The Joe & Mac game for NES is a pretty lousy port of a pretty decent arcade game, but if you absolutely must play it, you can make sure that you have all the chances that you could possibly want, but it's going to take a little work

First, play the game long enough that you qualify for the high-score table. Beating the first stage ought to do it. Then, at the Name Entry Screen, enter your name as

DATABUNNY

Done right the name will change to

YO DUDES

Once that happens, start a new game. You'll notice that now you can fail as many times as you want without running out of lives! Which now makes this a game of endurance. Do you have enough to finish it now?

I was bad enough at Rad Racer that I didn't even know it had an ending. But it's been brought to my attention that not only does it have an ending, but you can see it with almost no effort (which is one of the best kinds!).

So if you want to see it without actually racing, you first select a car

Then while at the 'Press Start to begin' screen

Grab Controller 1, press the B button 64 times(!), then hold Up + Right on the Cross Pad and press Start.

Done right, the ending will start

But be aware, there's not much more to it than the screenshot above.

We've seen that there are hidden goodies all over Castlevania, but there's one that's so secret that it's not even in the manual and a lot of people don't even know it exists: a 1up

To spot this rare gem, first make your way to the fifth area, which the game calls "Stage 13". After you leave the first screen and destroy a couple of skeletons, you'll come to this formation.

Most people will walk down the stairs and continue on, but if you just walk to the right and press against the wall for a few seconds

A 1up will appear!

You only have a few seconds to grab it, too, so make it quick!

Space Siege is a whole lot like Dungeon Siege, but in Space.

Obviously.

But if you take some damage and there are no healing items around, you could hit 'enter' to bring up a chat box and type the word 'heal' (without quotes)

For a quick refill of your life bar!

Which is incredibly handy for making progress.

If you're playing through Dungeon Siege II and just can't find any awesome fingerwear, you do have the option of just making some.

If you hit the Enter button and type:

You get a confirmation message

And a ring with fairly good stats will drop at your feet

Of course you'll probably find something else better pretty much right away with the amount of loot that drops in this game, but hey, it's pretty good for the beginning of the game, and for free.

I never really was much of a snowboarding fan, so I never really played Heavy Shreddin' much. Which pretty much means that when I did play, I saw this a lot

But I now know that if I'd have gone to the title screen, grabbed Controller 1, and held down Left on the Control Pad + A + B while pressing Start, I'd have 99 snowboards to play with

Which meant that I could have practiced a little more before running out of lives, greatly extending my frustration.

I've talked a little about 3D Worldrunner in the past. It's a 3D game on a system that's not really supposed to be able to do 3D, which makes it a little on the tough side. And that means that you're going to end up seeing this a lot.

But fret not!

If you hold Up on the Control Pad + the A Button + Start, you can continue at the beginning of the level where you left off!

Meaning you can keep plugging away at the levels until you either finish them or you give up in frustration.

It's really a no-lose situation.

In Super Mario Kart, every time you win a race you have to start in the back of the pack for the next one, I guess to make it fair to the rest of the racers somehow. But with a little knowledge, this won't be much of a problem.

If you can get your kart's engine revved up to just the right point, you can take off like you used a mushroom for a speed boost, but it's kind of hard to do.

Or is it?

When the countdown for the race starts, right after the first light/buzzer goes 'beep', lay on the gas

If you've timed it just right, you'll rocket ahead like a shot!

You just have to remember to steer around the racers that are in front of you, otherwise you run the risk of slamming headlong into Donkey Kong Jr.'s backside going full speed, and nobody wants that.

Think you're good at U.N. Squadron? Think you're a real gamer? Well, you're about to get the opportunity to prove it.

Pop in your copy of U.N. Squadron, go to the Options screen.

With 'Game Level' highlighted hold down the X and A buttons on Controller 2 and start ratcheting up the difficulty. As long as you're holding down the buttons you can take it from Normal

All the way to 'Gamer'

Do you have what it takes to defeat 'Gamer Mode'?

(Thanks to user Dakota for today's tip!)

I never really spent as much time with Arcana as I'd have liked, mostly because every time I scraped together a couple of bucks it was already gone from the rental shop.

But if you did and you want to hear some of the music in the game without actually playing through it, you could go to the title screen

Then hold L + R and press B on Controller 1. Done right, you'll see one of the most boring Sound Test screens I've ever seen

How exciting!