In Super Mario Bros. 2 if you pause the game

Then press Up + A + B on controller 2, then unpause, your life is over.

And you might be thinking to yourself, "That's stupid, why would I want to do that?"

Well, let's suppose that you were playing stage 5-2 (the one where you have to ride an Albatoss or Beezo across a giant pit)

And at the end you're feeling silly and you run and jump up on the Mask Gate before it opens.

And just like that, you're stuck in a wall.

There are only two ways out, sacrificing one of your extra lives or resetting your NES.

Guess which one I recommend?

Like a lot of Looney Tunes based games, Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions is kind of long and tough, due to several factors.

You do get to buy some powerups, but your initial cashflow leaves a little to be desired.

But what you could do, would be to start a new game, and when the title card comes up, quickly press

Left, Left, Right, Right, Up, Down, Y, A, B, X

Done right, you'll hear Daffy say: "Mother..."

Now when you go to your initial purchasing screen, you'll notice that you have lots more dollars at your disposal, you have lots more lives to play with, and you're at the maximum on your 'nutty attacks'.

Which should make the game much easier.

Is Tetris Attack too easy for you? Playing against the computer just not giving you the challenge that it once did? Well, you can ratchet the difficulty up one more notch... if you feel up to the challenge.

All you have to do is start a new game, go to the difficulty select

Highlight 'Hard', hold L & Up, and press A. Done right, the background will go from pink to red

Letting you know that you're in for a challenge.

Are you up to it?

Killer Instinct, like a lot of fighting games, has a ridiculously unbalanced final boss character. One that will nearly make you break your controller in frustration the first few times you face him.

But what if there were a way to use him as your own character?

Well, good news for you!

If you select Cinder

And then on the Vs. screen hold Right on the control pad and quickly press

L, R, X, B, Y, A

Done correctly, you should hear the announcer say "Eyedol", and once you get into the match

He will be yours to command! He's slightly toned down from when the computer's playing him, and he's kind of tough to maneuver. But, hey, you're playing the boss! That counts for something, right?

Basing a video game on a movie that itself was based on a comic that was written in the 1900s seems like an odd thing to do, but Little Nemo The Dream Master is just that, apparently.

The game's stages are actually a little on the long side, but you have a secret weapon at your disposal.

Go to the title screen

And press

Up, Select, Left, Right, A, A, B

Done right you'll have a new option, "Dream Select".

If you move your cursor down to it, you can press the A button to hear a sound, every time you do, you'll skip that level. Press it once to start on Level 2, twice for Level 3, and so on.

Which is an easy way to continue more or less where you left off if you decide to give up and turn your NES off for a while.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was a pretty terrible movie, which, for some reason, got re-imagined as an even worse Saturday morning cartoon series, which in turn had a video game based on it.

But say you're playing the game and you run out of lives.

Normally you see this message (if you have any continues left)

But!

If you hold Down + Left + A + B, before the screen comes up, a different message appears

Kind of sappy, eh?

In some of the Capcom-branded fighting games, the rigmarole you have to go through to select a secret character can be quite complicated. But it isn't always.

Take X-Men vs. Street Fighter, for example.

All you have to do is go to the top row of fighters, any of them will do.

And then press Up on the joystick.

And Akuma is yours for the choosing!

What could be simpler?

I never really played much Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, mostly because I didn't know there wasn't such a thing as "Beginner's Dungeons & Dragons".

Nevertheless, there were a few games that were released for the NES, like DragonStrike, which is a game where you take a dragon around and blow stuff up.

But what if you went to the copyright screen

And then pressed

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

Then the game would reset, and with the exception of the copyright screen, the rest of the text in the game will be in Japanese

And to reverse the effect, you either turn the game off and back on, or do the trick again at the copyright screen.

Now, why you'd want to if you didn't know how to read Japanese?

Well, you probably wouldn't.

It's really no great secret that the Ninja Gaiden series of games are tough. Ninja Gaiden 3 is particularly unforgiving because you only have 5 continues at your disposal instead of the unlimited continues of the previous games.

But we can fix that... sort-of.

First, turn on your game and press the Start button to go to the title screen, but don't start your game.

Instead, let the title screen fade out and the opening cinematic will start. Press Start to go back to the title screen. Once you've seen the title screen eight times total, hold Up + Left + A + B + Select and press Start.

You won't get a confirmation or anything, so you'll have to spend all of your lives to check. If you were successful, your continues should have gone up from 5 to 99

Will that be enough for you to complete the game? Probably not at first, but it's a start.

The Smash TV games are pretty tough. Mostly because you go up against thousands of enemies and your guy can only take one hit before he dies. So unless you spend lots of time mastering this game (or lots of quarters if you're playing the arcade version) you're never going to see the advanced levels.

Unless...

You go to the screen where you select 1 or 2 players

And press Right, Right, Up, Down, R, L. You should hear a voice yell, "Bingo!". Choose the amount of players, hit Start and

You can start pretty well wherever you want!

As an added bonus, if you hold Select before you enter a room, and keep holding it, the enemies won't even appear.

So you can pretty much explore the studios to your heart's content.

Double bonus!