Exor's Dungeon - Magazine Reviews - Nintendo Power Volume 43

It's the end of 1992 (December 1992, Volume 43). In addition to a note mentioning the SNES CD-ROM will have a 32-bit coprocessor instead of a 16-bit processor (sounding more like a PlayStation at this point, though I believe Sony was out of the picture by this time), Player's Pulse has a bit from Gail Tilden...just who are George and Rob anyway? George Sinfield, of course, was a Nintendo Staff Editor and remained pretty much through the end, while Rob Noel was more associated with the marketing division. The NES games this month include Batman Returns (Konami), James Bond Jr. (THQ), Tecmo NBA Basketball (Tecmo), and Caesars Palace (Virgin Games), a port of the Game Boy title and presumably licensed by Caesars World, which owned the casino at the time. James Bond Jr. was based after the animated series. I had never heard of this before, when I watched it JBJ was so American that his British accent is the ONLY that isn't.

Our Classified Information games this round include Space Megaforce (SNES), Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES), Phalanx (SNES), Super Star Wars (SNES), The Addams Family (SNES), Smart Ball (SNES), Track & Field (Game Boy), Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (Game Boy), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (NES), and Monopoly (NES). After that, it's The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past comic. Ganon is defeated, but the ending is bittersweet.

Luckily, the next page has Mario brighten up the day in his latest adventure to kick off the Game Boy section, Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins, which introduced Wario and a bunch of power-ups never seen again like the Carrot and Bunny Mario. Hudson Soft's Bonk's Adventure is there too. This is not actually the TurboGrafx-16 game of the same name, though that did receive a NES port in 1994. There's also Looney Tunes for the Game Boy (Sunsoft) to round off the section. Like the Zelda comic, this is also the last edition of Super Mario Adventures as Luigi rallies a bunch of Yoshis to send Bowser packing yet again.

Counselor's Corner covers the hits like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Street Fighter II: The World Warrior with some games with lesser numbers (Dragon Warrior III and Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters) before the Super NES games, featuring Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf (Electronic Arts), Road Runner's Death Valley Rally (Sunsoft) with the poster for Interplay's The Lost Vikings, and LJN's Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge. By this point, LJN was just a small group at Acclaim to publish games for Nintendo (their counterpart, Flying Edge, did Sega games). There was also Push-Over by Ocean which was a puzzle platformer that from the screenshots reminded me a bit of Lemmings, and an article called "Rapid Fire!" for three new Super Scope titles, X-Zone (Kemco), Bazooka Blitzkrieg (Bandai), and Battle Clash (Nintendo).

The Player's Poll Contest has Version 3 "Ts" as the third prize, a basketball and NCAA Basketball (SNES) for second prize, and for the grand prize, a trip to New Orleans to see the 1933 NCAA Final Four, and...a copy of NCAA Basketball. Recent Player's Poll Contests were curiously absent of a game and I'm glad we're back in the formula we would have for most of the magazine.

Surprisingly, Nester's Adventures follows the format of "last issue's game" (Super Star Wars). At this point, Nester's Adventures rarely follows the Howard & Nester formula of "this month's comic is last month's cover feature" (Howard & Nester broke that sometimes, but that was the rule). In Nester's Adventures, it's usually the other way around, so it IS rare to see it. Since the switch to Nester's Adventures in Volume 26, only four of its eighteen comics (including this one) have followed the H&N formula (~22%), whereas for Howard & Nester (starting at Volume 2), it was 12 of 19 comics, or ~63%, a number that probably would've been sharper had it not run for a relatively short time. Maybe because of that, the comic isn't completely terrible this month?

Top 20 has Super Mario Bros. 3 leading the new #2 The Legend of Zelda (buoyed by the re-release and now has Dealer numbers back) by just over 1,000 points. With Zelda moving from #4, it means bad news for the turtles. Mega Man 4 is still #3, Battletoads hopped up a bit (#5 to #4) but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project fell from #2 to #5. Tecmo Super Bowl still holds #6 for the FOURTH month in a row, Final Fantasy recovers a bit (#8 to #7, it had previously been #11 two months ago), Mega Man II is #8 (from #14), and Mega Man 3 is #9 (from #16). If it wasn't for Mega Man being at #16, all FOUR Mega Man games could've been on the Top 20! Anyway, Dr. Mario is #10 (from #12). The games that got bumped off the top 10 were Super Mario Bros. 2 (#10 to #14), Tetris (#9 to #11), and Yoshi (#7 to #18).

