After three previous covers with Disney properties, Mickey Mouse makes cover with The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse in the January 1993 issue of Nintendo Power (Volume 44). (Mickey would go onto make at least three other cover appearances on Nintendo Power). It's also the first subscriber edition of the magazine. The subscriber edition is similar to the original, except it folds out to expose what, or in this case, who, is Mickey hosing down. On the inside page of the subscriber edition fold-out there's a "find the item" search, but instead of listing items to find, they list the games and find the item associated (so for Spot there's a 7-Up can in the picture, Super Mario Kart has a banana peel, etc.).

Gail Tilden announces a few change-ups. She mentions a few design features have been touched up, Now Playing has been reworked as George has left to go to THQ (he'll be back, don't worry) like where Howard Phillips was at the time, and the Super NES and NES games swapped places. The font does look a bit different, a bit easier to read, the table of contents has a different font (except for the non-subscriber edition), and probably more to come.

With the new design, we hit up the Super NES games first, and instead of being buried in the back if it happened to be a SNES game, we get to the cover feature game first, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (Capcom). This section also has the poster for The Ren & Stimpy Show for Game Boy (from THQ). By the way, in this issue and the ones I've been covering, THQ is stylized as T*HQ. It's not particularly relevant, but I thought I should bring it up anyway. Other SNES games are Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye (Activision), Sonic Blast Man (Taito—no relation to the dreaded hedgehog on a competitor's console), Equinox (Sony Imagesoft's sequel to Solstice), and a whole article on various Super NES titles. This section is more like Now Playing (sans reviews) but just for sports games, some new and some older, covering John Madden Football '93 (Electronic Arts), Pro Quarterback (Tradewest), NBA All-Star Challenge (LJN), Super Play Action Football (Nintendo), Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs (Electronic Arts), NCAA Basketball (Nintendo), NHLPA Hockey '93 (Electronic Arts), Hit the Ice (Taito), David Crane's Amazing Tennis (Accolade), Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour (Ubi Soft), which was misspelled as "Jimmy Conners Pro Tennis Tour", Best of the Best: Championship Karate (Electro Brain), Cal Ripken Jr. Baseball (Mindscape), Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball (LJN), and Super Batter Up (Namco).

Finally, there's Firepower 2000. Firepower 2000 was developed by The Sales Curve, better known as SCi, which became Eidos in 2005 after buying the 1984-2005 Eidos, and published in Europe first as Super SWIV. Here in the United States it was published by Sunsoft.

Classified Information this month covers Super Star Wars, Rival Turf, True Golf Classics: Pebble Beach Golf Links, Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf, True Golf Classics: Waialae Country Club, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Phalanx, Kirby's Dream Land, F-117A Stealth Fighter, and Dragon Warrior III. Even though it's been removed from the column, at this point, the mailing address still says to send in a three-digit code for your tip. It also has an old picture of Nester, increasingly becoming irrelevant by this time, even if he headed other columns, like Counselor's Corner. Speaking of which, with no Zelda comic, the magazine goes straight to Counselor's Corner now even before the Game Boy games. Final Fantasy II, Soul Blazer, The Empire Strikes Back, and Spider-Man 2 are this month. Super Mario Adventures has concluded its main story but there's a one-off with Wario and Mario, showing that perhaps Wario is just a bit hung up on the past rather than a villain. Also Mario kills an octopus.

Just a year after shrinking to one page and becoming Power Players, NES Achievers has been renamed again, to Power Player's Challenge. High scores aren't printed here, but rather a set of challenges in popular games to submit. Maybe high scores will return next month.

Game Boy games covered this month are LJN's The Incredible Crash Dummies, Gametek's The Humans, and Capcom's Mega Man III for Game Boy. This provides a segue into the winners of the Mega Man Robot Design Contest (I don't think they won anything, just the opportunity for Capcom to steal their designs) and then the NES games starting with Mega Man 5. There's also R.C. Pro-Am II (Tradewest) and The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper (Taito). Nester's Adventures this month is Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf. Yes, despite the comics from 1992 on their way out, Nester's Adventures is still one page and showing no signs of improvement.

