#hot help

In an earlier article, we mentioned that it might be possible to unlock a secret hat in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game™ for play on the Nintendo Entertainment System Control Deck. Well, our Licensed Professional Video Game Counsellors have been hard at work ever since, and they have finally uncovered the secret you’ve been waiting to see! If there’s one thing our favourite bodacious green Turtles™ love, it’s pizza. In fact, this particular game pak comes with a free coupon for a personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut™! (Offer expires December 31, 1991. Void in Quebec and Mexico) But the pizza fun doesn’t end there. Certain levels of the game contain little reminders of the delicious pizzas made with only the most wholesome ingredients, as seen in the screenshot above. By controlling your Turtle™ with the directional buttons, you can steer him towards the Pizza Hut™ signs, and wear the legendary Pizza Hat™ for yourself! While this secret item does not directly affect your power levels or extra plays, it will strengthen your resolve the way the promise of pizza drives the boys in green to defeat every foe.

The Elder Scrolls: fiVe is a medieval action adventure and dragons game for personal gaming computer consoles wherein you take control of an unnamed dragon hunter aiming to stake out a claim for fame and fortune. While you can do literally everything you can think of throughout the Skyrim Province of Nirn, one of the main features of the game is collecting mementos from your dragon-killing exploits.

Almost every video game lets you pause the hot electronic action in case you need to eat or go to the toilet (excluding Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!, which, being the most hyperrealistic boxing game pak to date, will not allow you to perform non-punching actions in the middle of a round). But did you know that many action and adventure games also feature a secondary pause feature that can only be initiated by you, the video game player? Our Licensed Professional Video Game Counsellors have uncovered this amazing new tip which is guaranteed to significantly increase the emotional realism of your favourite titles! Although this example comes from Super Mario 64 for the Ultra-64 game-play system, you can experiment for yourself and see if it works in any other game paks. Simply follow the instructions below:

After achieving at least 70 stars, Super Mario should finally be able to ascend the endless staircase leading to his final showdown with the evil Turtle King, Bowser. Unlock the door and prepare to ascend the stairs. 

No cheating! Remember, this trick will not work if you take hasty shortcuts. 

Rather than running up the staircase in a hurry, hold the game pad firmly without touching any buttons. 

Take a moment to reflect upon your journey and quietly remind yourself what’s at stake. Your adventure has taken you to the highest skies and the depths of the ocean. Without your dear friend Princess Toadstool to secure the magic shielding of the Mushroom Kingdom, the denizens will be doomed to a life of enslaved servitude (if such a thing can be called life). 

Now you’re ready to approach the final battle. Rather than pushing the paddle’s control stick to it’s furthest position, instead, slightly tilt the stick so that Super Mario climbs the stairs at nervous, but steady, walking pace. 

The lengthy staircase, when taken slowly, provides further moments of reflection. The hall is lined with paintings of King Bowser on the left and Princess Toadstool on the right. This is the final battle between good and evil. The very balance of the world lies in your hands. 

Before jumping down the chimney (pictured at the top of this article), hold Super Mario steady to push all fears of the Turtle Dragon aside, then jump bravely into the abyss. 

You are the only remaining hope.

This week’s Hot Help comes at the behest of our readers who want more power out of their gaming systems. We get plenty of letters inquiring about the technical specifications of our cutting edge video game devices. Take this message we received through electronic mail:

Dear SHELPSHOT: I really like my state of the art video game consoles—I have them all and must have played almost ninety games! I play them for the newest and most realistic electronic experience, which makes me feel like I’m in the future! I have a pretty big gripe though: Every game I play seems to take forever to load to the next level! Blazing through titles is majorly difficult when I have to spend sometimes over fifteen seconds waiting. Is there a faster game deck I can buy to cut down on my downtime?   

 James G. Cheyenne, WY

Gosh James, we’re sorry to hear that your control decks aren’t able to keep up with your input, but this is the perfect opportunity to discuss an often overlooked feature of video entertainment: load time! Games will often, for dramatic purposes, cut to a black screen while bits and bytes are walked along the various information caches located throughout the electronics boards of your game consoles and game cartridge packs. While energy moves at the speed of light, these pauses or “load screens” are elongated to draw out the suspense of what lies in subsequent stages, or to drive home the ultimate goal of the experience. Some games even display graphics and minigames with the load screen.

Take the game program Tomba! for the PlayStationX: the main goal of this game is to bite as many evil pigs on the head as possible—an easy task for any experienced game player. But there is so much realism in the settings of Tomba! that it is easy to get lost in the beauty of the neolithic utopia. That is why the game designers programmed in a secret mini game on the load screen.

