Entering 1990 with January/February for #10 has Batman on the cover, with specifically Jack Nicholson as the Joker. You can find the magazine here if you'd like to read along. Player's Pulse (specifically the Mail Box section) has a few letters of note:
* Someone commenting on the changing appearance of Mario, with his nose specifically getting rounder...and many more "family friendly" changes to Mario would still come.
* A teenager (presumably) who wants to be a Game Counselor, whose only qualification is being good at video games. Even if Nintendo had a branch office in Miami where the kid was, the Game Counselors had to be good on the phone and able to explain things. When it comes to call centers, there's a personality aspect most people can do, but if you play video games, you probably don't. (I've been there). Nintendo Power kept a certain mystique about their Game Counselors, not showing the fact they had the binders and books of notes for every game for the NES at the time.
* Another letter that asks why a "competing magazine" (likely censored at the editing room) has information on the "Japanese Super Famicom" (that is, what we would know later as the Super NES) and Super Mario Bros. 3.
Six pages of maps and strategy for Batman follow with another six pages for Shadowgate, which is described from being "from the world of PCs". Nonsense! Shadowgate started as a Mac game with a Mac interface and not only was Shadowgate reworked for the NES environment it was made a whole lot easier. I'm pleased that when Retromags covered this years ago they pointed out the same thing.
"The Making of Super Mario Bros. 3" is next. Among four pages is an overview of how a game like SMB3 is made. It's a good article worth perusing (remember, you can read all of these online) and among the article it mentions a scrapped idea to have a "Centaur Mario" (which we've never had, even as Mario has turned into rabbits, cats, bees, elephants, and so on over the years). There's a profile of Shigeru Miyamoto (he's so young back then) and in this profile, three games of the future are discussed, Super Mario Bros. 4 and Zelda 3 for the Super Famicom with another game, "a role playing game set in modern times that will probably be available for the NES next year". We know about all of these, the first two becoming Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, with the last one being Mother (especially as it mentions Shigesato Itoi, a big giveaway). Mother was released for the Famicom and did get localized but not actually released. More of Mother will be discussed in the near future.
It's all features after that. Willow has several more pages to follow up from last issue, there's six pages of Double Dragon II: The Revenge, two pages of Super Spike V'Ball, four of Clash at Demonhead, and six pages of River City Ransom.
Top 30 has a few changes. The new #1 is now Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with the standbys of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Super Mario Bros. 2 in #2 and #3, respectively. Ninja Gaiden holds #4, Dragon Warrior rose to #5, Mega Man II dropped to #6 (#1 last time), The Legend of Zelda STILL on the top 10, but at #7, Bionic Commando back up to #8, Faxanadu pushed to #9, and Blaster Master back to #10. Strider dropped to #15, Super Mario Bros. 3 rising back to #13, Metroid at #20, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! at #25.
The poster is Dynowarz with a bunch of River City Ransom maps and strategy on the back.
There's a section Game Boy section, mostly featuring Golf, Boxxle, and Kwirk, as well as correcting the apparent error where the Asmik mascot is in fact Boomer, not Bronty.
Previews opens with Super Mario Bros. 3 earning 4.5 in the Power & Player Meter across the board (as it should, this isn't third-party trash), as well as covering some of the things you'll see in traveling like the matching game, the Mini-Fortress, and the Castle, and some rarer stuff that you might not encounter, like the Treasure Ship or the White Mushroom House. Burai Fighter, Astyanax, and Dynowarz finish out the section.
Another disappointing Howard & Nester (this time Dragon Warrior...one of the few times they strayed from the "last cover issue" theme, besides, they already HAD several Tetris mini-comics) precedes Counselor's Corner. Counselor's Corner features questions from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Legacy of the Wizard, Monster Party, Faxanadu, Adventures of Lolo, Ultima: Exodus (as "Ultima"), and Air Fortress this month.
Classified Information has how to get the birds in the stage background for Mega Man II, the now-famous ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS passcode for Kid Icarus, skipping parts of The Guardian Legend, a passcode for Godzilla (DESTR0Y ALL M0NSTERS), charging up a punch in Bad Dudes, picking up from your stage in Kung Fu Heroes, and making Rambo invincible with a code. (They won't tell you how to change Murdock into a frog, though). There's stuff for Faxanadu, RoboCop, Baseball Stars, P.O.W., Gyruss, and DuckTales. It also marks the first time a non-NES game has been covered, with infinite 1-Ups for Super Mario Land.
There's a second time for Winter Winners (these preview pages are getting confusing), with Infiltrator, The Chessmaster, and Short Order/Eggsplode!. Video Shorts proper includes Archon (port of one of EA's first games, though the NES version was simply called Archon, nor did include the stylish box art), All-Pro Basketball, Road Blasters (from Atari Games/Tengen, and ported by Mindscape), Genghis Khan, Cybernoid, Dig Dug II, Championship Bowling, and Twin Cobra.
In this issue's NES Journal, there's a recap of the winners who went to Seattle to tour the city and visit Nintendo of America, a recap of the "Super Dodge Ball World Cup Finals", advertising the new Captain Nintendo hotline ($1.50 a call, changing weekly), another article shilling the NES Cleaning Kit, but if it doesn't work, you can send it in for repairs, with more authorized repair centers opening soon. There's a page hyping up the Nintendo World Championships 1990, which we all know from it using a non-standard proprietary game cartridge, which is one of the most expensive NES games you can buy (a legitimate copy, that is, as opposed to a reproduction or bootleg). They printed a schedule that would be added to and finalized in the coming months.
After the Celebrity Profile of Stephen Furst, Pak Watch told of Super C, the sequel to Contra, though not by name, just that it was a "'contra'versial title". I wonder what they meant by that...it's not Europe, where everyone was robots and called Probotector (Super C was the home port of Super Contra), with the NES port of the sequel being known as Probotector II: Return of the Evil Forces. Also previewed was Wrath of the Black Manta, Remote Control (based after the MTV game show, though likely some of the show's humor dialed back), Snake, Rattle 'n' Roll, Adventures of Lolo 2 (much like its predecessor, it was just remixed puzzles from the Japanese Eggerland games), Wall Street Kid, and a few more distant titles, with Snake's Revenge, an original sequel to Metal Gear (produced without Hideo Kojima's involvement, with him going onto make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake for the MSX2), and FCI's plan to port SSI's Advanced Dungeons & Dragons over to Nintendo consoles. (Much like Origin Systems of Ultima, which FCI ported, Strategic Simulations Inc. was not a Nintendo licensee but their games on Advanced Dungeons & Dragons would be ported over by FCI.
The Player's Poll Contest this time around had the big prize for you and 25 others to receive an advance showing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, with the second prize getting a "movie game" and a VHS copy of the film it was based on, including the cover feature of Batman. The Retromags review points out that Nintendo Power's readership skewed young so many of the R-rated movies might not be appropriate...but that seems to a broader problem, as RoboCop, Friday the 13th, and later Terminator 2: Judgment Day had a whole marketing blitz that was partially aimed toward children. It doesn't point out that The Three Stooges wasn't based on a particular movie but rather a series of shorts that are referenced in-game. I'm not sure if any of them were on videotape by this time, but I can only guess they might've gotten copies of Stop! Look! and Laugh!. Next issue features one of the biggest and best NES games ever...Super Mario Bros. 3!