Now we get into the subscriber part. There's a pull-out booklet on Mario Paint, and then extra pages for subscribers. There was The Top 10 Games of 1992, which was the result of Pro and Player ratings of the Top 20 and some editor input. For Super NES the top game was once again Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, followed by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. From #3 down to #10, the games were Contra III: The Alien Wars (printed as "Super Contra III: The Alien Wars"), Super Star Wars, Mario Paint, Super Mario Kart, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time, Out of this World, NCAA Basketball, and Road Runner's Death Valley Rally. In the Game Boy category, the #1 game went to Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins with #2 to Mega Man II and Bionic Commando as #3. The other picks for Game Boy (#4 through #10) was Tiny Toon Adventures: Babs' Big Break, Gradius: The Interstellar Assault, Batman: Return of the Joker, Track & Field, Kirby's Dream Land, Looney Tunes, and Yoshi. NES' #1 title was Mega Man 4 with Darkwing Duck being #2. #3 through #10 included Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project, Rampart, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (written as "Star Trek"), Little Samson, Captain America & The Avengers, Gargoyle's Quest, and Felix the Cat.

There's an article on Star Fox and the Super FX chip, as well as a Star Fox model to cut out and assemble. You can count the polygons in-game, so you get a polygonal thing to cut out. There's an article how they actually evaluate games and "The Best of Classified Information". The idea was to take the best tips from the past and adding a few new ones, while also not repeating any that could be found in Top Secret Passwords Player's Guide. In this section, there were tips for Super Mario World, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, Faceball 2000 (Super NES version), Prince of Persia (Super NES version), Gradius III, the Konami code and what it does for several of Konami titles (from Contra to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan), Super C (which uses a variation on the code), Tom & Jerry, Super Spy Hunter, F1 ROC: Race of Champions, Kirby’s Dream Land, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan. Finally, there's a few maps for Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins.

In this case, I actually have the non-subscriber edition (for which I provided the scan for, there is some slight water damage), and what I found is that despite not being part of the extra subscriber section, Nester's Adventures isn't in the newsstand edition, it's missing it in the table of contents and it goes straight to the Player's Poll Contest after coverage on The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper. I'm not sure if Nester's Adventures is subscriber-only material but it does help re-sync the page count to have Top 20 on page 100. The Player's Poll Contest grand prize lets you win a trip to San Francisco to "see the San Jose Sharks take on the LA Kings" (ice hockey), "take to the ice and take a slap shot with the Sharks", an autographed hockey stick, and while in the Bay Area to visit Electronic Arts and meet the designers of NHLPA Hockey '93. Thhe Second Prize winners get the game and "Authentic Sharks' jerseys—with your name printed on the back". You can also win (50 winners) the "Version 3" Nintendo Power t-shirt. The first time that name is used, and I'm guessing it's to prevent confusion with the actual jerseys you could win.

Top 20 has been changed around, first the Super NES games, then the Game Boy, then the NES. The NES has really been pushed to back in all the ways, including Pak Watch where it gets listed at the bottom. But first, the Top 20. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior holds #1 and actually increases the margin against The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, with Super Mario Kart zooming into third place (from #10). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time gets bumped down to fourth place, with Final Fantasy II returning to its #5 spot (from #6). Super Mario World now is pushed to #6 (it was #4, pushing out of the top three for the first time since the SNES list first appeared. F-Zero moves up to #7 from #8. The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare appears at #8 as Mario Paint goes from #12 to #9, making the Top 10 for the first time. Super Castlevania IV dropped to #10 from #7. The new arrivals of The Simpsons and the rising of Mario Paint means that SimCity goes to #11 from #9 and Contra III: The Alien Wars goes all the way to #13 from #5.

