It's Konami code time again! You know, that mysterious code that is in a ton of games, and rumored to be in a ton more?

Well here's another one.

In Contra, you take one of two shirtless commandos up against an army of alien invaders. Don't let the title screen fool you, they take those tank tops off when they head in to the field of battle.

But, while you're looking at the title screen, after it finishes sliding in from the right and before the music stops playing, put in the ol' Konami Code.

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

If you're playing with two players, you might want to press Select before you press Start, so you both get some love.

Done correctly and quickly enough and...

30 lives! Which is great since your guys are incredibly fragile. Which you would think might make them a poor choice for going up against a few thousand heavily armed (and armored) foes, but maybe they like a challenge?

Mega Man 7 is made by Capcom, who likes to have some fun with their games sometimes. Take Mega Man 7, for example. It's pretty standard as far as Mega Man games go. But for a little treat, move your cursor over Shade Man's stage

hold down the B button and press Start.

You'll probably notice something different right away (though the difference doesn't show up in screen shots)

The tune for the stage intro and the stage itself change to something a bit different than the norm.

And if you don't recognize the music, I'd suggest you go back and play this game for a few minutes.

You might remember some time ago I posted the fairly well known continue trick for Super Mario Bros.

But all is not lost! Once the title screen pops back up, hold down the A Button and press Start to start back up at the beginning of the world where you bought the farm.

And would you believe that this trick holds true for other games as well? Games like Kung-Fu Heroes?

First, lose all your lives

Then go back to the title screen, hold A and press Start, and you're back in action, approximately where you left off.

Pretty snazzy, eh?

Astyanax is a game (very) loosely related to the Greek story about a kid with the same name.

And the game is pretty tough and unforgiving, which means you're going to see this a lot

Which isn't all that fun, really.

So you might consider going back to the title screen

And pressing: Up, Up, Up, Up, Down, Left, Right, Up, and then Start. Doing this will make Astyanax completely invincible.

In fact, enemies won't even be able to touch him. You just have to have him walk to the end of the game.

Watch out for the pits, though. Invincible or not, those still kill him.

The Super NES version of Lemmings is pretty much like every other version of Lemmings. You have to make your lemmings get to the exit of the stages instead of dying a grisly death.

But take a look at the title screen.

What if you hold down Select and then press Start instead of just pressing regular Start?

Why, you get options! You can change your controller configuration, and

You can listen to the various musical pieces from throughout the game. Which doesn't sound like much, but you get to listen to a silly version of a Cancan song, so that's something, right?

Gradius is pretty tough, mostly because your ship can only take one hit before it explodes. You can collect these orangey powerup things, though, and make your ship more maneuverable, get extra firepower, and get some shielding up.

But there's an easier way.

Just pause the game anywhere

Then put in the Konami Code:

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

Then unpause the game and you'll have some speed powerups, some Options (those orange things following you around), missiles, and a shield.

Just make sure you don't lose once you put the code in, since you can only do it once per game.

There's no way around it, Battletoads is a tough game. Those three lives you get at the beginning of the game start to look insufficient pretty early on.

But, you can give yourself a slight edge.

At the 'press start' screen you can hold Down on the control pad + A + B and press Start. Then you'll have five Toads at your disposal instead of three.

And, yeah, this works for the Super NES version also.

Mega Man's jump in Mega Man 3 is pretty much the same as it is in all of the Mega Man games, pretty pathetic:

This is pretty inconvenient since the boss robots, and most of the other robots in the game for that matter, are far more maneuverable than you are and can jump to nearly the top of the screen. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could do the same?

Well, hang on to your headwear.

If you plug in a second controller and have someone hold down Right on the control pad, suddenly Mega Man can jump much higher. How high? This high!

Even better is that if you fall into a pit, as long as the Right arrow is being held you can just jump back out.

Just a note, I couldn't get this to work in the Mega Man Anniversary Collection version of the game. It's old-school NES version only, I'm afraid.

I'm not very good at Captain Skyhawk. I'd like to say that it's because I could never find it at my local video game store, and thus wasn't able to spend much time with it... So I will.

But, assuming you do find it and decide to play it, you have to take the good Captain through a series of missions, each more impossible than the last.

But if you get bored doing the same mission over and over again because you're too poor of a pilot for this game, you do have one recourse... other than turning off the game.

Just plug in a second controller and press Up + B. Once that happens, you win the mission!

You don't get any points or money to purchase armaments, but if you planned on skipping the next stage anyway, who cares?

I mentioned Bad Dudes the other day when I was talking about finding our friend Karnov in more games than just his own. The game was brought to the NES, but since putting quarters in your NES doesn't actually get you any continues, the game's actually pretty tough.

So, you do what I do to make it easier on yourself. Go to the title screen.

Then pick up controller 2 and (quickly) press "B, A, Down, Up, Down, Up", then Start on controller one. Done right, you'll see this:

Which probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you, so when you get into the game proper, it displays correctly

Now, with that many chances, you'd practically have to try to fail to rescue the president from the ninjas.