The action-packed Volume 32 begins with new comics and an updated layout. If you'd like to read along in the somewhat image-compressed version at Archive.org you can!

The typeface has changed to a serif font. The subscriber advertisement in the beginning has a different theme than it's had for the last few years (the Player's Guide deal was one of their longest-running...the ones currently available at this point are NES Game Atlas, the Game Boy Player's Guide released around fall of last year, "Mario Mania", the guide for Super Mario World, and the Super NES Nintendo Player's Guide, an overview of the Super NES games currently available at that point. You get eight pages for Super Mario World, ten for Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, ten for Super Castlevania IV, and so on and so forth for the big hitters, including The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. THQ's Home Alone gets a full page, and that's STILL probably too much for it. We can look at the guide another time. It's time for the magazine.

Starting now, no longer would be the Game Boy be relegated to its own section. Each console now has a color code. This would be used in things like Super Power Cards later, game overviews, previews, and so on. NES was red, Super NES was turquoise, and Game Boy was purple. Later, the Virtual Boy would re-use the red (more of a darker red) while the Nintendo 64 got a blue color, before they dispensed with the colors altogether. Player's Pulse talks about the winner of the Hudson Hawk contest (they "shredded San Diego in search of Da Vinci's lost treasures") before we jump straight into the magazine's features. Mega Man 4 (Capcom) gets eight pages (it spoils that Dr. Wily was behind the whole thing, but every Mega Man fan knows this already). By the way, the opening to Mega Man 4 is fantastic. Konami's Monster in my Pocket, based after the comic book, gets six pages. What I noticed is that the Game Pak Data Box is gone. That was probably a Howard Phillips thing, but it's kind of a shame it couldn't be upgraded and adapted for Game Boy and Super NES. The third and last NES game covered this month is Tecmo Super Bowl. Now it's the fun stuff...this volume kicks off a 12-part series of a comic based on The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and a second one vaguely based on Super Mario World, entitled Super Mario Adventures. Both are excellent comics and I recommend buying the paperbacks (now in print) or finding a PDF (the version on Retromags looks to be a scan of the book, not of the actual magazine). Nester's Adventures (this time doing ActRaiser), however, takes this opportunity to drop to just one page—permanently. Not since Volume 2 was the comic one page.

For the Zelda comic, it ends on a cliffhanger roughly telling the story from the start to the arrival in the sanctuary and already it deviates a bit when Zelda is captured shortly after the escape from the castle. In the game this doesn't happen until after you get the Master Sword (after getting through three dungeons). Classified Information covers Snow Bros. Jr. (a Game Boy title, showing indirectly the new direction...though this isn't the first time Game Boy has showed up here), Vice: Project Doom, Super R-Type, Gradius III, ActRaiser, and F-Zero.

As Game Boy doesn't have a dedicated section, there's several pages for the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back From the Sewers. Not to be confused with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game, this title is a sequel to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan. But the Game Boy is still a bit of a second-class system so the second title covered is LJN's Beetlejuice, based after the animated series and not the film with Michael Keaton. The third is Prince of Persia. With Brøderbund now out of the Nintendo business but not out of the games business (yet), the computer game hit Prince of Persia makes its debut to the console side courtesy of Virgin Games which would later go onto to port it to NES as well. Prince of Persia was ported to a bunch of systems and Virgin Games wasn't the main console rights holder. The NES version was developed by MotiveTime and published by Virgin Games only in the United States (the European version would be published by Mindscape), the Genesis version was developed and published by Domark (the predecessor to Eidos) but because Domark didn't have a U.S. subsidiary at the time, it was published by Tengen (which was on good terms with Sega), and the Super NES version was programmed by Arsys Software and published by Konami (in the U.S. and Europe but NOT Japan). With all these ports, it's surprising that the original source code was once considered lost, but that's not uncommon these days. (Just look at Bubble Bobble.) Anyway, the game only covers the first few levels, but they'll get back to it when the NES version shows up.

Before we get to the SNES games, it's the Super Mario Adventures comic where Bowser first shows up, with the following Counselor's Corner going over the secret exit for Forest of Illusion 3 and where all four Switch Palaces are located. Besides Super Mario World, Solstice has a map, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure Video Game Adventure has a map (with the amusingly worded question on the right side of the page here), and Gargoyle's Quest just has descriptions. Rather than profiles, each question has a picture of the Game Counselor next to it.

Over 70 pages in and we finally get to the cover feature, Super Castlevania IV. Eight pages, hand-drawn, annotated maps, a fold-out part (The Rocketeer for Super NES on the reverse poster), five pages for a preview of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, four pages for T&E Soft's True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club, four pages for Super Off Road (Rare's first game for the Super NES and published by Tradewest), and the aforementioned Nester's Adventures. True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club featured a recreation of the Hawaii golf course (though only one other game in the title was made with that theme, True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links, before we got True Golf Classics: Wicked 18, which wasn't a real golf course at all). Super Off Road was a port of an arcade game by Leland Corporation that lacked the Ivan "Ironman" Stewart branding.

NES Achievers has been renamed to Power Players (it only takes up one page now, not two) while the Player's Poll Contest is a trip to Rare to England. The second prize winners (I assume the grand prize got similar swag) is Battletoads (for the NES and Game Boy) and a custom Battletoads sweatshirt.