This week we bring you an amazing trick for the Animal Crossing software series, a game that lets you do all the things you do in real life! You can spend your time doing whatever you like, making money, catching bugs, making friends, and even losing friends. From time to time, your friends will move away. Even if you’ve put everything into the friendship, you will grow distant, drift apart, and eventually you’ll wake up one morning and they’ll simply be gone. We’ll it’s time to give your animal friends a funny taste of their own medicine! Follow the guide below to become a legendary ghost in your village!

Play Animal Crossing daily for about a year (long enough to settle into a home and establish a presence in your community)

After a year has passed, play Animal Crossing late at night, so that fewer watchful neighbours are out. We recommend 3am. 

Empty all of the furniture, items, fossils, and other goods from your home and spread them around your house. Cut down all the trees. IMPORTANT: do not speak to anyone as you do this.

Now for the hard part: don’t play Animal Crossing for at least one year. Three is better. Seven is best, since seven is a number rife with superstition. 

From this point on, only play the game in the middle of the night. Walk around town, speak to no one, hide from everyone. 

If this trick is done correctly, the village will be overrun with weeds as your sudden disappearance takes its emotional toll on all the villagers. Doubtlessly, you will have become the stuff of legends, spoken about only in hushed tones behind locked doors. And as long as you continue speaking to no one, your occasional appearances will only lend further credence to the legend of your restless ghost. 

The inhabitants of Liberty City are pretty high strung, which might have something to do with their cars getting commandeered left and right. To keep things light though, Niko Belic likes to prank the citizens at every chance. You too can follow this trick for pranking all the self-centred citizens in Grand Theft Auto: 4! Step One: Setup

After arranging to meet your cousin, Roman, pull up close to where he is in your car. Wait for a busy-looking pedestrian to pass in front of Roman before sounding your horn. The alarmed pedestrian will, in a state of egocentric rage, cuss out Niko for disturbing his day!

Step Two: Execution You know that you were honking to get Roman’s attention! Roman will know this too and get in the car, but the persnickety pedestrian will not know your intent and continue to chew you out for being rude! Quickly drive off happily with your loving cousin for an afternoon of fun. "Cousin! We are prank pulling like true Americans!"

Step Three: Payoff While Niko and his cousin Roman go off together, they leave behind a Liberty Citizen in mid-rant. With the object of their anger speeding away, the pedestrian’s wroth words will slowly fall away into dawning embarrassment at their gut-reactions. They’ll have been yelling like a crazy-person at you for no reason whatsoever!

With any luck their day will be ruined, as they can’t shake the fact that it is their default mood to be so angry. They may not be able to immediately integrate that information, which will throw them into bouts of more misplaced anger and self-loathing. Just what kind of person goes from zero to blowing up at strangers at the drop of a hat or the sound of a horn anyway? The person may also be upset that they assumed the honk was at them—I mean, it’s not like everything in the world revolves around them—they’re nobody!

Every video game player knows that if you want to really feel like you’re in the game, a first-person perspective shooting game (FPPSG) is the only way to go. This immersive style of game is becoming increasingly popular with gamepaks like Doom and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion flying off store shelves! Of course, one of the most famous examples of this game style is Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64 gameplay system, which is due to the popularity of the James Bond film series. But did you know there’s a way to stay in the game even after you’ve turned off the control deck? It’s true! Just follow the simple steps below to be like Bond:

Play Goldeneye in a dimly lit room on a large television, or sitting very close to a small television. (Note: this secret trick also works with most other FPPSGs).

Play the game for between one and three hours (for better results, play longer).

IMPORTANT: While playing, be sure to use the R shoulder button to bring up your aiming icon as much as possible!

When you’re finished playing the game, shut off the control deck and go about your normal routine (eat a sandwich, go to the bathroom, read your favourite video game magazine).

 If done correctly, you should still see the aiming icon wherever you look! Now you’re just like James Bond!

On the surface, a game about going to school and studying hard seems like a perfect premise to unwind with after a long day of work: and it is! In Bully: Scholarship Edition (available for multiple interactive gaming consoles), you play the part of Jimmy Hoskins, a well-meaning young man who aims to make a good impression on his peers at his new school, Bullworth Academy.

While going to class to advance your education is fun enough, aiming to earn the coveted 100% Completion rate can be difficult at its easiest. Especially when some achievements are unlocked by performing time-consuming repetitive tasks, such as drinking 100 sodas or riding your skateboard 50,000 metres! Suddenly, staying on campus all the time isn’t an option.

Jimmy is a smart cookie though, and isn’t afraid to think outside the box. To unlock the secret-distance skateboard achievement, you don’t need to board though the hallways to class and back. Simply cozy up to car outside the front gate and perform a classic bumper shine. If you’re quiet and stay low, the driver won’t even notice as you hang onto the back and they’ll give you a ride all over the place! 50,000 metres suddenly isn’t that far.