It's really no great secret that the Ninja Gaiden series of games are tough. Ninja Gaiden 3 is particularly unforgiving because you only have 5 continues at your disposal instead of the unlimited continues of the previous games.

But we can fix that... sort-of.

First, turn on your game and press the Start button to go to the title screen, but don't start your game.

Instead, let the title screen fade out and the opening cinematic will start. Press Start to go back to the title screen. Once you've seen the title screen eight times total, hold Up + Left + A + B + Select and press Start.

You won't get a confirmation or anything, so you'll have to spend all of your lives to check. If you were successful, your continues should have gone up from 5 to 99

Will that be enough for you to complete the game? Probably not at first, but it's a start.

Crazy Taxi is kind of a tough game. Mostly because if you play the arcade game, you have no indication of how to perform the advanced techniques that you need to know to be successful at the game.

But that's what I'm here for.

You need to know 4 techniques to be a successful cabbie.

1. The Crazy Dash - The idea is to shift into Drive and then immediately stomp on the gas. The timing is a little tough to get without a demonstration, but pulled off successfully, you'll immediately rocket to top speed. You can do this at any time, even while you're driving. Also, if you're at a stop, and you do the Crazy Dash, but immediately put the car into Reverse, you'll go full-speed backwards.

2. The Limiter Cut - Once you get going at top speed with the Crazy Dash, you'll notice that your car will start to vibrate. When that happens you want to throw the car into Reverse, then Drive, and then hit the Gas, with the same timing as the Crazy Dash. This will give you a burst of speed that lets you go faster than your top speed for a couple of seconds.

3. The Crazy Drift - While you're driving, put the car into Reverse and then into Drive while turning a direction. You'll easily slide around corners. Let go of everything and do a Crazy Dash to recover.

4. The Crazy Stop - Do the Crazy Dash, but hit Reverse and the Brake instead of Drive and the Gas. You'll manage to stop much faster.

Here's a video I prepared of me performing all 4 of these techniques on the Dreamcast version Crazy Box challenge rank S-S. I'm a little out of practice at the game, but I think you'll get the idea.

The Smash TV games are pretty tough. Mostly because you go up against thousands of enemies and your guy can only take one hit before he dies. So unless you spend lots of time mastering this game (or lots of quarters if you're playing the arcade version) you're never going to see the advanced levels.

Unless...

You go to the screen where you select 1 or 2 players

And press Right, Right, Up, Down, R, L. You should hear a voice yell, "Bingo!". Choose the amount of players, hit Start and

You can start pretty well wherever you want!

As an added bonus, if you hold Select before you enter a room, and keep holding it, the enemies won't even appear.

So you can pretty much explore the studios to your heart's content.

Double bonus!

In the NES Monopoly, you can play with up to eight players, either human or computer.

And before the dice roll, you can press Select to bring up a screen

where you can choose a player to change from human to computer, and vice versa

I presume that this is because games of Monopoly can take just shy of forever to play, and if people join or leave the game, you can keep it going.

But if you're playing against computer opponents, you can also use this feature to turn a CPU player into a human one, then have it give you all of its money, then turn control back over so that you win the game.

So, yeah, it's a little underhanded, but if you're not playing against actual people, no problem.

The Battletoads games are hard. So are the Double Dragon games. Mash them together for whatever reason, and you get a game that's also pretty tough.

But you have a secret weapon.

If you go to the Character Select screen

Then press

B, A, Down, B, Up, Down

You'll hear a noise. Finish selecting your character by pressing Start and behold!

The Super Warp Zone! Which also gives you five lives to play with.

And you're going to need every one of them.

A while back I told you about a trick to racking up a lot of lives in Super Mario Bros. 3. But, you kind of have to wait until you're almost halfway through the game to do it. Isn't there a way to stock up on lives beforehand?

You betcha!

Make your way to 1-2, the second stage in the game. Make sure you have the Raccoon Tail and make your way to the pipe that generates an endless supply of Goombas.

Let a few build up around you and then start jumping on them.

It's kind of tricky, but what you want to do is to hold down the A button when you land on them to bounce toward the top of the screen, then rapidly press the A Button to slow your descent. Repeat this over and over (without touching the ground) to eventually be rewarded with

1UP!

Yeah, it's a little bit more work and a little bit slower, but you can do it so much earlier in the game that it's worth giving yourself a little bit of a buffer until you can make it to World 3.

Oh, and this also works any time you can get 3 Dry Bones together in a place with high ceilings.

The Ghosts 'n Goblins games are hard. But if you're looking to jack up the challenge for some reason, you could find one of the many tombstones in the game and just start chucking weapons into it. Eventually

This... thing will appear, which will shoot a sparkly cloud at you, and if it hits,

Arthur gets turned into a frog for a few seconds, making him less maneuverable and unable to throw his weapon.

Yeah, come to think of it, I'm not sure why you'd want to do that on purpose.

And no, this doesn't work on the NES version of the game.

If you grew up during the heyday of the NES, you probably saw The Wizard, and in that you saw a sequence showing off the super rad-to-the-max Power Glove

So, of course you wanted one. You might have even wanted some of the games that were made specifically for it, like Super Glove Ball.

Trouble is, though, that the Power Glove didn't really work very well for much of anything. Trying to grab the ball on the screen and throw it around was a neat idea and everything, but it just didn't work. I had better luck using an actual controller.

And so will you.

When you're playing through Yoshi's Island, you occasionally run into some bonus games, one of which is the Match Cards game.

It's kind of like Memory, you get a quick look at the cards, and then they're flipped over and you have to make matches. Screw up a couple of times and you lose.

But what if you don't have a camera or some other way to take a screenshot for reference? And what if you don't have a photographic memory?

I like to use a pen and paper. You have just enough time to write down what's being shown to you if you're quick and use a kind of shorthand.

For instance, with the screen above, I'd write:

Then, it's an easy matter of matching up the items by consulting your notes. Which will fill up your inventory and

The last thing you match will turn into a 10UP!

Double bonus!

In the first Castlevania game, there are secret treasures all over the place, some collectible, and some not. Most of them require you to duck in a specific place to make them appear, but there are a few that are a little more finicky.

For instance, in Area 2 (technically called 'Stage 5') you come across this innocent looking ledge.

Most people that I see play this game jump up on it and continue on. But if you don't want to be like most people, you could just stand on the blocks for a few seconds. Which will reveal...

A secret treasure chest (worth 2000 points)!

There are a few more which require standing still to make appear, but we'll talk about them another day.