As we press play on this issue (Volume 39, August 1992), before we even get to the table of contents, we get an advertisement for the Super NES, specifically a new low price of just $99.99 already. It doesn't have Super Mario World as a pack-in anymore or a second controller, but the idea was that you could pick games that YOU wanted. I'm not sure if this was an action or reaction to Sega Genesis when it came to pricing, but it did have to do with their ongoing war with Sega Genesis, which I believe would actually sell more units than Super NES in 1992. Player's Pulse discusses the contest Volume 29 had (of your choice to go where to), which I thought sounded lame but the winner had the bright idea of using to go to bike on Haleakalā in Hawaii (well played, I didn't think of that). I was not able to find any article of them going (must have been a SMALL newspaper). So, starting with the NES games we have Gargoyle's Quest II (Capcom) with maps, Casino Kid 2 by Sofel, and Contra Force by Konami, then (as usual) Classified Information, the continued adventure of Link in the A Link to the Past comic (this time introducing an original character named Roam, as well as an allusion to how to get into the Swamp Palace), and then the Game Boy games.

Before we get to the Game Boy games, I would like to list the eleven games that are featured in Classified information this month: Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Gun Nac, Abadox, Infiltrator, Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, Final Fantasy Legend II, Q*bert, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Soccer, F1 ROC: Race of Champions, and Arcana.

OK, so Game Boy games...we open with Kirby's Dream Land, a Game Boy title developed by HAL Laboratory featuring a floating spherical hero named Kirby, who has not even gotten his iconic pink color yet (even in official art, much less the Game Boy's cabbage-colored screen), as well as two other titles, an obscure puzzle title by DTMC named Lazlos' Leap (or "Lazlo's Leap" as the magazine calls it), along with Wordtris, a Tetris-like title from Spectrum Holobyte, which had made similar titles to capitalize on Tetris (Spectrum Holobyte had the rights to publish Tetris on home computers, it did very well for them).

There's four pages on Summer CES 1992 but there's not much to say other than there's some pictures to look at since it's just text otherwise and I think most, if not all, games discussed were released. Counselor's Corner has Drakkhen, Defenders of Dynatron City, Wizards and Warriors III, and Boxxle. The Super NES games start with Konami's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, noting its the sixth time the Turtles have shown up on Nintendo consoles (if you count the Game Boy games), though by this time Turtlemania was in decline. The level maps are on the reverse side of the poster for Felix the Cat, the featured game for next month. Wings 2: Aces High (Namco) and cover feature Mario Paint wrap up the section. The Player's Poll Contest is winning a trip to the FOX Studios and Hollywood, though makes no promises of meeting Matt Groening (just an exclusive signed poster) or the voice actors...or what the second prize winners got, their choice of Krusty's Fun House (NES) or Krusty's Super Fun House (Super NES). There's also the "Version 3" jerseys to win, too...but the Nester as depicted on the shirts and elsewhere in the magazine looks nothing like the Nester in Nester's Adventures (and unusually at this point, does last cover issue's feature, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior).

Now Playing (after Power Players as usual) has Rob and George dressed as Ninja Turtles (though it looks like it was originally sketched as a joke and not actually intended for publication), but let's take a look at the list of games that didn't get coverage elsewhere. The NES games include Hillsfar (FCI), Ghost Lion (Kemco), and Ultimate Journey (Bandai). Ghost Lion is a strange one, from the 80's box art to being based after a Japanese movie that was only in English but not released overseas, but I'm gonna let HG101 cover this one. Ultimate Journey is even stranger. They definitely played it (with Rob feeling like it should've come out three years prior) but YOU never played it because it was never never released and the prototype is still MIA.

What else...as I mentioned last issue, "You've got this great picture of Vanna at the very beginning of the game. Then, when the letter-turning action starts, she's like a knock-kneed woman in platform shoes looking no more like Vanna than my high school principal". GameTek's Wheel of Fortune was the worst rated game that month in the Super NES category on graphics and sound, with the other games listed that month being Clue (Parker Bros.), Kablooey (Kemco), and Super Bowling (American Technōs). Finally, the Game Boy games also list Wordzap by Jaleco and Miner 2049er (Mindscape...a port of an old Atari 400/800 game and still forgotten about). The list also looks a bit different as they switched from all caps to writing things out properly with lowercase (they'd switch back next issue).

I'm not sure how the Top 20 points work and how it works but at least on the dealer end it has to do with units sold, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past sold copies, more than any other title at that point (Super Mario World was previously a pack-in, limiting its potential) and destroyed the competition. While Super Mario Bros. 3 enjoyed the #1 on the NES list at a 2:1 ratio, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past seizes #1 at a 4:1 ratio. So let's look at the SNES games first...Super Mario World settles for #2 (Zelda was at #2 last month), while Final Fantasy II also gets a bump from #6 to #3. F-Zero holds #4, WWF Super Wrestlemania falls into #5 from #3, Super Castlevania IV dropped from #5 to #6, Contra III: The Alien Wars rose from #11 to #7, SimCity holds #8, Final Fight fell from #7 to #9, and ActRaiser gets pushed to #10. PilotWings went from #10 to #15 as Contra III returned to the list, but I see that Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is at #11, a number that will rise in the near future.

For the NES games, at this point, Super Mario Bros. 3 has been on top almost consistently for nearly two years. Mega Man 4 gets a surprise #2 (first time there!) from #3, Tecmo Super Bowl makes a comeback at #3 (from #9), The Legend of Zelda takes #4 (from #5) and Battletoads takes #5 (from #2), with the rest as such: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project is at #6 (down from #4), Final Fantasy holds #7, Tetris is at #8 (up from #11), Mega Man (the original) makes its first appearance in the Top 20 in a while and "premiers" at #9, while Mega Man 3 takes #10 (from #12). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game is off the list, plummeting from #8 to #19, Dr. Mario also loses out (#9 to #15), as does Super Mario Bros. 2 (#10 to #12).

Dr. Mario suffers in the Game Boy list as well. The top three are like last month: Super Mario Land ,Metroid II: Return of Samus, and Battletoads, but Final Fantasy Adventure went from #8 to #4, The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly moves up to #5 (from #6), Dr. Mario went from #4 to #6, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge improved slightly (#8 to #7), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers went from #5 to #8, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan also made a minor improvement (#10 to #9), with Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge back on the top 10 when it went from #13 to #10. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is back to #12 (it was #9 last month, though #12 is still an improvement from #13 two months ago) and Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, which never made the Top 10, is gone from the list.

The Celebrity Player Profile is the hip-hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince. It talks about Jeff Townes being more on the "music side" and Will Smith being more on the "TV side" when it comes to cross-media, but while Townes largely faded into obscurity, Smith's career was taking off, with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air being a hit for NBC (running for six seasons and nearly 150 episodes before ending in 1996) and launching a successful movie career that started to falter around the time Nintendo Power came to a close.

When it comes to Pak Watch, the only thing of note is covering Konami's Parodius for the Super NES. We wouldn't get Parodius nor did they promise it, but somehow it got a PAL release.

The back pages has a quiz on several NES endings (they'd reveal the answers in Issue 40, but I won't spoil anything if you want to grab the CBRs and see for yourself) and the preview for next issue, covering Soul Blazer, Adventure Island III, Prince of Persia (NES), and The Jetsons: Robot Panic. Seems like one of them would make cover for next issue, right? But somehow none of them did...

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