The NES version of Kid Niki has secret rooms all over the place. They're pretty well hidden, though, and I probably wouldn't have found them without the help of an old tips and tricks video I got a long time ago.

Like this one on the first stage.

Make your way to 1-9 and position yourself like so:

Then duck for a bit. Maybe hit the B button a few times to spin your sword around.

After a few seconds (and usually right after pressing B a couple of times) you'll be transported to a secret room!

Unfortunately, there's not a lot in this one

But there are a few others later on that have lots of bonuses, which we'll talk about another day.

Gradius 3 is a whole lot like the first Gradius game. So you might think that you can use the old Konami Code to get a munitions boost like you did in the earlier game. So you pause the game, put in the code

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

and notice how you get all the powerups, just like before, only when you unpause the game:

Your ship explodes!

Harsh.

I guess it's kind of an acknowledgment of the old code or something.

But, you can slightly modify the code. Instead of pressing Left and Right on the control pad, you can press the L and R shoulder buttons on the controller.

Up, Up, Down, Down, L, R, L, R, B, A

Which will have a similar effect as the original code did for the original game.

And, just like the original code, you can only do it once per credit, so choose wisely.

Gradius is pretty tough, mostly because your ship can only take one hit before it explodes. You can collect these orangey powerup things, though, and make your ship more maneuverable, get extra firepower, and get some shielding up.

But there's an easier way.

Just pause the game anywhere

Then put in the Konami Code:

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

Then unpause the game and you'll have some speed powerups, some Options (those orange things following you around), missiles, and a shield.

Just make sure you don't lose once you put the code in, since you can only do it once per game.

You might think that 3D Worldrunner is called '3D Worldrunner' because the worlds that the Worldrunner runs on are presented in a pseudo-3D.

But you'd only be partially right.

If you press the select button, you'll notice that the screen kind of freaks out and displays most of the game in red:

and Blue

It's what's known as a 3D Anaglyph. If you have those funky glasses with the film for the lenses, you'll see the images in glorious 3D!

Well, kind of. The 3D isn't really all that good in this game, but, hey, they tried.

In Deja Vu, you play an amnesiac detective who's been framed for murder. You have to clear your name and implicate the bad guys. You do this by going around the city and searching for clues, both real and planted.

Eventually, you have to go to the police with what you find to clear your name. But if you have any incriminating evidence against you, you go to jail.

So, you have to get rid of the incriminating evidence. You do this by going down to the sewer.

You can throw anything you want into the waters down here and it'll disappear forever. So all you have to do is throw away the stuff that incriminates you and you're home-free.

How do you know what you should throw in?

Easy, just throw everything you have in. Your character is a good enough detective that he won't let you toss anything that you'll need to clear up the mess. So just throw in everything you can, walk to the police station, and win the game.

You'll probably want to wait until you've gathered all the evidence first, though. Otherwise you might get stuck.

These creepy things are Bling Gnomes:

They have two purposes in life: to pick up the gold that drops from enemies that you kill, and to convert unwanted items into gold. They do the latter by doing a little dance and anything on the ground of a certain quality or lower will disappear and the gnome will defecate a stack of gold coins.

No, really.

But, he has a little quirk... well, several, but we're only going to talk about one today.

You can't use your little gnome friend to clear out your inventory on the middle of a dungeon run.

Anything that's been in your inventory, or that you tried to pick up, but wouldn't fit in your backpack and then dropped back on the ground he won't consume. I don't really know why, maybe your hands are dirty?

Any of those items that you've sullied with your contact have to be lugged back to town to sell, so you have to decide if you want them before picking them up.

There's no way around it, Battletoads is a tough game. Those three lives you get at the beginning of the game start to look insufficient pretty early on.

But, you can give yourself a slight edge.

At the 'press start' screen you can hold Down on the control pad + A + B and press Start. Then you'll have five Toads at your disposal instead of three.

And, yeah, this works for the Super NES version also.

Lunar Pool is a kind-of odd pool game. You get tables of different shapes, and you get to play with the physical laws of the universe. On the screen where you can pick what round you start with, you can also pick the coefficient of friction between the balls and the table, anywhere from 0 to 255, with the default being 32.

If you set it all the way to 0, then the balls will never come to a stop, they'll just roll and roll until they all go into the pockets and you lose.

If you set it all the way to 255, the balls hardly move at all, and you'll never have enough shots put them all in the pockets.

So, I'm really not sure why you'd even want to go to those extremes.

Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream in later versions) is waiting for you at the end of Punch-Out!!

You have to fight a gaggle of other boxers to even get to him. You have passwords to save your progress, but the best one you can get will still stick you with several guys to go through before facing the champ.

That's why I like to put in this password:

This will take you straight to whoever's at the end of your cartridge, Tyson or Dream.

Unfortunately, he's kind of tough. Way tougher than anyone else in the game.

And if you lose, you don't get another chance, you get booted to the game over screen.

Which boots you to the title screen, where you can put the password in again, so no big setback.

In the Super Mario Bros. series, Mario is known for his jumping ability, he can easily jump twice his own body height if he gets a running start.

But, interestingly, he can jump even higher given the right circumstances.

First, find a Super Mushroom. A fire flower would work, but they don't move, so the effect isn't as obvious. Starmen won't work at all.

Then jump so that you're coming down as you collect the power up.

While the powering up animation is playing continue to hold the jump button. Once the animation stops animating, you'll jump again!

I haven't really found very many uses for this tip, other than showing off, but maybe you can.