In the SNES category Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is still #1 but the margins are closer (~5000 points instead of ~12000 points) against #2, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and despite their drop-off in the NES lists, #3 now belongs to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time. (This was #11 last month). Super Mario World is now #4 (formerly #3) as Contra III: The Alien Wars comes back to #5 (from #7). Final Fantasy II falls from #5 to #6, Super Castlevania IV similarly drops from #6 to #7, SimCity drops from #8 to #9, and, as predicted, Super Mario Kart takes #10. What was #8? F-Zero, which tumbled from #4 (first time leaving the Top 5) to its new humble spot. The arrival of the Turtles and Super Mario Kart pushed two games out of the top 10, Final Fight (which had been declining, but dropped from #9 to #17) and Krusty's Super Fun House which went from #10 to #19.

Game Boy games keep Super Mario Land and Metroid II: Return of Samus in their current places as Battletoads takes #3 from Yoshi (Battletoads was #5 was last month but Yoshi is sent to #14), Dr. Mario moving from #6 to #4, Game Boy Mega Man II premiering at #5, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins shooting up to #6 from #20, Final Fantasy Adventure showing signs of reversing decline (back to #7 from #8), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan also getting better (#9 to #8), Final Fantasy Legend II going from #12 to #9, and The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly no longer holding #4 and dropping straight to #10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers went off the top 10 (#7 to #11) Batman: Return of the Joker off the list again (#10 to #16).

There is a Celebrity Player Profile (though it's definitely on the way out), this time on Craig T. Nelson, whose voice would grace a Nintendo game over 20 years later (as Mr. Incredible, which he voiced in The Incredibles and its far inferior sequel) in the Wii and Wii U's Disney Infinity.

George & Rob's Now Playing NES games include MicroProse's F-117A Stealth Fighter, which was an original title to the NES and not a port of a computer game. There's also THQ's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (based after the film) and Atlus' Widget, along with the other four games covered that month. For Game Boy, the "extra" games were F-17 Strike Eagle II (MicroProse), Hit the Ice (Taito), Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball (LJN—this was listed in Volume 41 but not reviewed), the Game Boy version of Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Tradewest's Super Off-Road. In the Super NES category, there's Gemfire (Koei), Gemforce (Irem), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (THQ—this may be the first time THQ has put out a version for each Nintendo console and getting all three reviewed in one issue, and definitely won't be the last...expect to see this sort of thing at least through 2009), Imperium (Vic Tokai), Jeopardy! featuring Alex Trebek (Gametek), Prince of Persia (Konami—note that the Game Boy and NES versions were done by Virgin Games), Q*Bert 3 (NTVIC—what was Q*Bert 2?), Race Drivin' (THQ), Sonic Blast Man (Taito), and Warp Speed (Accolade). They also discussed, but apparently forgot to give a review to, California Games II by DTMC, a port of a title by Epyx (the original California Games was ported to the NES by Milton Bradley in an issue I've since forgotten).

Pak Watch discusses upcoming games and talks about SimEarth getting ported to the Super NES. Unlike SimCity, SimEarth brought to the SNES by FCI (the hit-or-miss porting studio), Nintendo Power even admits that "fans of SimCity may find SimEarth too slow and complex", which was the same problem it suffered on its original release, too. Pak Watch has the first time it talks about Shoshinkai (later Space World), the late Japanese Nintendo expo. It's just a paragraph, but the games they talk about are worth discussing briefly.
* Final Fantasy V has "up to 100 different character party combinations possible" which is a fancier way that there's at least nine characters (it's like how sandwich shops have exponential numbers for the combinations of sauce and vegetables). Or at least that would be the case, if FFV had nine characters. They only just have five.
* "Devil's Course" by T&E Soft is mentioned ("golf in impossible fantasy terrain"). This was New 3D Golf Simulation: Devil's Course, and released as True Golf Classics: Wicked 18 stateside. I can understand why they wanted to censor the word "Devil" at the time, but it's not actually "True Golf Classics" like the true-to-life maps of True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links or True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club were.
* "Power Monger" (Powermonger) was described as being similar to Populous and the original PC version was indeed based on the engine to Populous. Powermonger got a PAL release but the SNES port never was released stateside.
* Super Mario Bros. 2 as we know it in the West was released in Japan as Super Mario USA. While it's true that when Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic was localized, there were lots of enhancements made to the original game (a run button, for starters) but to say that the game "has never before been released in Japan" wasn't exactly true.

"Ace Harding: Lost in Las Vegas" shows up in Pak Watch again. It wasn't released for the NES but I wonder if the original IP holder, ICOM Simulations, doing stuff for the TurboGrafx had anything to do it with it, with Beyond Shadowgate being a TurboGrafx CD exclusive.

Before we move on to Volume 44, I do have to ask a question. It wasn't the worst choice of the ten games this month and I do like fun covers, but I still feel the cover feature could've been something better than Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. Am I wrong in that?

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