Pro Tip of the Day

Let's just get this out of the way right up front: Yes, there is a game called Mr. Nutz. It stars a squirrel.

It's kind of long and kind of hard (*snicker*), and you get passwords to kind of help you along.

But what if you went to the Password screen, and instead of entering the password you had, you entered "VITAMI"?

Well, then you'd be taken directly to the ending sequence!

Which, like a lot of the games of the time, isn't all that special.

But don't worry about that.

Casino Kid is one of those games where you have to take a paltry sum and gamble your way to a fortune.

I'm real bad at that, so I prefer to start with a fortune and then gamble my way down to peanuts. To do that in this game, I go to the Password screen

And tell the game that "I AM A RICHMAN" (using "FORWARD" for the spaces).

Then highlight END and hold down Start + A Button until the game starts.

The result?

I start out with $100,000 instead of $500

Which means that it takes me much longer to lose my shirt.

Bonus!

Mega Man 7 is a pretty decent game, even though it expands the universe quite a bit and adds a bunch of new characters to the mix (other than the obligatory Robot Masters), like Bass, who antagonizes Mega Man throughout the game. But what if you wanted to arrange a one on one fight between Bass and Mega Man?

Well, hold on to your hat.

First, go to the Password Entry and put in this password:

But! Instead of just hitting Start to continue on, hold L + R, and then press Start. Done right, you'll be taken to the Character Select Screen

Where you can set up battles in any combination of Mega Man vs. Bass that you want

The guys are missing some of their moves, they can't slide or have more than one shot on the screen at a time, so the battles are slow and plodding. But hey, both guys are that way, so it's pretty even.

Best 2 out of 3 wins!

Have you ever been playing On The Ball and got tired of seeing that blue marble hurtling through the mazes?

Well, you could go to the Password screen and put in the password: GFXJF

Done right, you'll be whisked to a screen where you can pick alternate balls... even though they don't look particularly ball-like

But they behave just like the ol' blue marble does, so don't worry about that

Yeah, they look kind of funny, but it's nice to have a change of scenery once in a while.

In Dragon Warrior, like most Role Playing Games, your guy starts out pretty weak.

But!

If you start a new quest and use the name "TEST" instead of something good

You'll find that your starting statistics are slightly higher!

Making the game a bit easier.

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!

Mega Man 3's password system may look pretty complicated, but it's actually pretty easy to figure out. For example, it uses the placement of a single red dot to record how many Energy Tanks you have, and you can totally use this to your advantage.

For example, take this code that I got for having beaten no Robot Masters and having no Energy Tanks.

Consulting the chart below, I know that a single red dot in square C5 means 0 Energy Tanks. From there, it's a simple matter of moving that dot up to A6

To start the game with 9 Energy Tanks, the maximum!

From there, it's a simple matter of recording your password, moving the dot, and continuing on each time you need a refill!

And here's the list of dots and their Energy Tank attributes

      #   Dot Position
0      C5
1      E6
2      E4
3      B4
4      A5
5      C1
6      D2
7      C3
8      F2
9      A6

The Lolo games are pretty tough, but maybe you've gotten pretty good that them. You've practiced enough and can finish the levels backward and forward without batting an eyelash. You're ready for the Pro levels.

The second Lolo game has four Pro levels, accessible by going to the password screen and using the password PRO*, where "*" is either A, B, C, or D, depending on what Pro level you want to play.

And these levels are doozies, check 'em out.

Pro A:

Pro B:

Pro C:

And Pro D:

And, yeah, there's only four of them, but they're tough. But you're up to the challenge, right?

The Guardian Legend is a kind of weird game. You have stages that alternate between spaceship shooting (kind of like Gradius) and foot-based action adventure (kind of like The Legend of Zelda).

But what if you don't have time to (or just don't want to) play the adventure stages?

Well, you could go to the Password Entry screen and enter the super-hard-to-remember password, "TGL"

And hit 'END'

Then start the game as normal. After making your way through the first stage and beating the boss

Instead of going to the Adventure Mode stage, you'll just mosey on to Stage 2

Greatly speeding up this game!

Thanks to reader J for this tip!

The first Actraiser was a unique game, it had side-scrolling action stages interspersed with Sim-City-esque building stages. Which mostly means that if you want to get to the Big Bad at the end of the game, you've got a lot of work to do.

Or do you?

You could fire up the sequel, Actraiser 2, go to the Password screen, and enter this password

If you do, you'll be whisked away to the final battleground of the first game!

Where you can fight the final boss from that game while in the second one. Why would you do that? To see if you still have the chops to defeat it. What happens if you do?

Uhm... I don't know. I wasn't actually able to do that...

But!

If you can, let me know!