We're now in 1991 (and the cover scan I have is askew again...I do have a copy of this issue but that's for a future update). This is the year Nintendo Power switches to a true monthly issue format, while introducing the Super NES, which will eclipse the NES soon enough, while Game Boy continues to rise in prominence. (Maybe it will get a cover feature!) and I'm right there with you. Mega Man makes the cover again with Mega Man 3 (or "Mega Man III" as it says, which the magazine will use inside as well). No other NES Mega Man games would make cover, and if you don't count Mega Man X and its sequel this would be the first and last time the Blue Bomber made a real appearance. The box did say Mega Man 3 and Wikipedia insists that "Mega Man III" refers to Mega Man's 1992 Game Boy outing, and I'll be using "Mega Man 3" even though for the next 11 or so issues it refers to the game as "Mega Man III".

Mail Box opens with the return of the Woz and a Game Boy going to Operation Desert Shield (the troop build-up to Desert Storm) to get the "workout of its life" (link) but that Game Boy wouldn't be the iconic war veteran of the Middle East. You'll have to wait until Volume 26 for that.

The Archive.org version of this issue is sort of terrible but that can't fix the atrocious art in the Mega Man 3 section. There's still 20 pages on the game, though. Next, an article called "Your Game Paks Never Forget", explaining how the NES works and the MMC chips. Even without the typo on the page (you'll know it when you see it), it doesn't talk about MMC4. It wasn't widely known and it was only used in a few Japanese strategy games. Strategy for The Immortal follows, an isometric action-adventure from Electronic Arts. After having outsourced Archon and M.U.L.E., EA enters the console world with an in-house published version of a game they had. The MMC chips are important though, as new to 1991 is the Game Pak Data Box, with the featured game getting a small box describing its score, its publisher, and any special chips like the MMC series it has.

Classified information has for this month, extra lives for Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse and Heavy Shreddin'. There's also an invisible man in Final Fantasy, extra coins in Dungeon Magic, stage select AND extra lives in Dragon Spirit (though not both), stage select for Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum and ImageFight, and a full page for Skate or Die 2: The Search for Double Trouble. The section wraps up with Swords and Serpents, as well as Thunderbirds.

Déjà Vu is covered, and like Shadowgate is somewhat censored from the Mac release and subsequent computer ports...notably, Ace is drugged by pills rather than injected, as well as making the game easier. In the computer versions, there was a hard time limit as Ace succumbed to the drugs in his system, here you have all the time you need.

The poster (appears to be two-sided?) is for Bart Simpson vs. the Space Mutants with another strategy section for Gremlins 2: The New Batch by Sunsoft (after the film).

The now-monthly Game Boy section covers Dragon's Lair...except not really, it's actually Dragon's Lair: The Legend...which was a rethemed port of an old ZX Spectrum game (exclusive to Britain, of course) called Roller Coaster. Very strange...other games in this section include Mercenary Force, Burai Fighter Deluxe, F-1 Race, Super Scrabble (where Milton Bradley actually brought their own property to the table), and a special Classified Information/Counselor's Corner for Daedalian Opus, Nemesis, and Gargoyle's Quest. The Game Boy Top 10 has reader-submitted scores calculated in now, Super Mario Land retains #1, Tetris goes from #4 to #2, Gargoyle's Quest goes from #3 from #2, Batman goes from #3 to #4, The Final Fantasy Legend back on the charts at #5, Double Dragon returns to the charts at #6, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan returns to the charts at #7, Paperboy premiers at #8, Spider-Man premiers at #9, and NFL Football retains at #10. Say goodbye to Golf, Daedalian Opus, Castlevania: The Adventure, Nemesis, and Alley Way.

Howard & Nester's comic today is Solar Jetman instead of Dr. Mario as would be expected based on last month's cover feature. I wonder if actually doing Dr. Mario was an idea was sketched up but they couldn't make it work, or maybe it was to drum up sales as Solar Jetman was a bit of a flop.

There's four pages of coverage on the Miracle Piano Teaching System. The article alludes to the idea that additional cartridges would be released to make your own music, which never came to be as far as I know...but the piano component was a MIDI device so it's not tied to the NES and that software.

Counselors' Corner covers three questions from Destiny of an Emperor, two from Dungeon Magic, two from Crystalis, and two from Swords and Serpents. After that we get the Player's Poll Contest, which is now in the middle of the magazine, something that would remain until its eventual disappearance (for the most part). The grand prize is becoming a "character in a VALIANT comic book" with copies of said book and other comic book-related prizes. You could also win autographed a complete autographed set of Valiant's "Nintendo Comics System" or the second edition of the Nintendo Power jersey. I looked around to see if anyone actually won the contest but couldn't. Valiant Comics had been founded just a few years earlier by an ex-Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter and would, until their bankruptcy, be a part of Acclaim, with one of the Valiant Comics properties being a major N64 franchise. (That comes later).

