You remember Waldo, right? The guy that stood around in a series of very busy pictures while you hunted for him? Turns out that was in some video games, too, like The Great Waldo Search.

But, unlike the books, there's a strict time limit that you can extend slightly by finding little clocks in the levels.

Or, you can plug in a second controller and press the B button. Do that and the clock will stop counting down, giving you plenty of time to find everything in the stage.

And, since you get bonus points for having extra time on the clock when you're done, if you stop the clock immediately, you'll get a heck of a bonus when you finish each stage.

So that's what I'd do.

If you get far enough in Ninja Gaiden, you'll get to this fun thing

Which requires you to jump down, catch the left wall right before you plummet to your death, and then hop onto the platform below.

Which is a lot harder than I made it sound.

But!

If, after you press Left to kick off the wall, you immediately press Right, you'll slowly creep your way up the wall where you'll discover that it has no top, and that means...

You fall right through it onto the platform below.

But be aware, you'll stir up quite a few enemies in the process.

The title screen for Kickle Cubicle is nothing to write home about.

But if you plug in a second controller and hold down its A Button while you turn your NES on, and then keep on holding it until the title screen shows up, you'll notice that the little blue thing has been replaced by a certain Radical Ninja

He doesn't actually affect anything else so far as I can tell, but I bet you didn't know he was in there.

In Super Mario Bros. 3 the power ups that come out of the ? blocks will most of the time go to the right.

But occasionally they'll go off to the left

And if you're not prepared for it, you might lose them. But, why do they occasionally go left in the first place?

Take a look at the ? blocks

Where you hit the block determines which direction the powerup will go. Hit the left side and it goes to the right. Hit the right side and it goes left.

You can use this to force the powerups to go where you want them, instead of possibly off into a pit.

This also applies to any of the 1up mushrooms and starmen.

Some people think that Shatterhand is the epitome of NES gaming. I'm not quite sure that I agree.

But it's pretty tough, regardless, especially the boss fights. But there's a way you can practice them without having to go through the stages first.

First, go to the title screen

Then (quickly) press the following buttons:

A, A, A, A, B, B, B, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A, B

Done quickly enough, you'll be taken to a screen loaded with goodies

You can hear any of the sounds the game has to offer or, more interestingly, you can play any of the bosses

But you don't have the aid of your little mech thing, so it's going to be a little harder than it could be. But practice enough it at, and it won't matter.

A while back I told you where you could make appear a money bag appear in Castlevania so that you couldn't actually collect it. But there are several more that you can actually collect.

Take the very beginning of the game, for example.

Most people will collect the powerups, and walk into Dracula's castle. But, if you hop over the entrance to the castle instead...

Free money!

You just have to remember to jump back over the entrance when you go to collect it, or you'll go in the door instead.

The Tales Of... games are pretty good RPGs, but like a lot of RPGs, the plots sometimes get a little bit tough to follow. But you have a (not very) secret weapon.

Check out my status screen from Tales of Symphonia for the Game Cube:

The bottom-right option is 'synopsis', which shows a list of topics

which tell you a brief recap of what's happened so far, and what you should do next.

Which is pretty awesome if you have a tough time following the story for some reason, plus it gives you insights into how the story's playing out that you may have missed otherwise. Which, when the story gets as complicated as it does in this game, that's not a bad thing.

This one's kind of fun. In Final Fantasy 6 for the SNES (otherwise known as Final Fantasy 3 in North America) there's a couple of bugs that will let you defeat just about any enemy or group of enemies with essentially no effort.

First, get into battle with a party that has Cyan in it. Then have him charge up his SwdTech to level 2 (Retort).

Then, before he has a chance to use it (i.e. before he gets hit with a physical attack) turn him into an Imp.

Then kill him off with a magical attack.

Then revive him.

Now the fun begins.

As soon as a physical attack is made, from anyone to anyone else, Cyan will counter it.

And, because of a couple of bugs, he'll continue to counterattack until every enemy on the screen is dead.

You might run into a problem if an enemy on the screen is invisible or otherwise can't die from physical attacks, so be careful. Once this bug is initiated, you can't do anything else until the battle is over.

On The Ball is a little bit of an oddball game. You have to guide your little marble through the stages by rotating the stage and letting gravity take care of the rest. There's a huge variety of stages (one hundred of 'em!) to keep you busy for a while.

But what if you went to the password screen and put in this sequence of characters?:

You'd be taken back to the title screen, with a snazzy new option!

Pick your round and get on it!

But, be warned, those higher levels are pretty ridiculous.

I mean, they're at the end of the game for a reason, you know.

Take a look at this page from my Super Street Fighter 2 manual.

In particular, check out the entry for 'blood type'. You might look at that and think, "Why would I care about that? I'm not going to be working in a fictional hospital where this fictional guy might go to get treatment." But there's more to it than that.

If you dig enough, you can find blood types for lots of characters, not just Street Fighters.

But why?

It turns out that there's this theory in Japanese culture that different blood types have different personality traits. For instance my blood type, type O, says (from this site) that I'm

"People with blood type O people are outgoing, energetic and social. They are the most flexible of the blood types. They easily start up projects but often have trouble following through because they give up easily. They are flighty and not too dependable. O types always say what's on their mind. They value the opinion of others and like to be the center of attention. Also, people with O blood are extremely self-confident."

Does that describe me? Kind of, but then again, so do parts of the others. So, take the profiles with an appropriately-sized grain of salt.

You can get more info at Wikipedia.