Volume 21's cover is StarTropics and is a bit more detailed and artsy than tiny-resolution scans I've seen. (Check out the full cover). I'm not really going to cover "Powerline", the issue preview as that's kind of what I do here...

Player's Pulse opens with a Game Boy out the window and an "old lady" who plays Nintendo (turns out she's only 34, something a bit sobering since I'M 34). It's kind of like the Mark Discordia example, playing Nintendo in your 30s is weird. By this time, the Genesis was out and while not with Sonic the Hedgehog yet or the advertising campaign Sega used in the 1990s, was already trying to sell the Genesis as what the cooler older kids played. There's also some envelope artwork, something that 100-120 issues would adorn the Player's Pulse section.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game gets 16 pages, then Howard & Nester does Mega Man 3, and a game called "Quantum Fighter" (actually Kabuki: Quantum Fighter) gets eight pages before moving onto Classified Information. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan for Game Boy gets in the main Classified Information with a full page. There's also stuff for The Immortal, Dr. Mario, getting Anchors and P-Wings in Super Mario Bros. 3, extra stages for Mendel Palace, a sound test for Conquest of the Crystal Palace, warping in Crystalis, and extra options for Journey for Silius are here before a big StarTropics section.

After StarTropics and the reverse poster for Metal Storm we get to the Game Boy section, where Sunsoft's Gremlins 2 gets two pages and three basketball games (NBA All-Star Challenge by LJN, Double Dribble 5 on 5 by Konami, and In Your Face by Jaleco) get two pages between them. Game Boy Classified has Batman, Penguin Wars, Mercenary Force, and Soccer Mania. In addition to the four games covered in the section, Now Playing covers Battleship (INTV), Chase H.Q. (Taito), The Game of Harmony (Accolade), Jeopardy! (GameTek), Mousetrap Hotel (Milton Bradley), Power Mission (NTVIC), and Solomon's Club (Tecmo). Actually I lied—Double Dribble 5 on 5 is not on the list for some reason. Also, there's another INTV release that never saw the light of day. Monster Truck Rally was delayed until 1991, and as for Battleship, if we put things together, it looks like the game was released in Japan in 1989 as Kaisen Game: Navy Blue and INTV did the heavy lifting on it like getting the Battleship license from Milton Bradley (which did not publish it themselves for whatever reason) but their bankruptcy meant it would be delayed until 1992 when it was released by Mindscape (The Software Toolworks). Game Boy's top 10 has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan back at #1 (from #7), Super Mario Land now in #2 (from #1), The Final Fantasy Legend at #3 (from #6), Tetris back at #4 (from #2), Dr. Mario appearing at #5, Gargoyle's Quest at #6 from #3, Batman from #4 to #7, Qix appearing at #8, Castlevania: The Adventure returning as #9, and Double Dragon from #10 from #6. Paperboy, Spider-Man, and NFL Football come off the list this month.

The next title to receive coverage in Nintendo Power is Magician (a game by Taxan I've personally never heard of), then an article called "Power to the Player" where they talk about what the scores mean and how they're rated. They also mention the games are weighted to new games, so "a game that scored 4.0 several years ago might rate lower today because competition is stronger than it used to be"...probably because of Moore's Law and improvement of titles. But some late games are still good...

Next up is FCI's Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, the NES version of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar released several years earlier for home computers. Powerline called Ultima: Quest of the Avatar that the "NES version is better than the original". Maybe the Apple II version anyway...

Counselor's Corner covers Dragon Warrior II (one question), Maniac Mansion (three questions), and four questions for The Legend of Zelda, as the game was STILL popular and still getting questions. After all, it was basically on the top 10 on the NES list for almost the entire run of the magazine (see Top 30).

The Player's Poll Contest is "Win a Trip Four Four to FASA's Chicago Battletech Center" (with sight-seeing in Chicago)...and the second prize winner doesn't even get a video game, it's Battletech board games! Very unusual...but I guess there's those Version 2 Nintendo Power jerseys.

Now Playing has small paragraphs for Galaxy 5000 (Activision), Shadow of the Ninja (Natsume...possibly their first Nintendo game), Ski or Die (Ultra Soft), Isolated Warrior (NTVIC), The Krion Conquest (Vic Tokai), and North & South (Kemco-Seika). The first one in the main list is Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance from FCI. The actual scores are only middling with at worst 1.9 for Play Control, but this was later acknowledged by 1997 to be one of the worst NES games in the library, and this still shows up in "Worst NES Games" list including by Cracked and Seanbaby, especially if it's not polluted by the obvious choices of unlicensed games. The list this month otherwise includes Flying Warriors (Culture Brain), The Hunt for Red October (Hi-Tech Expressions), The Krion Conquest (Vic Tokai), The Legend of Hero Tonma (Irem), Magician (Taxan), Mike Ditka's Big Play Football (Accolade), The Punisher (LJN), Kabuki: Quantum Fighter (Hal America), StarTropics (Nintendo), Supercars (Electro Brain), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game (Ultra Soft), Ultima: Quest of the Avatar (FCI), The Untouchables (Ocean), War on Wheels (Jaleco), and Wayne Gretzky's Hockey (THQ).

Volume 21 marks the first time that the months on the chart would be shown, a feature that it would keep until the end of the run in December 2000 (NES games would be cut by that time). In this case, however, The Legend of Zelda only has 14 months means they kept track since January 1990, not summer 1988. Link, you were cheated. Still, it moved up to #3 from #6 while Super Mario Bros. 3 and Final Fantasy hold #1 and #2 respectively. NES Play Action Football finally makes top 10 after appearing at #16 last month, Mega Man II holds #4, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse is at #5 (it premiered last month at #21), Crystalis dropped to #6 (from #3), Dr. Mario and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game premier at #7 and #8, respectively. Tetris is now #9 (from #7), and The Legend of Zelda is back at #10. The ones that got thrown off the top 10 was Back to the Future (no longer charts), Super Mario Bros. 2 (now at #16), the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now at #11, and Dragon Warrior II falling to #17.

The Celebrity Profile is two L.A. Lakers players, Vlade Divac and A.C. Green before going to NES Achievers.

Finally we get to Pak Watch. There's a picture of the Super Famicom (the final appearance of the American Super NES was not yet revealed), an article on SimCity with a picture of Miyamoto and Will Wright, still promising a NES version but with at least the Super Famicom version coming for Japan. (As we know the NES version was axed).S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team is announced, which "follows the adventures of a pair of heavily armed space marines (Arnold and Sigourney) as they battle their way through a heavily guarded enemy installation). No points for guessing which two Hollywood stars they're named after. The names and the name of the game was only in North America. There's also Totally Rad by Jaleco, a localization of Magic John. There used to be a great site called The Rad Project with comparisons of these games, but it's since gone offline...but I mirrored it a while back. Among the rest of the news is a new Nintendo bundle called the Nintendo Sports Set which comes with a Control Deck, a NES Satellite, four controllers, and a Game Pak with Super Spike V'Ball and Nintendo World Cup on it, as well as news of MicroProse becoming a NES licensee.

And with the exception of the note in Bulletin Board on counterfeit games (see above), that's it, see you next time.

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