the game.