The second edition of the new Now Playing covers Conquest of the Crystal Palace, Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu, Silver Sufer, The Adventure of Rad Gravity, Werewolf, and Arch Rivals: A Basket Brawl. Silver Surfer later gained notoriety for its punishing difficulty but it has an amazing soundtrack. Other games included a second showing of Gremlins 2, Mega Man 3, and the Miracle Piano Teaching System (the scores this time were higher). While plenty of games were released by this time and many never got proper ratings, Now Playing isn't an extensive list of every Nintendo game released. The format kept changed and many games (mostly licensed ones and third-party ones) slipped through the cracks or otherwise ignored. Conker's Bad Fur Day was completely snubbed, and by 2005 they were just listing some of the "additional games released this month" with no ratings or information beyond the publisher, and that was probably even the ones they even bothered mentioning.

Following NES Achievers, this time in the Top 30, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Final Fantasy still take #1 and #2 but by a far closer margin. Crystalis is #3 (premiered at #11), Mega Man II is now in #4 (from #3), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles move up to #5 (from #10, the sequel isn't on the list yet), The Legend of Zelda is at #6 (from #9), Tetris is now back in #7 (from #4), Super Mario Bros. 2 is at #8 (from #7), Dragon Warrior II is at #9 (I think this is supposed to pink, not green, if you're following along), and Back to the Future at #10 (a closer look at the lists shows this is entirely from sales, which makes sense). The two that got thrown off include Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (#17 from #8) and the original Ninja Gaiden (off the list). Other things to note is that Metroid and Punch-Out!! featuring Mr. Dream are gone from the Top 30, and Solar Jetman appears at #29, yet doesn't chart at all on the Dealers' Picks (poor sales, remember?)

The celebrity profile is New Kids on the Block (the band). There's mention of a new game with them by Parker Bros. (owned by Tonka at the time), which was mentioned a few issues ago (I didn't take note of it, as "billed as this generation's Beatles" was a laughable premise), though apparently despite the presence of a prototype box, the game never made it past the design phases.

Over in Pak Watch, while the Game Boy had its own section of previews, the "Super Famicom Showcase" butts its way into Pak Watch with previews for Super Mario Bros. 4: Super Mario World, F-Zero, and Pilotwings. Better watch out, NES.

There's no Gossip Gremlins, but there's still various gossip talk, with Capcom continuing to make titles on "Disney Afternoon" properties (next up, TaleSpin), Tradewest's answer to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the "Battle Toads" (more on those guys later), talk of a live-action TV pilot adaptation of Double Dragon (this never aired), American Sammy getting the rights to The Magic Candle (which was released in March 1992, but only in Japan), Ocean releasing a game based on the film Darkman, Data East making a baseball game with Bo Jackson (released as Bo Jackson Baseball later that year, and finally, the new location of Taito's U.S. operations which I doubt readers really cared about (they would close their office in 1996 after selling publishing rights to Acclaim). On that, the demise of Brøderbund's New Ventures wasn't discussed in Nintendo Power as I had mentioned in Volume 12...in Volume 21 the first game of THQ (which bought the division) is rated in Now Playing, Wayne Gretzky Hockey, followed by Fox's Peter Pan & The Pirates: The Revenge of Captain Hook, starting its legacy of sub-par games. Given that Brøderbund published a mix of Japanese import titles and ports from its own games (Raid on Bungeling Bay and Lode Runner) and THQ's stuff was entirely different, I wonder if they just killed those projects altogether. Anyway, THQ and its licensed games will be in Nintendo Power to the end of its run (they folded around the same time).

After a preview of next issue, in Bulletin Board, there's the back issues (the first year of Nintendo Power is as a set now—I won't be covering when back issues start sloughing off). There's also a note on not using your NES with a projection television due to risk of burn-in, but burn-in was a problem on regular televisions as well. When the pediatric dentist switched from SNES to N64 in the early 2000s (to my memory) the item reserve boxes from Super Mario World remained burned in. Also notable is that because of Nintendo Power's newer schedule, the Captain Nintendo line is discontinued, with the section thanking the VAs for the line. Captain Nintendo was portrayed by Robert Zenk, known for his voiceover work in Humongous Entertainment work like Spy Fox in "Dry Cereal" (1997).

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