Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is one of my favorite baseball games of all time. It's just Plain Good(tm). But have you ever wondered to yourself who was responsible for bringing this game to life? I sure have.

An easy way to find out is to go to the title screen.

Then (kind of quickly) press: B, A, Down, B, Up, B, B, A. (You can remember this code easily if you remember BAD BUBBA)

The result?

The credit sequence, without having to do any more work than that.

If you remember a while back, I told you about a way to vastly increase Mega Man's jump in Mega Man 3. It turns out, though, that there's more to that trick than first it seems.

First, grab controller 2, and hold down the Right arrow, just like before. You might want to recruit a friend or a rubber band to do the honors, since it's hard to do on your own.

After that, find a conveniently-placed hole, and jump in. It'll need to be a hole where an enemy will follow you.

Let the enemies hit you while you're offscreen and eventually, you'll run out of life points and hear the "you dead" sound. But, as long as you're holding down the Right arrow, you can still jump out and walk around, even with no life points.

The awesome thing is, that now enemies can't kill you off. They can hit you all they want, but you'll never explode. The downside is, though, that your Mega Buster doesn't work any more, since Mega Man's energy for that weapon is gone.

The rest of his weapons work fine, though. And since the Rush Marine is all but useless, I like to use that to fire the Mega Buster.

Just don't pick up any health powerups. If you do that, you will be able to die again if you get hit.

Oh, and spikes are still lethal. They're jerks that way.

If you're tired of the normal progression of fighters in the NES Punch-Out!! game, you can try fighting the guys completely out of order for an interesting experience.

First, start putting in this password:

Now, when you get to the zero at the end, press A + B + Select all at the same time to confirm the password. It's kind of tough to get the presses right, but if you do

You start out with all the titles, and fighting King Hippo instead of Glass Joe, and the opponents only get harder from here, too. Can you handle it?

In the street fighter games, the Russian guy Zangief has one of the most powerful moves in the game, the Spinning Piledriver.

You perform this maneuver by doing a 360 on the controller and then pressing punch

But, that is kind of tough to get right, since when you press any of the 'Up' directions, your guy jumps, usually out of range of the move.

It turns out that you don't really need to go the full 360 degrees, just 270 will do

In fact, any 270 will do, so go nuts.

Also, this works with any move requiring 360s, including T. Hawk's crazy face-smashing move

And this applies to games in the whole series, including sequels and crossovers. Pretty much anything with the words 'Street Fighter' in the name.

Just like the first Ninja Gaiden game, Ninja Gaiden 2 has some pretty good music. But the game's kind of tough, so it's a little bit difficult to get to hear your favorite track any time you want to.

That's why I use the Sound Test.

At the title screen

Hold Up, Left, A, B, and Select, and press Start.

Boom! Sound Test mode!

Which is pretty awesome by itself, but if you hold down Up, Left, A, B, and Select. Then wait for the screen to fade out, then press Start to bring it back, then let it fade out again, then press Start to bring it back, then let it fade out again, then press Start to bring it back, and then press Start again to complete the code, well, then you get to the Sound Test again... but slightly different.

The Musicruise is kind of a neat little visualization for the tracks in the game. And since it looks cooler, it's my choice for a sound test.

It's Konami code time again! You know, that mysterious code that is in a ton of games, and rumored to be in a ton more?

Well here's another one.

In Contra, you take one of two shirtless commandos up against an army of alien invaders. Don't let the title screen fool you, they take those tank tops off when they head in to the field of battle.

But, while you're looking at the title screen, after it finishes sliding in from the right and before the music stops playing, put in the ol' Konami Code.

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

If you're playing with two players, you might want to press Select before you press Start, so you both get some love.

Done correctly and quickly enough and...

30 lives! Which is great since your guys are incredibly fragile. Which you would think might make them a poor choice for going up against a few thousand heavily armed (and armored) foes, but maybe they like a challenge?

In Blaster Master's Area 5 you come across a boss that is not susceptible to the pause trick, a giant crab.

Making things tougher is that this crab shoots out a ludicrous amount of bubbles that keep you from pelting its weak spot (its face) with grenades and have a side effect of killing you pretty quickly.

So what I do is exit and reenter the corridor leading up to the boss over and over again picking up gun powerups from the square enemies that litter the area. It's kind of tough since, if you get hit, you lose some of your gun power. Once your gun is fully charged, it's pretty unstoppable.

Then you can go ahead and enter the boss's room and hold down the A button (your grenade button) while wailing away on the B button (your gun button). Holding down the grenade button will ensure that you keep facing the same direction while you move back and forth, allowing you to keep up the pressure.

Eventually the crab will explode somehow and the Dive attachment will be yours!

Which will make maneuvering underwater so much easier.

Mega Man 7 is made by Capcom, who likes to have some fun with their games sometimes. Take Mega Man 7, for example. It's pretty standard as far as Mega Man games go. But for a little treat, move your cursor over Shade Man's stage

hold down the B button and press Start.

You'll probably notice something different right away (though the difference doesn't show up in screen shots)

The tune for the stage intro and the stage itself change to something a bit different than the norm.

And if you don't recognize the music, I'd suggest you go back and play this game for a few minutes.

You might remember some time ago I posted the fairly well known continue trick for Super Mario Bros.

But all is not lost! Once the title screen pops back up, hold down the A Button and press Start to start back up at the beginning of the world where you bought the farm.

And would you believe that this trick holds true for other games as well? Games like Kung-Fu Heroes?

First, lose all your lives

Then go back to the title screen, hold A and press Start, and you're back in action, approximately where you left off.

Pretty snazzy, eh?

Astyanax is a game (very) loosely related to the Greek story about a kid with the same name.

And the game is pretty tough and unforgiving, which means you're going to see this a lot

Which isn't all that fun, really.

So you might consider going back to the title screen

And pressing: Up, Up, Up, Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, and then Start. Doing this will make Astyanax completely invincible.

In fact, enemies won't even be able to touch him. You just have to have him walk to the end of the game.

Watch out for the pits, though. Invincible or not, those still kill him.