Demon Sword is a tough game, which means that you're going to be seeing this a lot:

Which means that you're going to have to start the whole thing over... or does it?

Instead of just pressing Start to go back to the title screen, what if you held Down on the D-Pad and pressed B, A, B, A?

A password? And the option to continue? Awesome!

And to put in your passwords?

Go to the title screen

Hold Up on the D-Pad, press A, B, A, B

And you're back at the password entry screen!

Makes progressing so much easier.

In the NES Adventure Island game, your powerups are hidden in eggs for some reason. The trouble is, though, that some of them are invisible. So how do you find them? Excellent question!

Check out the range you get on these stone axes.

You're going to want to throw them absolutely everywhere because occasionally

They disappear short of where they should go.

So you go to that spot

Jump

And collect whatever was in your Secret Egg

Happy hunting!

Remember a while back that I told you how to get lots of 1ups in the original Super Mario Bros.? Turns out that you can pull off a similar feat in its super-hard sequel, too.

At the very beginning of the game you see this thing.

Which houses a hidden mushroom. Hit it from underneath to pop it out of there.

Then get the koopa over on the right-most block and strategically break the rest like so:

Then, wait until the koopa is about halfway off its platform and jump straight down on it. Done right, you'll start bouncing.

And just like before, you'll eventually start racking up the 1ups!

And the best part is that on the Super NES version, the counter actually stops correctly at 127 lives, so there's no danger of going over and losing them all.

And you're going to need every one of those lives, trust me.

All over the populated areas of the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past you find these chickens.

They don't do much except cluck and run away if you hit them with your sword, so you might get bored and just start hacking away at them. They never run out of health, so you can keep it up for a while, until...

The distressed chicken calls in the cavalry and they swarm the screen! These chickens are invulnerable and dangerous to touch. I just hope you were near a doorway so you can run and hide. If not, the onslaught will stop eventually.

Oh, and this works on the skeleton chickens in the Dark World, too.

Ys III: Wanderers from Ys is one of those games that I played and really liked the music to (bonus pro tip, the game name, "Ys" is pronounced very similar to "Ease"), so wouldn't it be great if you could listen to the music any time you wanted?

Well, then, good news!

First, bring up your menu by hitting Select on controller 1

Then press Select on controller 2

Ta da!

Now you can listen to all the sounds and music that the game has to offer.

And as a bonus, the song you pick will continue to play after you close the menu and until you change areas.

Pretty awesome!

The NES Legend of Zelda holds a special place in the hearts of a lot of people, even the title screen is enough to bring back a flood of fond (and maybe not so fond) memories. Check it out:

Now, if that image didn't bring back floods of memories, then I have a tip you might be interested in.

Normally, after you finish the game once, a new, slightly harder, version of the game is presented to you. Stuff's moved all around, so your maps that you might have made the first time around will be all but useless. Which makes for a new experience.

But, what if you've finished the game before and just want to jump straight to the second quest without having to bother with the first one?

Easy!

Go to the Name Registration screen and enter your name as ZELDA.

You'll see Link holding the telltale sword that shows that he's ready to tackle the second quest.

Good luck. You'll need it.

It should probably come as no surprise by now that I like video game music. Especially from games that have good music, like Castlevania III.

You probably recognize the title screen if you've ever played this game:

But, hold down A and B while you press Start and:

Ta da!

You use Up and Down to choose your song, B to play it, and A to stop it. Perfect for making your own mix CD.

Which we'll have to talk about another day.

In the original Super Mario Bros. (and its huge number of remakes) you get to slide down a flagpole at the end of each level.

Once you slide down and go into the mini-fort, you might see some fireworks, which give you 500 points each. There might be one, three, six, or zero.

But what triggers it?

Great question!

The amount of fireworks you get is dependent on the last digit of the timer when you hit the flagpole. If the digit it 1, 3, or 6, then that's how many fireworks you get. Anything else nets zero.

I find that the best way to guarantee a 6 is to stand on the top step as far left as you can. Then, when the timer's last digit hits 9, hold B, run and jump onto the flagpole. Then you get the 5,000 points and six fireworks for 3,000 more, which nets you a total of 8,000 points (plus the bonus for whatever's left on the timer).

Not too bad!

Oh, and this tip only works on levels that actually have a flagpole. So it's a no-go in the big castle levels.

In Nightshade you need to go around doing Good Deeds (tm) to gain popularity. The game's crammed full of them, and some are hidden better than others.

Take this dinosaur skeleton in the museum for example.

If you examine it, you find a loose bone, which you can TAKE, but it causes the skeleton to collapse, which causes you to lose popularity, which is a bad thing.

But, you can then OPERATE the pile of bones left on the floor to create:

The correct dino! Which nets you more popularity than you lost.

The bone you removed was extra, so you get to keep it to use later on in your quest.

Good luck!

I've mentioned it before, but it bears repeating, Battletoads is a tough game. And you can take certain measures to pad your lives a bit, but you'll find out pretty quickly that you need more.

So, make your way to Level 2, the big tree-thing. And find these weird silver bugs with stingers.

They only take one hit to defeat, but they kind of bounce up when you hit them. Hit them again when they bounce off the wall. Then hit them again and again until.

1up!

Once they give up the 1up, they fall down off the bottom of the screen. And you can do this once for each of the bugs that you find in the tree.

Just be warned that the other bugs can sting the one that you're bouncing off the wall and if they get the last hit in, you get nothing.