Game Boy has a big upset where Kirby's Dream Land premiers at #1, besting both Mario AND Samus (they both move down, but keep their order). Dr. Mario holds #4, Battletoads dropped from #3 to #5 as it had been two months ago, The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly is doing better (#10 to #6), Final Fantasy Adventure holding #7, Tetris saved from extinction (#20 to #8), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers back on the top 10 (#11 to #9), and Batman: Return of the Joker back on the top 10 (#16 to #10, as it had been two months ago). I guess Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins still isn't ready yet (#6 to #11). The other games that got bumped off (a total of four games including SML2) were Mega Man II (off the list from #5), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (#8 to #13), and Final Fantasy Legend II (#9 to #16).

Finally, in the last category, is the NES. Super Mario Bros. 3 takes #1 as it usually does, though Tecmo Super Bowl climbed into #2 (from #6, where it has been hanging since September 1992). The Legend of Zelda dropped to #3 (from #2) but I believe it will be a permanent fixture for the next two years before it is retired. Battletoads is still #4, Final Fantasy is doing even better than it had been in a while (#7 to #5), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project not doing terribly great (falling from #5 to #6, it was #2 just two months ago), Mega Man 4 (#7 from #3), Dr. Mario (#8 from #10), Tetris (#9 from #11), and Mega Man 3 (#10 from #9). Mega Man II dropped off the top 10 (#8 to #13) to allow Tetris back on the list.

With George and Rob now gone, Now Playing has an entirely different layout, with MSRPs for games and positives/negatives. An example can be seen here. They do have mini-reviews for all the games covered int he issue, and ratings for them too. The following list is what they gave reviews too, a * indicates it did not have a mini-review in Now Playing, though a lot of these were covered in the big SNES Sports section to some degree. Starting with Super NES...Best of the Best: Championship Karate (Electro Brain)*, The Brainies (Titus), Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs (Electronic Arts)*, Chuck Rock (Imagesoft), Hit the Ice (Taito)*, Imperium (Vic Tokai), Jimmy Connors Pro Tennis Tour (Ubi Soft—misspelled as "Jimmy Conners Pro Tennis Tour" AGAIN)*, John Madden Football '93 (Electronic Arts)*, The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (Capcom), NBA All-Star Challenge (LJN)*, NHLPA Hockey '93 (Electronic Arts)*, Pro Quarterback (Tradewest)*, Shanghai II: Dragon's Eye (Activision), Sonic Blast Man (Taito), Spindizzy World (ASCII), and Wordtris (Spectrum Holobyte). Under the NES games, there was The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (THQ), Goal! Two (Jaleco), Mega Man 5 (Capcom), The Jetsons: Cogswell's Caper (Taito), R.C. Pro-Am II (Tradewest), and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (Jaleco). Game Boy also saw Battleship (Mindscape), The Humans (Gametek), The Incredible Crash Test Dummies (LJN), Speedball 2 (Mindscape), and Xenon 2 (Mindscape). Battleship, by the way, was reviewed way back in Volume 21 (February 1991), almost two years ago, but publisher INTV never got around to it as they went bankrupt shortly after.

While there were games that were scored and not reviewed, there were also games that were reviewed but not scored, namely Chester Cheetah (Kaneko) and Gods (Mindscape), both for Super NES.

Pak Watch has a new Game Boy game that is referred to as "Zelda" or "Zelda for Game Boy" or "Zelda IV", a game we know as The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening that would be one of the best Game Boy titles in its library and would basically be #1 for years on the Game Boy list before Pokémon dethroned it. SimEarth and SimAnt are both on the Super NES Pak Watch list, though don't expect SimLife or SimFarm to show up there. It should be noted that SimAnt (which first showed up at Shoshinkai) was ported by a Japanese developer (Tomcat Systems) but for its U.S. release, was published by Maxis. It also would use the SNES Mouse. But more on that another day.

What a jam-packed issue! In my scan there's also some peel-off controller decals, presumably as a subscriber bonus.

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