The next section is the one real downside of the 1992 update, Now Playing is now George & Rob's Now Playing with George Sinfield (who would write to the magazine's later days, at least to 2006). I have no idea who Rob is. He's not listed in the editor's list, so I guess George and an obese nobody. However, if he's not a games journalist he probably has better takes. Tough call. The format is now George and Rob's banter about recent games. There's also a big disclaimer that the opinions of Rob and George not reflecting the opinions of Nintendo Power or Nintendo of America (much like DVD commentary tracks, but that was later). At least the list is still there...for the NES (besides the three main games covered in the issue) we got The Blues Brothers (Titus...the game was released on numerous other platforms and they all played kinda the same), Cowboy Kid (Romstar), Dragon Fighter (Sofel), F-15 Strike Eagle (MicroProse...self-published, but years behind its original 1984 release for the Atari 8-bit series), Ghoul School (Electro Brain), Gun Nac (Nexoft), Hammerin' Harry (Irem), Hudson Hawk (Sony Imagesoft...finally!), L'Empereur (Koei), and Uncharted Waters (Koei). For the Game Boy besides the three covered we have Amazing Tater (Atlus), Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (THQ), Double Dribble 5 on 5 (Konami), Fastest Lap (MTB), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (LJN). For the Super NES besides the three main games covered, there's D-Force (Asmik), John Madden Football (Electronic Arts), Nolan Ryan's Baseball (Romstar), and Pit Fighter (THQ).

We now get to Top 20, the replacement to Top 30. It adds Super NES and Game Boy while expunging the last ten of each less with less descriptions, only the top 5 (not the top 10) get descriptions, and only the top three show how many months they've charted. It seems that the numbers are still based on sales and "Pros" (we unfortunately don't get those lists anymore), but the numbers jump around for NES. Super Mario Bros. 3 has a 2:1 margin on Battletoads which crawled back to #2 (from #4). Long in the shadows, The Legend of Zelda is now in #3 (from #11), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game has dropped to #4 (from #2), Dr. Mario is back on the (medical) board at #5 (from #13), Mega Man 3 moves up to #7 from #6, Final Fantasy dropped from #3 to #7, Batman's back on the menu at #8 (preparing for the new game), Metroid has returned to the Top 10 at #9, and Super Mario Bros. 2 at #10. Other games that fell off were The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants (from #8 to #11), Crystalis (#5 to #12), Tetris (#9 to #13), and Dragon Warrior II (#15, from #6), but Zelda II: The Adventure of Link saved itself from falling off the list by improving to #17 (from #24). Next up, Super NES! There aren't too many Super NES games at this point, but going down the top 10 in order, it's Super Mario World, F-Zero, SimCity, Final Fight, ActRaiser, Super Castlevania IV, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (ranked relatively low because it was only held up by the "Pros", as yet unreleased), Super R-Type, Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV), and Pilotwings. We'll follow these for the next seven years. I have a feeling The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past will be a permanent fixture on the Top 10. On Game Boy, for its first Top 20 appearance, Super Mario Land retains #1, with Metroid II: Return of Samus premiering at #2, Dr. Mario still holding #3, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan pushed to #4, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge back at #5, Super R.C. Pro-Am new at #6, F-1 Race at #7 (from #4), Castlevania: The Adventure dropped back to #8 (from #6), Battletoads now at #9, and Final Fantasy Legend fallen from #5 to #10. This pushed off Operation C again (now at #12 from #7), Batman (now at #14 from #8), with Sword of Hope and Gargoyle's Quest off the list. For as much press they gave FaceBall 2000 in Volume 30 it's still at #13. It's cool that we get to see another ten, I'm sure that the ones that have bounced up and down in the list (Castlevania: The Adventure, The Hunt for Red October, Operation C, Batman, etc.) probably weren't actually that far behind.

Celebrity Profile, now Celebrity Player Profile, is still here in an interview style page, this time with Bill Laimbeer, doubling as an advertisement for Bill Laimbeer's Coombat Basketball for the Super Nintendo. Anyway, as part of Game Boy's acceptance into the mainstream, the new Pak Watch gives the Game Boy its own section. There are road-like signs for some of the games previewed, presumably for either theme or who far along they are. Contra Force gets "Blast Off" because of its release in a few months, but Darkwing Duck gets an orange "Under Construction" because it should be there by summer. "Bright Idea" is games further off...Ultima VI is announced but they use the screenshots from the DOS version. Unfortunately, the SNES version turned out to be one of FCI's worst ports...and there's nothing even resembling this awesome intro despite that such a thing would be quite possible on a Super NES.

The last page of the magazine has a picture of the Nintendo Instant Redemption Certificate and that it expires March 15, 1992. This was part of a price-fixing settlement with the FTC.

Overall, this issue has been mostly an improvement. Stuff that's not improved is that the Top 20 really doesn't benefit the NES and takes away useful information, Now Playing has been damaged but not ruined, the Game Pak Data Box is missed, and they missed a chance to actually fix Nester's Adventures in the process of the new comics. (It won't be any better).

Starting with this issue and for issues as they kept updated, I'll add a link to the next page if I have know it will be up with this update, so let's go to Volume 33!

Return to Main Page | Return to Magazines Index | Contact Me

© 2026 Carbon-izer.com