Krusty's Super Fun House, like pretty much all the Simpsons games, is pretty tough. You have to take Krusty on a tour of the rooms in his Fun House to rid it of an infestation of purple mice. It's a puzzler, of sorts.

But say you get tired of the puzzles, or you just give up. You could start the game over and change the default password of "HI KIDS"

to the much less obvious " JOSHUA " (with a space at either end)

Which will let you enter any door in the Fun House you want. So just enter and immediately leave all of the different areas to instantly clear them. Then, head to the exit and marvel at how such a tough game could have such a lame ending.

I warned you!

Dracula's a pretty tough customer in Castlevania, and if you die while fighting him, you only get very few powerups to fight him again, making things tougher.

But!

You could go back down the staircase leading to his chamber, and then back up again. If you do, the candelabras will reset and you can collect the powerups again. And as long as you don't walk far enough to the left to trigger the boss fight, you can repeat as many times as you want. And using some techniques I discussed earlier, you can really load Simon to the teeth with weaponry

Making this a slightly slower version of the method in Castlevania IV

Occasionally when I observe people playing games with a joystick (especially in an arcade), I'll see them grab the joystick full-on with their hand and hang onto it like it's the only thing keeping them from falling off a cliff.

Which works, yeah, but it definitely hinders your experience by requiring that you use your entire arm to play which results in:

1. a loss of fine-control, you have to use the gross movements of your arm and
2. increasing the rate you get fatigued, moving your whole arm over the course of a few games takes more energy than you think

   The solution?

   Grip the joystick lightly between the thumb and the index finger, using the middle finger as well if that's more comfortable for you

   

   You get more accurate control and don't use so much energy, which leads to longer playing sessions. It's totally win-win!

In Super Mario Bros. 2, you can skip large amounts of the game if you're so inclined by using the jumping abilities of The Princess and Luigi.

Take Stage 1-2, for example. Instead of going down the Jar to grab a key, unlock a door, and go through a cave, you could choose Luigi and head for the Ninjis that are standing near the door.

Pick one up and chuck it so it lands somewhere underneath the real high green mesa.

It will start jumping

Hop on its head and begin charging for a Super Jump (by holding Down) and hit the Jump button when the Ninji is at the apex of its jump. Done right, you'll be on top of the hill!

And ready to run right to the end of the stage!

Cutting this stage down to just a couple of minutes.

In F-Zero, you have four hovercars to choose from. All have slightly different stats in areas like top speed, accelleration, and 'grip'.

But they have another attribute that isn't shown on this screen: they start in the same order every time. So what that means is that every race, no matter what position you finished in, the Fire Stingray (the pink car) will always begin the next race in the pole position.

Add to that its good 'grippiness', and you have a great car for beginners.

So go nuts!

In Nightshade you have two meters, Health and Popularity.

You gain popularity by beating up villains and doing generally superhero-type things, and you lose it by being defeated in battle. There are certain events where you need to have your popularity built up pretty high to trigger. so what would you do if your popularity dipped too low, there was no more crime to fight, and you got stuck?

So what I do is, once my popularity is maxed out and I see some kind of thing that needs doing

I just pass it by until I need the popularity boost. Which doesn't sound like a Superheroic thing to do, but, hey, I'm a pragmatist when it comes to this stuff.

There's really no way around it, Blaster Master's a hard game. And when you get through Area 7, the controls start to change and mess with you.

In Area 6 you acquire Wall 1, which lets your tank go up walls, and in Area 7 you acquire Wall 2, which lets your tank roll across ceilings.

Which is pretty great until you try to jump off a platform. Since you have these great new Wall attachments, your tank will go down the ledge instead of flying through the air.

Meaning that when you jump, you jump off the side of the ledge, potentially into Doom(tm).

So, instead, what you have to to is, right before your tank hits the edge of the platform, briefly let go of the direction that you're holding, then jump. Once in the air, you can start holding the direction again. Done right, you'll jump pretty much as far as you did before.

Yeah, and it's kind of annoying that you have to relearn how your tank handles 7/8 of the way through the game, but at least it's not in impossible feat.

So let's say that you're playing through The Adventures of Lolo and you accidentally make a puzzle unsolvable

There's no time limit, so what do you do? Reset your NES and use the last password that you got to start over?

Well, yeah, you could do that, but there's a better way.

If you press the Select button, Lolo will do... something, and lose a life, resetting the level

You can do this as many times as you want... until you run out of lives, but since continues are unlimited, it's not a huge deal.

Just be aware that you're going to be applying this liberally as you progress through the game, it gets kind of tough.

The red shells in Super Mario Kart are pretty useful, mostly due to their homing capabilities.

But they're not perfect.

Say you're in Battle Mode. You have a Red Shell and your opponent is stopped in the middle of a wide open area

You drive toward him and start to powerslide so that you just miss him

Then you fire the shell just before hitting him, so it sails right past

If done right, the shell will go around and around your opponent's kart, but since the turning radius of the shells isn't that great, will never hit him

Don't believe me? Check out this video

The shell will keep orbiting around your opponent until he moves or the shell hits something else on the course!

Of course, I was never able to find much of a use for this, other than it's something that looks kind of neat, but maybe you can.

Today we're going to look at one of the slightly more advanced skill chains you can do in Tetris Attack / Puzzle League, something that I'm going to call a Delayed Skill Chain.

Starting with this puzzle here

we first slide the Green Tile to the right so that it falls down and creates a 4-combo

Then, moving quickly, we move the first Yellow Tile over so that it falls on the Green Tiles as they clear

Then we (quickly!) move the second Yellow Tile over to the gap between the two that are already there

So that it falls to where the Green Tiles were before the other Yellow Tiles fall

So when they do fall, you get a quick chain!

And since it's a little bit easier to see the timing in video form, I've prepared a short clip for you