Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is here, and Nintendo Power is going to tell you all about it. The openers today are six pages on Acclaim's WrestleMania, the second part to the Captain Nintendo short story (page 4, page 5, page 6), two pages on Sesame Street: 123 (but why?!), and finally seventeen pages on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. There's also a big section for Skate or Die, though it didn't make the cover. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was a decade away, and I believe THPS2 did make a cover in 2001. But that comes later. I do love Nintendo Power's original artwork in those days.

There's the usual features, Howard & Nester (about Track & Field II), Counselor's Corner (with tips on Super Mario Bros. 2, Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode, Wizards and Warriors, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest), and Classified Information (with Double Dragon, Mega Man, Life Force, Gauntlet, Blaster Master, Bionic Commando, and Track & Field II).

After those, there's a few pages on Marble Madness, Operation Wolf, and three games on NES football (much like Volume One's focus on baseball), with the three being Tecmo Bowl (Tecmo), John Elway's Quarterback (Tradewest), and NFL Football (LJN). There's four pages on Metal Gear, followed by Video Shorts. Video Shorts I've noticed have a LOT of licensed games released (and indeed, the NES library consisted of a lot of these games) or ports. This month's lineup includes Friday the 13th (LJN), World Games (Milton Bradley, based on an Epyx game for computers), Star Soldier (Taxan), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Bandai), Bump 'n Jump, Rampage (Data East, based on the arcade game from Bally/Midway), Othello (the board game), RoboWarrior (Jaleco), Spy vs. Spy (Seika), Gyruss (Ultra), and Q*Bert (Ultra). Ultra was another brand created by Konami to bypass Nintendo's limit on how many games a licensee can put out, and Milton Bradley was already owned by Hasbro at the time. The Milton Bradley Company was officially shut down in 1998 when Hasbro merged it with their other board game company Parker Brothers, but their video game division ceased to exist in the early 1990s. Pak Watch introduces the "Gossip Gremlins", which were drawings of weird and often ugly (as in, visually unappealing) creatures that had miscellaneous rumors and gossip. These appeared on every page.

NES Journal talks about the Hands Free Controller (I've always wondered about the HFC, you would need some powerful lungs to play even the first level of Super Mario Bros.). Todd Stablefeldt, the boy pictured in both the link provided and the actual magazine (his picture was associated with the HFC, even being the manual), became a quadriplegic after he was shot in the jaw and paralyzed from the neck down after the bullet got lodged in his spine. While Stablefeldt remains a quadriplegic, it wouldn't be his foray into showing off new hands-free technology; many years later he would go and give a talk at Apple's WWDC to show off the new iOS Switch Control feature. His YouTube channel hasn't been touched in a few years, however; I hope he's doing well.

Moving on, there's an article on the PlayChoice-10, the NES arcade machine, and "Sound Waves", this time attempting to add news in the world of music. Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link now top the charts (at 1 and 3 respectively). The Legend of Zelda got knocked down to #2, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! dropped to six, Metroid dropped to #4, Double Dragon moves up to 3. Metal Gear dropped to 8, with Super Mario Bros. and Kid Icarus in 16 and 17, respectively. Milon's Secret Castle premiers at #7, Contra has climbed to #9, and Bases Loaded takes #10. I'm guessing that due to slow sales Super Mario Bros. has slid to 16, with Kid Icarus in 17. And Ice Hockey? It's off the aggregated list. We'll continue to keep up with the charts in future articles...

Also for all the controversy Volume Two had about the severed head on the cover, there's no letters about it, or anything for that matter. One more thing, the Player's Poll Contest was a bunch of controllers for the Grand Prize, half of them being made of suck, and no games with them. I'd rather get Zelda II or the Nintendo Power jersey...and that's it for Volume 4, January/February 1989.

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