In several of the castles in Zelda II, you run across these things that look like skulls in bubbles, which are called, shockingly, Bubbles.

They're particularly nasty because they bounce around all over the place, and when they hit you they drain your life and your magic. You can hit them, and they stop moving long enough for you to run past.

But what happens if you keep on hitting them. A lot? A whole lot?

They're defeated for 50 experience points! Which at the beginning of the game is a whole lot.

But when your attack is at level one, it takes lots of hits to kill the things. I stopped counting at 200 swings. So you'll have to determine whether the tradeoff is worth it to you.

This one's slightly on the odd side, but in Baseball Stars if you go to make a custom team

And press

Down, Right, Left, Down, Down, Right, Up, Up, Down, Up, Down, Up

That should put you on the Veterans team.

Hit the A button to choose a name, but you'll first be greeted with a question:

And, of course, the answer is:

And you'll be presented with another question:

With a slightly less obvious answer:

Once you go through all that and pick your logo for the team (the logo doesn't matter), check out your team lineup.

It's all girls... at least, I think they're girls

What's the point?

Well, I'm not sure, but I thought that the method was more interesting than the result.

If you ask people what the toughest NES game is, you're probably going to hear "Ghosts 'n Goblins" quite a bit. Sure, you'll hear "Battletoads" and the occasional "Dragon's Lair".

And it's true, all of those games are tough, especially Ghosts 'n Goblins, which is made doubly tough in that you have to beat the game twice to see the real ending.

But...

Let's say you go to the title screen

and press the following buttons

Press and hold Right, press B, B, B. Release Right. Press Up, B, B, B, Left, B, B, B, Down, B, B, B, Start

Done correctly, instead of starting the game, you'll be presented with the level select screen

Just pick the last stage, Stage 7, and go to town fighting the last boss.

And when you win, you get the false ending.

But!

You get to level select again after you clear the stage, so choose Stage 7 again, and fight the boss again to reveal... the true ending!

Which is below this line

Is it worth all the frustration of playing the game normally? Eh, probably not.

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle for the NES is a pretty terrible game, but if you're determined to play it, I've got a shortcut for you.

First, start the game

Then, on Controller 2, press

B, A, A, Start, A, B, B, A

Done correctly, you'll hear a confirmation noise. You can then press the B button on Controller 2 to skip to the next stage.

If you skip the final stage (the second one with the painting) you'll end back up at the beginning, so you have to actually finish it if you want to see the ending

Or you could look below this line for the entire ending (spoiler warning, I guess)

Yeah, it's just the one screen.

It's been a while since we talked about the ol' Konami Code. But it makes appearances in more than just video games, believe it or not.

Take Google's RSS reader, cleverly named Google Reader. If you log in, you'll see the sites you're following on the left-hand side. If you put in the Konami Code (using the arrow keys for the directions and the A and B keys for A and B):

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

Then your background will turn into this:

What's the significance? Probably nothing other than at least one of the people working on the Reader is a video game fan. And that, in itself, is pretty awesome.

It's pretty difficult to get stuck in Deja Vu (not quite impossible, but close).

Take your supply of quarters, for example. You'll need them for a few things, but mostly to pay for your cab fare. How do you get them?

By playing slot machines in the abandoned casino, of course. But even that's no guarantee.

Also, you don't want to throw your money into the left slot machine, you lose every time.

So what happens when you're completely out of quarters... er, 'coins'? Well, if you EXAMINE the right machine, you find a surprise.

A free coin! Better still, is that if you're foolish or uncoordinated enough to put your lone coin into the wrong machine, the coin will magically be back for your taking.

Giving you plenty of opportunities to win at the 'real' slot machine.

Since today's the 10-year anniversary of the US launch of the Dreamcast, I figured a Dreamcast-style tip was in order.

The game Space Channel 5 is a rhythm game with kind of a nutso story: You have these aliens (in space) who are capturing (space) people and forcing them to dance. You play the part of a reporter who uses her power of dance to rescue them, Simon-Says-Style. The better you dance, the more people you rescue, and the higher your ratings get. You have to maintain a certain viewership or the game ends.

Easy, right?

Well, for the first few seconds it is kind of easy, but then the game throws all kinds of stuff at you: stalls, motions between the beats, changing tempos, that kind of thing. It actually gets pretty tough.

So that's why, when I get frustrated, I take my controller, hold L & R, and press Up, Left, A, Left, A, Down, Right, B, Right, B. Done right, you hear Ulala (your character) say, "Yeah!" I don't even have to pause the game first or anything. From then on, the computer takes over and plays a perfect game, which is kind of hard to convey in picture form, so I've prepared a video sample.

It takes about an hour to watch the game go on autopilot from start to finish, but it's worth it if only to see (and hear) the cameo by Michael Jackson as 'Space Michael' (no, really).

Skate or Die's adventure mode is pretty tough. Partially due to some wonky hit detection, but mostly because of some pretty evil level design. There are 4 stages total, but odds are that you're going to give up on it well before you see them.

Unless...

If you have a second controller, at any time in the adventure mode you can press on it:

Start, A, Select, B

And then either Right, Left, or Up. Depending on the direction you pressed, you'll be instantly warped to a different stage: Right takes you to the Mall (Stage 2), Left to the Beach (Stage 3), and Up to the Warehouse (Stage 4). You would think that Down would take you back to Stage 1, but no.

Just be aware that you don't get any board or trick upgrades when you warp around. So I'd definitely recommend hanging out on Level 1 for a while getting upgrades before you go on. (Yeah, you can get some upgrades in Stage 3 also, but there aren't any items to collect to pay for them. So stocking up on those is probably a good idea, too).

Trying to catch fish in any fish-catching video game can be tedious. Good thing that the designers gave you some passably decent music to listen to. If only there was a way to listen to it without trolling for fist.

Like going somewhere in the title sequence

then holding Start + Select and hitting the Reset button to go to some kind of screen where you could hear the music any time you wanted

Yeah, something like that would be awesome.

When you finally get to Dr. Wily's castle in Mega Man 2, you get stymied by these floors that look solid, but you fall right through them. They're kind of tough to deal with until you remember that you have a (not so) secret weapon: the Bubble Lead.

The Bubble Lead follows the ground's contours (but never goes up, always down), so all you have to do is to fire one

and watch where it falls through the floor

Which makes it much easier to tell where the intangible blocks are, instead of trying to rely on your memory.