SimCity can be a tough game if you're not that great at managing the budget, which is why I usually don't bother worrying about it.

First, spend all your money. Make sure you spend it on stuff like roads and police/fire departments, stuff that will want tax money to keep operating. Then, wait until the end of the year.

Then, just wait until the year ends and the budgeting screen comes up.

Start holding down the L button (and don't let it go until I tell you), and hit 'Go With Figures'

Then, go back into your Budget screen and raise all of the Funding Levels to 100%, which will result in negative Current Funds.

Then hit 'Go With Figures' again. Close all of your menus, and then release the L button.

The result?

$999,999 in the city's treasury. With that kind of cash you can do pretty much anything you want any time you want.

Go nuts.

In California Games, one of the events you have to do is the BMX races. You do tricks for points, and the person with the most points wins.

And here's a way you can ensure that you will be the winner of the BMX event. First, make your way to the BMX event itself.

Then, hold down Select and press A to start it. Keep holding Select (the brakes) and then start pressing B repeatedly. Each time you do, you do a meager hop and get points.

You can do this as many times as you want for as long as you want, getting all the points you want.

And a turbo controller really helps pull this off.

Deadly Towers is a pretty terrible game, but that doesn't mean that we don't have any tips to make your journey a little less tedious.

So, first start a new game

and then immediately kill off your guy.

Then you get a password.

Make the first two characters EF or FE and then check your inventory screen.

Bam! Heavy artillery!

It doesn't make the game any more fun, just a whole lot easier. One for two's not too bad, I'd say.

In the original Super Mario Bros., in the X-1 stages (2-1, 3-1, etc.) there are hidden 1UP mushrooms.

Sometimes they're there, and sometimes not. But what's the key? Why are they so fickle? In How to Win at Nintendo games Jeff Rovin thinks he's figured it out. Page 191 says:

[In level 5-1] [w]hen you reach the second floating Block (behind the wall) you'll find a One-Up Mushroom between them ... but only if you haven't been hurt prior to reaching the area.

Now, this is partly right, the mushroom is right there... sometimes. Getting hurt has nothing to do with its appearance, though. There are two ways to make them appear.

In the prior X-3 world (in the case for 5-1, it'd be 4-3) you have to have collected all of the coins.

Or.

You have to have warped directly to that world (i.e. warp to world 5, the 1UP will be there).

Works every time.

For their locations, I humbly suggest that you take a look at a prior pro tip.

And that wraps up this week's myths. We'll return to regular ol' pro tips next week.

You might remember this screen shot from a prior tip about Double Dragon for the NES.

I said that I liked walking off the edge of the platform like that because Billy makes a silly face when I do. But was that the wrong thing to do? Page 58 of Compute!'s Guide to Nintendo Games seems to think so, Steven Schwartz writes:

Also, don't just walk off the end of the wall. Jump if you don't want to lose life points.

I tested this by walking up to that same ledge and walking right off a dozen times in a row. The result? No life lost.

So go ahead and make Billy pull that silly face by walking off that wall, it won't cost any life points.

Sorry, Steven.

Today we're going to take a look at one of the strategies for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Compute!'s Guide to Nintendo Games.

You start out the game in search of April O'Neal, who has been captured by Bebop and Rocksteady. On page 160 it says:

In the sewers, run Rocksteady into the far right wall. He can't turn around, and can be attacked from behind.

This is a little confusing to me since you don't run into Rocksteady in the sewers, you run into Bebop.

I ran him up against the right wall and he was able to turn around just fine. So on to Rocksteady, who's in a building near a sewer.

I ran him into the far right wall of his room also, and he was able to turn around with little effort.

So, it looks like this one is false.

Sorry, Steven.

Blaster Master is a pretty tough game, but Jeff Rovin's How to Win at Nintendo Games #2 would have you believe that it's a lot tougher than it actually is.

In Area 4 you come across an area that is blocked by two doors, with a keyhole on the outside of each

And the strategy for getting on the other side is as follows from page 31 of How to Win at Nintendo Games #2

"Here's a special tip: When you come to Stage Five at the end of Four, there are two Doors , and you need a Key for each. If you only have the one you got for killing the long-tongued, fire-breathing Frog Mutant at the climax of Stage Four, don't despair! Open the first Door, get out of the ol' Rover, and climb the ladder all the way up. Take a mighty leap from the top, staying close to the wall on the right; if you land on the lock, you'll open the Door. You'll lose that Jason's life ... but it's better than standing around with your hands in your pockets, unable to continue!"

So, first you have to beat the boss of the Area to get a Key, no problem there.

Then you come back to the doors and open the first one.

Climb out of your tank, climb the conveniently-placed ladder to the top of the precipice.

Then jump off, hugging the left wall, and aiming for the lock.

It opens, you die. Totally right!

Except...

One could also just climb down the series of ledges slightly to the right, then walk over and unlock the door with the same key (it doesn't disappear after being used, which is different from a lot of games).

That way you can open the door to continue while not costing yourself one of your precious extra lives.

So it's totally true as presented, but there's a better way.

The How To Win at Nintendo Games series was indispensable to me for a long time. Mostly because for $4 I could get a guide to a couple dozen video games, written out in fantastic detail. This saved me a few hundred dollars on cartridges and let me vicariously experience some games that I might not otherwise have gotten to. They're kind of like a dead-tree edition of GameFAQs before there was a GameFAQs.

This week, I'm going to take a look at the How To Win At Nintendo Games series and some of the other series of these hint books and pull out some of the tips, tricks, and strategies that just don't sound right for one reason or another and verify their accuracy.

On page 127 How To Win At Nintendo Games #3 you see this nugget in the Mega Man 2 chapter:

[Heat Man] is most susceptible to the Air Shooter (which you've already collected, right?).

So, I tested it by collecting the Air Shooter, going to Heat Man's stage and facing off with him.

Hitting him with the Air Shooter is kind of tough, but if you do, you damage him slightly. Here's his energy meter after one shot.

I tried out some of the other weapons on him and when I got to the Bubble Lead, one shot did this much damage to his energy meter

and three shots did him in.

So, I'd have to say that Heat Man is most susceptible to the Bubble Lead. Sorry, Jeff.

Make it far enough in Super Castlevania IV and you'll see this stage, affectionately known as 'the treasury' by some... well, by me anyway.

Along the way through the stage, you see these treasure chests pretty much everywhere.

What might not be immediately obvious is that each one contains a hidden porkchop, you just have to work real hard for it.

Pick any chest you like, and then jump on it 255 times. Yes, two hundred fifty five times. Then, a large pork chop will appear right over your head!

The problem is that it takes so much time to pull this off that you eat up a lot of time on the old clock, so you probably don't want to do it unless you're in the direst of straits. You also might consider not doing it on the chest that I did, you're probably going to want your food to appear in a place where you can actually collect it.

You've very likely heard about Tetris, so I won't bother explaining how it works to you.

One of the things that you'll notice, though, is that over on the right side of the screen there's a preview of what piece is coming next, which is very useful information.

However, by just pressing the Select button you can make that box clear.

Supposedly this is to make the game more challenging. Which it does, but only by destroying some of the strategy, so I'm not really sure why you'd want to do it. You can press Select button again to make the piece reappear.

This also works in the original Game Boy version.