I debated covering Volume 13 because it's not a traditional magazine in the traditional magazine sense, it's a strategy guide. But considering I've covered other strategy guides before, so I should give token acknowledgment to this.

You can read the volume here. There's not much I can say about it, it covers enemies, items, the matching tile game, and how to get stuff like the Warp Whistle. The levels are drawn out rather than screenshots per the usual NES-era strategy guide way, though it would've been nice if they had recommended power-ups like what StrategyWiki does or at the very least point out where you can't use them. Fortresses and autoscrollers make the P-Wing less useful and World 7-7, the difficult one with all the Munchers, has a feature that prevents a P-Wing from cheesing it. But overall it's a good guide, and it's a guide for a good game—just reading through all the wondrous worlds Mario goes through is entertainment in itself starting of course with World 1-1.

Yup, this is where they leave you.

If there's one real problem with this guide, it's that Bowser's Castle has no maps (just a few screenshots and tips) with no help for Bowser himself. I'm sorry, but when you use a strategy guide that isn't explicitly designed to prevent spoilers, you're taking that risk, and when you buy a strategy guide to help you with the game, ditching you when it matters most is bad form.

It's definitely a better guide than what was put out for Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 in 2003. While it's still the essentially the same thing (and to be fair, that game does cover the Bowser fight), the drawn levels have more soul than what's there for that game (and that guide doesn't use screenshots/ripped maps either!), plus it doesn't even cover that game's new features, the e-Levels (or the new power-ups).


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