Playing with Super Power

Authors: Sebastian Haley & Meagan Marie
Publisher: Prima Games, 2017
Pages: 320
ISBN-10: 0744018692
ISBN-13: 978-0744018691

Playing with Super Power is Prima's answer to the Super NES Classic Edition, but instead of a strategy guide for 20+ games, it rather is a coffee-table book with a very limited look at some of the games within. The book opens with overviews of the Super NES and some of the legacy before it--old news if you're familiar with Nintendo systems but it's a nice refresher. There's sections for the individual games as well. Unfortunately, despite only 21 games in the scaled-down system, the book only covers 13 of them, ostensibly the ones developed by Nintendo, but it includes Star Fox (and its previously-unreleased sequel), as well as Donkey Kong Country (Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country were done by Argonaut and Rare, respectively, both based in the UK), and if the idea was first-party characters no matter the developer, that means Super Mario RPG would show up as well, which it doesn't (and that's a massive shame). In addition to the no-show status of Super Mario RPG, the other seven games that were third-party titles don't get mentioned at all, these being Contra III: The Alien Wars, Final Fantasy VI (known as Final Fantasy III when it was originally released), Secret of Mana, Super Castlevania IV, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, and Mega Man X. All of them had Nintendo Power features and some of them even got official guides from Nintendo, so they aren't there for lack of content. They don't even have the decency to have a full list of every Super NES game ever released, something that was available on Nintendo's own website for years.

Despite more information than ever out there on the SNES, the book sadly has several errors and shortcomings. On Page 14, it mentions the yellowing issue on Super NES systems and the oxidation of plastic. They talk about how it could be restored with just "simple household cleaning agents and a bit of patience". Unfortunately, that's not true. The actual process which involves concentrated hydrogen peroxide...very different than the typical stuff sold at drug stores, and not something an average person would be expected to have on hand.

Beginning with the first game covered, Super Mario World, the book models what the rest of the games cover:

- A brief overview of the game (basically what the manual would say, except without button commands), like the backstory of the game, in Super Mario World's case, all the power-ups.

- A few maps (in Super Mario World's case, and arguably one of the most extensive, maps from one level of every world, plus the world map).

- Some of the speedrun records.

- A few well-documented glitches.

- Trivia about the game, sometimes just pictures of the Japanese box art or unused items in the game's code (think The Cutting Room Floor) but it's not always true—there's a claim that the Giant Banana found in Donkey Kong Country "originally featured a well-known brand logo before being replaced by the Nintendo logo", which was an old bit from Mario Wiki that was removed back in January 2015, well before the 2017 publication of the book. Seems someone was confusing it with Super Monkey Ball's Dole labels.

- A brief overview of other games in the series.

- The game credits.

A few pages at the end describes some of the SNES/Nintendo fandom, as well.

I'm not really sure of the book's purpose because for all of the book's intent, does nothing particularly well. Everything here is on the Internet in some form or another, but it still doesn't excuse it. If it was to celebrate the SNES with a special focus on the 13 Nintendo-developed games, then why couldn't they at least get a few pages or at least talked about in a bigger index? If it were to provide some strategy elements, then why not at least talk about some of the secrets to get the hidden exits in something like Super Mario World, which is required in some of the later worlds? (It does go over the strategies to beat the boxers in Super Punch-Out!!)

If it was about nostalgia, then why not have the whole book be reprints from Nintendo Power and the accompanying strategy guides? The wider, shorter form factor of the book allows double the pages, as seen in reprinting four pages from the Nintendo Power Star Fox comic. If it was more about the history of the console, then they could've at least spent some time talking about the other games on the SNES Classic Mini or other Nintendo-published SNES games that didn't make the cut: Super Soccer (which was in the Super Famicom Mini), Stunt Race FX, Mario Paint, and the other two sequels to Donkey Kong Country. If it was about replicating the old strategy guides and just having a book to refer to like the old days, the trivia sections could have been easily cut out or compressed, and even if they didn't want to print complete strategy guides, that's totally fine! Nintendo Power itself didn't spoil the entire game, even the earlier guides from them didn't cover the entire game. The strategy guide for Super Mario Bros. 3, for instance, published as a special edition Nintendo Power issue, does not cover the final Bowser fight. It's not hard to figure out if you're that far, of course, but color maps from any game in a print publication are a treat. Anyone can see a full color map of, say, Mine Cart Carnage from Donkey Kong Country to see it in glossy print is another issue.

In the end, I personally liked it (I got it for a gift) but I wouldn't recommend it, especially if you have the print copies of Nintendo Power in this era or its guides...and if you needed helpful game advice when beating the games on the system, this is not the place for it.


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