Player's Pulse looks a bit different to have several letters on the troops in the Persian Gulf (at the time, still Operation Desert Shield) with Game Boys including a staff sergeant changing his mind on the Game Boy and being a "kid's game" after getting one as a present, likely because he was dying of boredom and Tetris could get his mind off things. There's also a small paragraph on the winner of the Final Fantasy Treasure Quest, though it was just ultimately a trip to the British Virgin Islands and some bad Mario-themed jokes.

Taito's Power Blade, the issue's cover story follows as Special Agent Nova (gosh, the artwork looks a lot like a big action star at the time) must "collect Tape Units from the Data Bases in six sectors", sounds like a lot of jumping and enemy-fighting that must be done...looks a whole like Mega Man to be honest.

Howard & Nester introduces the first comic drawn by Art Nichols. The particular comic, (Déjà Vu and not MetalStorm) is drawn in Shuji Imai's style but this falls apart within a few issues. Shuji Imai may have been the one responsible for making sure that with a few exceptions Howard & Nester had covered last issue's cover feature. Of the 30 Nester's Adventures comic strips and the last three Howard & Nester comic strips just five actually follow that rule (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Super Star Wars, Batman Returns, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is two issues behind (late) and Star Fox is issue-of (early).

Jaleco's Totally Rad follows with maps for the whole game. It includes full maps for the game which, as our hero Jake would say, is most righteous. While I don't have a page for Totally Rad at press time, I do have The Rad Project which is well worth checking out. Classified Information has stage select codes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, Adventure Island II and Shadow of the Ninja, unlimited continues for Silver Surfer (you'll need it) with coverage for StarTropics, MetalStorm, Dragon Warrior II, and Palamedes as well.

We have Sword Master just before another article called "The British Invasion", a profile of a number of British developers like Rare (which we know of already) but also a few lesser known ones at the time like Software Creations (which developed a number of other titles from porting Epyx's World Games to making Silver Surfer, they were later bought by Acclaim and shut down with the company), Ocean Software (which later became a publisher being acquired and folded into Infogrames), and Elite Systems. Next, S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team (by Natsume) strategy follows with the poster on the reverse side being for the yet-unreleased Nintendo version of SimCity. At the time, the NES version was still waiting and the Super NES version hadn't been announced. This is either the first SNES poster or the first unreleased game poster. (Pick one).

The Game Boy feature ("Special Feature Game Boy" even though it's monthly) covers R-Type (Irem), Ultima: Runes of Virtue (an original title developed by Origin Systems and published by FCI, not a port), Mickey's Dangerous Chase (Capcom), WWF Superstars (LJN), Pac-Man (Namco), and Caesars Palace (Arcadia). No Game Boy Classified Information but it does have Game Boy Counselor's Corner with three questions for The Final Fantasy Legend. Now Playing for the Game Boy lists Bubble Bobble (Taito), BurgerTime Deluxe (Data East), Castelian (Triffix), Extra Bases (Bandai), and Sword of Hope (Kemco/Seika). I'm disappointed BurgerTime Deluxe didn't get better coverage...it was in many ways better than the arcade/NES version. Let's see the top 10 this month...the top 3 (Super Mario Land, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, and The Final Fantasy Legend) are still the same. Tetris is back in #4 (from #6), Batmangoes up to #5 (from #8), Paperboy reappears as #6, Gargoyle's Quest falls to #7 (from #5), Castlevania: The Adventure at #8 (from #7), and Dr. Mario at #9 (from #4) with Double Dragon back on the list at #10. Play Action Football and Golf are off the list now.

Parker Bros. (then a division of Tonka) self-publishes Monopoly for the NES (the strategy here is the same as the board game), then NES Achievers section next, and in Counselor's Corner, three The Immortal questions, two for Destiny of the Emperor, one for the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a map for the Spaceship in StarTropics (a full color map).

Player's Poll Contest seems to be settling into the "prize and game" format as I've told before. The second prize wins pit crew jackets and Bill Elliott's NASCAR Challenge, but the grand prize also gets to an "official NASCAR race" (location TBA) to see Bill Elliott on the track. With that, Top 30 continues. Super Mario Bros. 3 no longer has a massive edge and leads by less than 1,000 points (it's down to #18 on the Pros' Picks, even though it leads in Players' and Dealers'). Mega Man 3 now jumps to #2 (from #4) with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game back to #3 (from #11). Final Fantasy is at #4 from #2. Dr. Mario moves up another slot to #5, Dragon Warrior II at #6 (from #8), Crystalis falls to #7 (from #3), The Legend of Zelda drops to #8 (from #7), Tetris is back to #9 (from #12), and NES Play Action Football is still on the list as #10. The return of the Turtles means Mega Man II got bumped to #11. Punch-Out!! and Metroid are at #18 and #25 respectively, while Zelda II: The Adventure of Link falls to #20 and Super Mario Bros. 2 has disappeared for the first time, less than a year after they confidently declared it would be on the top 10 for years.

Now Playing has paragraphs for Double Dragon III (Acclaim), a whole page for The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (also Acclaim), RoboCop 2 (based on the film of the same name, by Data East), Base Wars by Ultra Games (apparently, it was first in the line of "Cyber Stadium Series", though that never seems to have come to fruition), Seika's port of ICOM Simulations' Uninvited which you can already tell is different from the computer versions (see the Wikipedia article), namely it's your (older) sister, not your younger brother that goes into the mansion alone, and it mentions getting the envelope and the amulet to explore the mansion. In the computer versions, that's still there, but will let you enter the mansion without the amulet, which will cause you to lose. Requiring the amulet to enter the mansion was a choice Kemco/Seika made to prevent players from automatically losing when they entered, even if they didn't know it yet (this wasn't a bug in the computer versions—it was one of those nasty traps that Sierra was fond of). Metal Mech (Jaleco), Zombie Nation (Meldac), Kiwi Kraze (Taito), Tecmo World Cup Soccer (Tecmo), and Beetlejuice (LJN) all got paragraphs. Everything else listed (Monopoly, Power Blade, S.C.A.T.: Special Cybernetic Attack Team, Sword Master, and Totally Rad, were covered in the main magazine.

Among the games listed in Pak Watch is Battletoads which gets a full page and would be the NES' last big game before the Super NES was released. Because the Gossip Gremlins had been zapped last year, there's a "Blabber Bonus" with CES stuff. It mentions American Softwork Corporation's Power Punch starring Mike Tyson (actually, the game's full title at this time was Mike Tyson's Intergalactic Power Punch) but his July 1991 arrest ended all that so we got "Mark Tyler" instead in "Power Punch II". The first mention of Final Fantasy II is here, noting it's based on Final Fantasy IV in Japan. (That did happen).

After the Celebrity Profile of Jeremy Miller, Howard's letter at the end acknowledges the change in art style to Howard & Nester, noting that Art Nichols did in Valiant's "Nintendo Comics System". "Don't worry, I'm not giving up my bow tie!" Howard writes, in reference to the comic. Hmm. I wouldn't be so sure of that...

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