Currently, this review stands alone from others in the list, and like I said back on (when I first wrote) Volume 81, I'll edit it when I get back around to it (probably not as dire since there's less continuity). At this point, Nintendo Power is abysmal. Subscribers get actually the worst cover in my opinion. In the past I've talked about celebrity covers, but although it has Harrison Ford's likeness, that's not Harrison Ford. Instead of the first advertisement trying to get you to subscribe, as it was for the first 100+ issues, there's an ad for GameFly games-by-mail service (modeled after what Netflix did at the time, and as of this writing I'm surprised GameFly is still around). The "News" section mentions that the recently-elected Barack Obama plays Wii Sports with his daughter (or at least played—I mean, everyone did by that point), another rare foray into politics.

The Wii Channels section has a two-page interview on the developers of Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, a WiiWare exclusive (which means you can't legally buy it anymore, anywhere). They also talk about WiiWare's first FPS, Onslaught. Other games in the "Evaluation Station" include WiiWare titles Cue Sports: Pool Revolution (Hudson), Fun! Fun! Minigolf (Shin'en Multimedia), Jungle Speed (Playful Entertainment), Tiki Towers (RealArcade), Maboshi's Arcade (Nintendo), Planet Pachinko (Allied Kingdoms), and Sandy Beach (Konami...a sandcastle sim). The Virtual Console games include Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (Konami for the NES), Kirby's Dream Land 3 (Nintendo for the Super NES), Phantasy Star IV (Sega for the Sega Genesis), and Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II (Nintendo for the NES). Chris Slate praises Castlevania III's music, though what we got on the NES was nothing like the Famicom and its custom memory mapper. I'm skipping past Previews, nothing really of note there (by this time, most of what was covered by Nintendo Power was in fact released). The cover story on Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings ("Live the Adventure") takes time to bash Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (after all, that was the worst Indiana Jones movie by far for 15 years...until Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) but doesn't actually cover any strategy or anything (it's just a preview, essentially). "Liberty or Death" is a similar article on The Conduit, "Back with a Boom" on Boom Blox: Bash Party, "Life in the Big City" on Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, four pages including an interview on Major Minor's Majestic March ("Keep on Marching"), a WiiWare title, and an interview with Dave Gibbons, specifically talking about Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars — The Director's Cut being ported to the Wii and Nintendo DS. (Waluigi? Is that you?)

The 2008 Nintendo Power Awards follow, bringing up the 1988 awards where Zelda II: The Adventure of Link took home the prize. This time around (all are Wii games unless otherwise noted), Super Smash Bros. Brawl won the Wii Game of the Year, Best Wii Graphics, Best Original Score, Best Multiplayer, Best Fighting Game, and Overall Game of the Year. It even lists all the previous winners over the year, which was nice. The World Ends with You won the Nintendo DS Game of the Year, along with Best RPG and Best Story/Writing. Mega Man 9 won WiiWare Game of the Year and Best Shooter/Action Game. Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia won Best DS Graphics. No More Heroes won Best Sound/Voice Acting, Best Adventure Game, and Best New Character with Travis Touchdown. Rock Band 2 won Best Music/Rhythm Game. Tiger Woods PGA Tour 09 All-Play won Best Sports Game. Mario Kart Wii won Best Racing Game and Best Online Functionality. Kirby Super Star Ultra (on the Nintendo DS) won Best Platformer. Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS) won Best Puzzle Game as well as Special Staff Award, the Justin Cheng "My Brain Hurts" Award. Wii Fit won Best Alternative Game, as well as Special Staff Award, the Steve Thomason "Living Longer" Award. Chris Slate gave his The Chris Slate "Good Samaritan" Award to Wario Land: Shake It! (noting that 2008 didn't have a big Zelda or Mario game) and The Chris Hoffman "Retro Revival" Award went to the DS port of Chrono Trigger. The article even lists all the previous winners over the year, which was nice. Mega Man's console outings never won a single "best overall game" for the system, except for 1992 with Mega Man 4. This is easily the best feature of this issue, sadly. There's an interview with Alexey Pajitnov, an article on G.I. Joe for the NES (for Playback), an ad for Dish Network, the Nintendo Power Sweepstakes, and the Reviews.

The Sweepstakes has no card, one page, no t-shirt, typical of the Future US-era contests, let alone anything particularly cool or special associated with the game. Grand Prize just gets the "New Play Control!" Wii ports of Pikmin and Mario Power Tennis (plus a Wii), with the runner-ups just getting games. The Review sections include Wii titles Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon (Nintendo), The House of the Dead: Overkill (Sega), Sonic and the Black Knight (Sega), Deadly Creatures (THQ), We Ski and Snowboard (Namco Bandai), with "Also This Month" listing including New Play Control! Pikmin (Nintendo), New Play Control! Mario Power Tennis (Nintendo), and Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop (Capcom). The Nintendo DS games reviewed are My World, My Way (Atlus), Boing! Docomodake DS (Ignition Entertainment), Blue Dragon Plus (Ignition Entertainment), Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride (Square Enix), and under "Also This Month", Tomy's MyDoItAll and Nintendo's Personal Trainer: Math. They also say that MadWorld was supposed to be reviewed this month, but couldn't make it for press time.

Community is skippable, but if you pass on that, that's it for that issue. It sounds weird but I was drawn to the aforementioned Dish Network ad. These sorts of ads had logos of all the channels you could get when you became a subscriber (this was before streaming completely took over) and were always a draw for me as a kid (Dad couldn't even go for full cable), but these days it's more nostalgia, looking at some that don't exist anymore (or in that form or in their better logo version), but also noticing a numbers of channels I had never heard of, like the late ResearchChannel or Colours TV, a Dish Network-exclusive public interest channel that disappeared in 2011 after launching less than a decade earlier, which according to the press release linked, was "a non-profit, African-American-owned and operated network that portrays the cultural diversity of African, Asian, Latin and Native Americans". The forum link I posted says that Wikipedia never mentioned it, and fifteen years later, they STILL don't. You'll have to dig around in Logopedia just for the correct logo, it's not to be confused with Indian or Filipino networks of the same name. See that's the problem, an advertisement is more interesting than the real content. The old Nintendo Power never would've had this issue, even when they DID have advertisements.

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