The NES Ghostbusters game isn't very good, but that didn't stop me from playing the heck out of it when I was younger. Mostly because I didn't have much better to do.

Fast forward a few years and I find mention of a technique for raising money that I had never heard of. It's all over the Internet, and boils down to:

buy the Ghost Alarm for $2000 and sell it back for $3000. Keep doing that until you have all the money you need.

But, I didn't have a copy of Ghostbusters to test, so I went out and found the only copy of the game within 10 miles of my house at great personal expense ($3.95 American).

I popped the game in and went to work.

I immediately went to the Shop:

Bought a Ghost Alarm for $2000

And sold it... for $1000

Then I kept doing that until I couldn't buy anything else, and the game was unwinnable because I didn't have any equipment.

But, given the prevalence and specificity of this tip, I'm thinking that there might be some revisions floating around out there that have this bug, but it certainly wasn't in any that I had.

Double Dragon 2 is a tough game, especially if you're just starting out with it. But if you're playing by yourself, there's a way to give yourself a slight edge.

First, pick a 2-player 'B' game, so that you can hurt your partner. Then, after you've cleared the enemies away, start beating up on the prone second player.

Keep on beating him up until he's gone through all of his lives. As you're eliminating the dead weight, you'll notice that your number of remaining lives is climbing. Keep on going until you have them all

Which will definitely come in handy, trust me.

The Warp Zone in Super Mario Bros. 3 is a little different from the one in the first game, it's its own separate World, World 9.

What determines which row of pipes you have access to is what World you were in when you used your Whistle. Anything that's 7 or higher will take you to the bottom row, which leads to World 8. And since we're in World 9, we can use the whistle while in the Warp Zone to...

Go straight to the shortcut to World 8!

Which means that you can do this from pretty much anywhere you want, so long as you've collected at least two of the three Warp Whistles.

Just be aware that World 8 is pretty tough, and if you haven't spent time in the earlier Worlds preparing (i.e. gathering supplies) you're going to have a pretty hard time of it.

As far back as the original Game Boy hardware, Nintendo's portable systems could output stereo sound. But all of the systems have a very poor delivery system: tiny, tinny speakers.

But!

Most of their systems (save for the Game Boy Advance SP) came with the 1/8'' phono plug on the bottom for headphones. Which instantly makes the game sound better (it's how I first discovered that the final battle in Donkey Kong '94 had music mixed in stereo), and is fine, but I like to take it one step further.

I went out and purchased this from my local Radio Shack:

It has the phono plug on one end, and the left/right RCA plugs on the other end.

What does that mean?

It means that I can plug the output of my portable game system directly into my surround-sound system.

And that means that playing games like Elite Beat Agents and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow takes on a whole new dimension.

The SNES Civilization game can be tricky, you have to be equal things diplomat, economist, and military strategist. But, sometimes things just don't go your way.

Like occasionally your tank will be killed by a warrior with a stick for a weapon. Or your cannon gets destroyed by a diplomat with zero attack strength.

It happens... somehow.

But, you can minimize damages.

The game is designed to let you save anywhere, so long as it's your turn. So all you have to do is save right before you attack someone

And then if you lose, just quit and reload the game. Keep on reloading until the battle goes the way you want.

Tedious? Yes. Cheap? Yes.

But, hey, it's a single-player game, so it's alright.

In Mega Man 5 you get these M-Tanks which are very helpful. Just like the E-Tank, they restore all of your life energy, but unlike the old-fashioned E-Tanks, they restore all of your weapon energy as well.

But, what would happen if you already had full everything when you used your M-Tank, hm?

Well, you would hear the sound like you collected a 1UP, and all non-boss enemies on the screen would turn into 1UPs!

Which is very handy for stocking up on lives before taking on a particularly tough challenge.

I've been thinking about Zombie Nation lately (no, not that Zombie Nation, the other one). It's pretty tough, but you have one secret weapon up your sleeve... if your character had sleeves, that is.

When you run low on health

Pause the game and put in the ol' Konami Code, even though Konami had nothing to do with this game

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

Unpause, and you'll have full health!

But, beware, this can only be done one time across all of your continues, so make sure you really need it before you do it.

Despite playing a lot of Toejam & Earl, I was never actually able to finish off the game. Heck, I was never even close. That's why, when I want to see the ending, I pause the game (usually at the beginning to make things way easier)

Then I press

Up + A + B + C, Right + A, Down + B, Left + C

which makes a 'ding' sound, and doesn't appear to do much until you go to the next stage. The next stage will have a ship part on it, collect it and...

Bam! It's the last piece!

Collect it and it's Ending Sequence for you!

If you're like most everyone on the planet you hold your controller like this.

Which is fine, until you get to a point where you need to press one or both of the buttons quickly and repeatedly. Like in the Wii Punch-Out!! game, where you have to rapidly press the 1 and 2 buttons to regain health. And unless you have some kind of SuperThumb(tm) you're just not going to be able to press those buttons as quickly as you'd like, at least not for very long.

That's why, when the situation arises, I quickly flip my grip around so that my index and middle fingers are on the button (or buttons) that I need

That way I can tap my fingers back and forth to press the buttons far faster than I can with just my thumb

With the added benefit that my thumb doesn't start to cramp after a few minutes of button-mashing, which is always a plus.

In the first castle you come across in Super Mario World, you have to deal with this fence that you can climb on. Trouble is, that it's swarming with Koopas.

But, you can totally use it to your advantage.

You have two main ways to dispatch Koopas on the fence: you can punch them if they're on the opposite side, or you can descend on them from above and stomp on them... sort-of

Now, like other Mario games, if you continue to stomp on them without hitting the ground, your point values for each successive stomp increase.

And, since we're climbing around on a fence, we're staying well above the ground. And that means that you can take your time methodically stomping on Koopas to eventually get

a 1UP! There are enough Koopas crawling around on the fence that you can get several 1UPs before you have to get back on the ground.

And, if you're hard up for extra lives at that point, just swan dive into the lava, restart the stage, and do it again. As long as you're gaining more lives than you're losing, you'll come out ahead.