Kid Niki is full of hidden passages and bonus stages, some of which are... different.

Like take this spot in Stage 4, for example. It's the platform directly after the second moving platform.

Jump up a few times and the next platform will turn into a fish!

Walk off the platform, directly into the fish's mouth and...

You're in!

You traverse the length of the fish (there's nothing in it but bones), and you come to the exit

Well, how else did you expect to get out of a fish?

If you've never played Rival Turf!, it's kind of like Final Fight, you run around various cities across the country beating up wave after wave of identical twins.

And just like lots of other games, if you end up running out of lives and continues, you have to start over. But if your score is high enough, you get to enter your name in the High Score Table. If you pretend for a moment that your name is 'CHRCONF'

And then hit 'EX', you'll be taken to a secret screen

Where you get to change the names of all the characters in the game. There aren't any restrictions that I could find, so go nuts

And that should make having to repeat the first few stages a little less tedious

Toward the beginning of James Pond 2, you'll find a group of collectibles laid out as such:

Not too exciting, right?

But!

If you collect them in this order:

Cake
Hammer
Earth
Apple
Tap (at least, I'm pretty sure it's a Tap... like a spigot)

(the first letters of which conveniently spells out the word 'CHEAT'), you become invincible... for several minutes, in fact. I was able to clear out two whole areas and part of a third before it wore off. Just don't get too complacent, it will wear off without much of a warning.

Play enough Super Mario World and you'll eventually make your way to the Special area where eight fairly tough levels with kind of silly names await you.

But if you sit at the map screen long enough, for several minutes, you might notice the music changes to something that sounds oddly familiar, the theme from the first game!

Don't have access to a save file close enough to the Special area? Or don't have a Super NES within arm's length? That's OK, I've prepared a sample for you right here in mp3 form.

Make no mistake, Kid Chameleon is long, difficult, and hates you. But if you've played enough of it and you want to check out what the last boss is like, then I have some good news.

First, make your way to the end of Blue Lake Woods 2 (the second stage of the game) and you'll see these P blocks over the flag.

Hop on top of them and make your way to the last one just over the flag. While there, press Down + Right + Jump + 'Special' all at the same time. Done right the stage will end and you'll have an express ticket to Plethora, the final boss

He's pretty tough to defeat, but if you run out of continues, it's pretty easy to get back and try it again.

Good luck!

It's the first of the new year, and that means (among other things) that it's pretty much the middle of Winter, and that means that (around here, at any rate) that it's really cold outside. But I can get some company.

All I have to do is start up Bookworm Adventures, go to the title screen.

And type the word: Winter

Then Lex dons a scarf, produces a hot beverage, and prepares to weather the, erm, weather.

Which sounds like great advice on a day like today.

Today is Christmas, so I decided to fire up my GameCube and throw in a copy of The Simpsons: Hit & Run, and I was greeted with this:

The halls are decked, and Homer is passed out on the couch in a Santa outfit. Sounds like something to aspire to on a day like today.

Also, I understand that this works on the PS2 and Xbox versions as well, as long as the clock is set to the correct date.

Today is Thanksgiving here in the United States, so I thought we'd go with a Thanksgiving-themed tip for today.

Just start up the game, go to the title screen

And type the word 'gobble' (without quotes) on your keyboard. Done right, Lex will momentarily don a turkey outfit

How appropriate!

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?

It's been a while since we talked about the ol' Konami Code. But it makes appearances in more than just video games, believe it or not.

Take Google's RSS reader, cleverly named Google Reader. If you log in, you'll see the sites you're following on the left-hand side. If you put in the Konami Code (using the arrow keys for the directions and the A and B keys for A and B):

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

Then your background will turn into this:

What's the significance? Probably nothing other than at least one of the people working on the Reader is a video game fan. And that, in itself, is pretty awesome.