We're now in July 1992 (Volume 38). Guile from Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is on the cover. His theme is a timeless hit (but does it go with everything?). Anyway, this issue's actual game stuff opens with Panic Restaurant (Taito) and all stages at that...it's a fun NES platformer and I'm glad it sees proper coverage here, six stages across six pages. I think I wrote a bit on Panic Restaurant on this site elsewhere. Following this is a section on Capcom's Gold Medal Challenge '92 and then Might & Magic. Unlike Ultima, where what NES gamers got as the "first" Ultima game was actually Ultima III: Exodus, this is the first in the Might & Magic series. At this point, the game was released for the Apple II six years prior, and at this point New World Computing was releasing Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen, which had some neat tricks up its sleeve due to its compatibility with the later Might and Magic: Darkside of Xeen, which concluded the storyline from the first game. Basically Nintendo players needed a lot to catch up on (they wouldn't get that far).

To celebrate its fourth anniversary of the magazine there's a "password giveaway" section to a handful of games spread across the three systems, even newer titles like Lemmings (SNES) and Mega Man 4 (NES). Luckily, if you missed out, you could still order all the back issues at this point, so there shouldn't be a reason other than financial hardship that you shouldn't have all 39 issues at this point that didn't arrive new. The regular Classified Information, which usually deals in this sort of stuff has the three systems as well, with the NES showing off Bo Jackson Baseball, Shatterhand, Tecmo Super Bowl, The Hunt for Red October, and Pipe Dream. Game Boy has codes for Operation C and R-Type, with Super Smash TV, HyperZone, Ultraman: Towards the Future, and F1 ROC: Race of Champions. After the Zelda comic, we get the Game Boy games—Toxic Crusaders (Bandai), Jeep Jamboree (Virgin Games), Wave Race (Nintendo), and Centipede (Accolade). The last two are of interest...the original Wave Race has been largely forgotten (even the series itself went into hiatus years ago) but the game promoted a new four-player Game Boy link cable (not many games used this, though the GBA made such things standard) and Centipede, despite its age, still gets two pages...yes, the original arcade game licensed from Atari Corporation (with Accolade bringing it over); Centipede went with Atari Corp. as it was a pre-1984 game, so it was Atari, not Atari Games.

While Atari Games was on the outs with Nintendo due to the whole Tengen thing, Atari Corporation was directly competing against Nintendo at the time with the Atari Lynx. Like the Game Gear, the Atari Lynx wasn't nearly as successful as the Game Boy...both the Game Gear and Atari Lynx were color, but they were more expensive, chewed up batteries, and lacked games like the stuff the Game Boy had, even back then.

Similar to previous months, Super Mario Adventures is between the Game Boy games and Counselor's Corner, the latter of which covers Mega Man 4, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Lagoon, and Sword of Hope. "Super NES Technology Update" returns for a look at digitized pictures in video games (impressive looking but they're only stills). In particular, it shows off a digitized picture of Vanna White in Gametek's new Wheel of Fortune game for the Super NES, but that would not resemble anything of what she looked like in-game however, as George & Rob would duly note in the next issue.

Capcom's Magic Sword headlines the SNES games but most of the strategy is on the backside of the poster for Wings 2: Aces High (actually nothing to do with Cinemaware's Wings, Namco just rebranded Sky Mission for the North American market). Finally, the cover feature...Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, the port of the hit arcade game, makes its way to the Super NES, before a few pages of NCAA Basketball (published by Nintendo) sneaks its way in there.

Player's Poll Contest has no real games this month, you can win a Super Mario Bros. pinball machine from Gottlieb, custom-made Super Mario World jackets or the "Version 3" Nintendo Power jersey, and Nester's already fallen off a cliff at this point so instead of Lemmings, it's DragonStrike. After Power Players, it's the new installment to Now Playing.

George & Rob's Now Playing is a little different and returning to more of how it was with sections for each game and George and Rob's thoughts on each. Also they give the games covered in the magazine a proper review. Spanky's Quest gets a proper look this time and is listed again. Otherwise, the "other" games covered this month (besides those with full features and aforementioned Spanky's Quest) consist of Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge (Acclaim, NES), Knight Quest (Taito, Game Boy), Rival Turf (Jaleco, Super NES), Romance of the Three Kingdoms II (Koei), Super Battletank: War in the Gulf (Absolute), and Thunder Spirits (Seika).

Top 20 talks about the shakeups in each category. In NES, Super Mario Bros. 3 takes #1 yet again but Tecmo Super Bowl dropped to #9 (from #2), with Battletoads and Mega Man 4 going up in rank. Turtles are back on the menu with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project at #4 (from #7) with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game at #8 (from #11). Final Fantasy drops to #7 (from #6, two months in a row dropping), Dr. Mario drops to #9 (from #8), Tetris drops to #11 (from #9, so off the list), Metroid drops to #13 (from #10). The Legend of Zelda also goes back down to #5 (from #2).

The Super NES games have Super Mario World leading by less than a thousand points, with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past moving up to #2 from #3, yet sales numbers pushed WWF Super Wrestlemania rolling in at the new #3. What this means otherwise is F-Zero has dropped from #2 to #4, and all the others pushed down one slot. Super Castlevania IV from #4 to #5, Final Fantasy II from #5 to #6, Final Fight from #6 to #7, SimCity from #7 to #8, ActRaiser finally pushed down from #8 to #9, though Contra III: The Alien Wars fell from #9 to #11. Instead, PilotWings returns to the Top 10. Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts is also off the Top 10 with it getting bumped to #13.

The Game Boy listings see Super Mario Land return to #1 with Metroid II: Return of Samus back in #2. Battletoads are still #3 to Dr. Mario's #4 but their margins have been enhanced with a 1,000 point margin, with the fifth place of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers at #5 (from #6) on a margin of less than 300 points. The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly is up to #6 (from #8), Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge fell from #5 to #8 after holding that for three issues, Final Fantasy Adventure falls from #7 to #8, Terminator 2: Judgment Day goes from #13 to #9, and the 10th place, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan is back up to the top 10 after going to #16 last month. Looking at the ones bumped off the list, it's Final Fantasy Legend II going from #9 to #14 and Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge going from #10 to #13. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters still is #19.

Celebrity Player Profile is on Tori Spelling back before what I assume was unfortunate plastic surgery, and I don't typically cover Pak Watch as there's not much to see that's of note (after all, ALMOST everything gets released), though it does discuss a Dragon Ball Z title from Bandai (yes, name is formatted correctly), something that wasn't seen in the West yet...the NES did get a Dragon Ball game that was de-Dragon Balled, something that was still obvious...but the particular game Pak Watch looked at was Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu. It nor any other Dragon Ball games for the Super NES would be localized, it wouldn't be until 1997 when Dragon Ball: Final Bout was released for PlayStation as Dragon Ball GT: Final Bout and already by 2004 the Dragon Ball games on Nintendo systems would elicit a collective yawn from the magazine. Anyway, that's all for Volume 38, see you in Volume 39!

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