I am going to enlighten you on things you may already know. These are the tricks that everyone’s older brother showed them, the tricks that made games go from “GRAGH I CAN’T DO THIS!!” to “Ha-ha! Take that sucker!” I’m gonna start this list off with one of my personal favorites-
Donatello vs. Rocksteady-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES) TMNT for the NES was…. Weird. Instead of fighting traditionalninja turtle enemies like foot soldiers, you fought guys with chainsaws and legs made out of animated fire. Konami redeemed this oddity with a classic ninja turtles arcade game a little later, so we’ll let the weirdness slide. Fortunately, you do get to butt heads with a few classic turtle foes, one of which is Rocksteady, at the end of World 1. Now this guy can run, headbutt, and fire his machine gun. Guns vs. swords isn’t really a fair fight, but you can even the odds by perching Donnie up on the pile of crates on the left side of the screen and repeatedly attacking downwards. You will be 100% untouchable as you smack poor Rocksteady in his hardened noggin over and over until victory is yours!
1-up- Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis)- Now, I’m not going to narrow it down any more than just saying that all of the 1-ups in the Sonic games were tucked away into nooks and crannies of the levels, hidden obviously enough that you could find them even with your addled, sugar-high seven year old mind, but cleverly hidden enough so that every time you found one you felt like a master explorer.
Mega Man’s Elec Beam vs. Devil Eye- Mega Man (NES) Devil Eye, That Eye Dude, That Boss in Wily’s Castle That Turns Into Blocks and Shoots Crap at You. He goes by many aliases, but the one universal truth is that this guy is an absolute beast. He is hands down one of the toughest bosses that you will see rendered in glorious 8-bits. Mega Man bosses have the tradition of each boss having a particular vulnerability to a particular special weapon, and Devil Eye is no exception. Using the Elec Beam is the only way to score any palpable damage against the guy, but even with that special weapon the fight is a nightmare. But, using a special trick (aka a glitch) you can make the fight go from nightmare to… well, I don’t know any positive things rhyming with nightmare, but the fight’s really easy. If you pause and unpause repeatedly right as the Elec Beam connects with Devil Eye’s ugly ol’ eyeball, he’ll take damage as if you were unloading shot after shot into him, all without him even being able to blink. Now, some might call this a glitch, but back in the NES days you took every advantage you could. Sometimes you had to glitch to cheat in your favor because the games would glitch and cheat against you.
So what’s the last trick on the list for today? Well, it’s a classic trick from the NES days of yore that many of you may have mulling around in the back of your minds, fingers already entering the combinations in your head. I speak, of course, of the
Konami Code- Up Up, Down Down, Left Right, Left Right, B A, Start. These few button combinations apply to
almost any game Konami has ever released, but the game it’s most known for is Contra for the NES. Contra is a classic game, filled with blisteringly tough stages and enemies that wish you dead with every fiber of their beings. You play a frail super soldier, super in that your guy has all the cool guns, frail as in he can only take a single shot without going to the big boot camp in the sky. Putting in the Konami code transformed the game, transforming the normal three lives per continue into a whopping 30 lives per continue, which is just enough edge to make the game… well, still really friggin’ hard. But not quite so bad.
There you have it. Some of the most common video game tricks known to man. Just remember, for some of these games, like Sonic or Contra, the best trick in your arsenal is to bring a friend.
