Exor's Dungeon - Magazine Reviews - Nintendo Power Volume 33

The Turtles make the cover for the second time with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project for Nintendo Power's 33rd issue (Feb. 1992) and the game strategy is covered immediately after Player's Pulse. If you'd like to read along on Archive.org, the link is Archive.org here, but their scan quality isn't the best.

This guy is almost as old as Nintendo itself.

In fact, while Fandom does have somewhat complete information on this issue, the strategy seems to be NES games first, then Game Boy games, then Super NES. NES gets four games this month, so after Konami/Ultra's heroes in a half shell, there's also G.I. Joe: The Atlantis Factor (Capcom), Rampart (Jaleco) and Acclaim's The Simpsons: Bart vs. the World, before the Zelda comic, much like last issue. (Don't expect summaries). Also like last issue, Classified Informatiuon follows, this time covering NES games Tom & Jerry, Palamedes, American Gladiators, and Kickle Cubicle, with Darius Twin and SimCity getting coverage on the SNES side. Faceball 2000 covers the Game Boy representation. The information for SimCity covers how to get all rewards, all of which are exclusive to the NES version. The Game Boy games this time around are Gradius: The Interstellar Assault (Konami), Super Hunchback (Ocean), and LJN's Terminator 2: Judgment Day (it was in Now Playing last month but makes another appearance this month), and "Asteroids & Q*bert". At first I thought it was a compilation cartridge that were popular years later, but it's just two games, with Atari's Asteroids brought to the Game Boy by Accolade, and Jaleco bringing Gottlieb's Q*bert to the system. The Super Mario Adventures comic is before the Super NES pages (also like last issue) with the games this time being The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Konami), Wanderers from Ys (American Sammy and the first Ys game for a Nintendo system), and Super Scope 6 (Nintendo, featuring the new Super Scope light gun). Counselor's Corner covers Final Fantasy II, Crystalis, ActRaiser, Faceball 2000, and Catrap. Player's Poll Contest is about Space Shuttle Project by Absolute Entertainment. Like last month's contest, I ASSUME that the grand prize winner gets a copy of the game as well. This one wins a trip to see "an actual Space Shuttle launch" though asterisks are given that it will coincide with NASA's schedule and delays aren't Nintendo Power's fault), to "take a VIP tour of the Astronaut Hall of Fame" and a week at Space Camp. The jersey looks like a new one as it shows a mock-up of a cover of Nintendo Power with Nester on the cover (how he used to look, not like what he looks like in the next page), but it's the same one (luckily I figured out this error BEFORE the page went to press). The actual Nester's Adventure comic features last issue's cover again with Super Castlevania IV, but here Simon looks and speaks like a Native American for some reason. Scott, do you even play games?

With the games all done (the poster was on Sunsoft's Lemmings, coming soon) and Power Players done, George & Rob's Now Playing can commence. They talk about King's Quest V. I'm guessing that since they didn't complain of constantly dying or getting stuck, like the ICOM MacVentures games the NES version was made easier. Besides the four NES games covered with full features and Konami's King's Quest V port, there's Bucky O'Hare (Konami), Cyberball (Jaleco), and The California Raisins by Capcom. This last one was interesting since they didn't talk about it in their section and it wasn't ever actually released despite being almost entirely done. Maps were published in other books, box art was created, and the prototype is almost entirely complete, but it never made to store shelves. This takes away from the other mistake, that somehow Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project wasn't actually listed, it's all of L'Empereur's data. Under Game Boy, there's the five games covered in the magazine plus The Addams Family (Ocean), Boggle Plus (Parker Bros.), Boxxle 2 (PCI), Darkman (Ocean), Doomsayer (Ascii), Jordan vs. Bird: One on One (Electronic Arts), and Mini-Putt (JVC). Blaster Master Boy is on the list. George and Rob were disappointed that it didn't have much to do with Blaster Master because it never was to begin with. The only SNES game that didn't get real coverage was Kemco/Seika's Lagoon.

When it comes to the Top 30, er, Top 20, Super Mario Bros. 3 STILL beats Battletoads on a 2:1 margin, with The Legend of Zelda holding #3 with less than a 200 point difference from upstaging Battletoads. Mega Man 3 is up to #4 (from #7), Final Fantasy is up to #5 (from #7), Dr. Mario is down to #6 (from #5), Batman is up to #7 (from #8), Metroid is up to #8 (from #9), Crystalis is up to #9 (from #12) and Tiny Toon Adventures appears at #10. The only games that are off the Top 10 that was there last time is Super Mario Bros. 2 which is now at #11 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game which has tumbled to #14. It once rivaled Super Mario Bros. 3 and now it's dropping hard. On the SNES side, the top five are still mostly in place. Super Mario World retains #1, F-Zero retains #2, SimCity and Final Fight switched places from their debut, Super Bases Loaded inserted itself at #5 to push ActRaiser (the old #5) to #6. U.N. Squadron takes #7 as a new top 10, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is pushed to #8 (don't worry about it), Drakkhen appears for the #9 slot, and Pilotwings maintains #10. Super Castlevania IV got pushed from #6 to #13, Super R-Type went from #7 to #11, and Final Fantasy II went from #8 to #14. The Game Boy liust is still largely the same. Super Mario Land retains #1 again, Dr. Mario launches to #2 (from #3), Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge finally gets top 3 with #3 (from #5), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan maintains #4, Metroid II: Return of Samus dropping to #5 (from #2), Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge premiering at #6, F-1 Race holding #7, Super R.C. Pro-Am dropping to #8 (from #6), Final Fantasy Legend at #9 (from #10), and Operation C back on the list at #10 (from #12). This pushes off Battletoads (#9 to #11) and Castlevania: The Adventure from #8 to #17.

Celebrity Player Profile is Darius McCrary and Kellie Williams of "Family Matters". In Pak Watch, Yoshi is less than six months old after being introduced to North America and they're already talking about Yoshi's Egg, a puzzle game to be called Yoshi in North America. This would be Yoshi's premier on the NES. Next month...The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past!

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