February 1993 (Volume 45)'s cover is for The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt and is derived from the 1992 animated series. Starting off, Player's Pulse talks about a call for a new T-shirt design for the contests (another t-shirt reference, though the contest would slip up again and call them jerseys) and talks about the winners of the White Knuckle Scorin' contest. I found it mildly amusing that whatever concert they went to was actually a KISS concert, and Trixter was just the opening act. (I had to explain openers to people like my mother, the opener is always a lesser act, and that's why everyone has heard of KISS, Trixter not so much.)

The Super NES games in this issue start with Cybernator, Harley's Humongous Adventure, Wing Commander (the port of the PC title from Origin Systems and ported by Mindscape as opposed to FCI), Jeopardy! (with some quiz questions scattered throughout, they're all easy), and The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (with the poster for Star Fox on the other side of most of the coverage) and Aerobiz. (Nester's Adventures for Sonic Blast Man is before Aerobiz).

Before getting into Classified Information, there's an article titled "Unsung Heroes of the NES", talking about underperforming NES titles, whether appearing against heavy competition (Maniac Mansion got drowned out by Final Fantasy), a lack of character recognition (Blaster Master and Rockin' Kats are mentioned), or even questionable packaging (where there is perhaps the first mention of how weird and bad the first cover of Mega Man was when first introduced, with its legendarily bad cover). They don't talk about Anticipation though, which looked to be hyped up as a big game for Christmas 1988 but sort of disappeared after that. Guess they STILL don't want to talk about that one.

Despite its absence last month, the agent numbers are back. In this issue, there's permanently small karts in Super Mario Kart, sound tests for Lemmings (the SNES version), weapon duplication in Final Fantasy II, accessing the Secret Zone, then from within that accessing Fantasy Zone in Sküljagger: Revolt of the Westicans, accessing Easy Mode in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (not that SML2 was a difficult game), giving you more time to work on the circuitry segments in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (for the Game Boy), warping in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends for a price, and a previously-unknown password for Kid Icarus to make beating the game a lot easier.

The comic for Star Fox makes its debut, though it would only run for a few issues. The Game Boy section follows with Darkwing Duck (basically the same version of the NES game covered back in Volume 36, something they'd note in Now Playing as well), Spot: The Cool Adventure, a platformer title rather than the board game-style Spot for NES. This one is a bit strange...it's not the same thing as Cool Spot, a console title released in 1993 and later ported to Game Boy, but rather an entirely different game. It looks a lot like M.C. Kids, which was covered back in Volume 34 with a Game Boy version promised for the last several issues. This was in fact supposed to be released as Game Boy M.C. Kids but ended up getting the 7-Up branding instead. The unadulterated M.C. Kids for Game Boy was released in Europe with the same title the NES version got, McDonaldland. I should note that even the Game Boy McDonaldland was substantially different than the NES McDonaldland/M.C. Kids so it wasn't TOO obvious. There's also coverage for Alien³, The Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures, Rampart, and The Little Mermaid.

Counselor's Corner games this month are Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Soul Blazer, Might & Magic, and Dragon Warrior IV.

Finally, we have the NES games...Zen: Intergalactic Ninja, Bomberman II, Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland, and Time Diver: Eon Man. This last one is interesting as it was shelved before getting a release and remained unreleased until 2007 when the prototype leaked.

The contest this month is themed to Wayne's World. You don't get to meet Mike Myers or Dana Carvey, but, for the grand prize winners you DO win a Fender® Stratocaster, a Fender® amp, video camera, a pair of drumsticks, a "well-used couch" (yes, that was part of the prize package listed in the official rules), and a copy of Wayne's World for the Super NES. There was a small advertisement that if you wanted a Fender catalog, send two dollars to Fender's facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona. The second prize winners didn't get any of that except for the game but you did get the film on VHS, and then there was the shirts/jerseys.

In the Top 20, at this point, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior leads by only a little over 3000 points over runner-up The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but Super Mario Kart trails by less than 1,000. Mario Paint reaches fourth place now (from #9, another big leap). NCAA Basketball appears in 5th. Super Mario World holds #6, but F-Zero gets knocked down to #8 like it was two months ago as Super Star Wars moves up to #7 from #16. Final Fantasy II drops from #5 to #9, while SimCity returns to #10 (from #11). Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time goes from #4 to #12, The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare went from #8 to #11, and Super Castlevania IV continues falling (#10 to #14).

With Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins officially out in stores and people playing it, the game shoots to the top of the list, with Super Mario Land taking the #2 spot and Metroid II: Return of Samus taking #3, which they did last month. Kirby's Dream Land, which was #1 last month, has plummeted to #4. Tetris improves from #8 to #5, FaceBall 2000, which was #12 last month and only saw the Top 10 when it was first released, is now #6. Dr. Mario, which had been holding #4 for a few months, is now #7. The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly still struggles (#6 to #8), Final Fantasy Adventure is #9 (from #7), and longtime chart candidate Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan improved to #10 and back on the list. Mario, the Turtles, and the smiley face things pushed a few games off the list, of course, with Battletoads dropping from #5 to #11, sending Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers back to the sewers (#9 to #18), and Batman: Return of the Joker to #16 as it had been two months ago from #10 (it keeps alternating).

NES has an upset as well...the #1 game is now Tecmo Super Bowl (from #2). Super Mario Bros. 3 is #2 (from #1), The Legend of Zelda still at #3, Mega Man 4 at #4 (from #7), and Final Fantasy at #5 again like last month. Other games in the list include Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (holding #6), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (#14 to #7—it's been a long time since Zelda II was on the top 10), Mega Man premiering at #8, Battletoads dropping to #9 (their star finally beginning to fall...it was #4 last month), and Super Mario Bros. 2 at #10 (from #11). The three new additions meant that Tetris went to #11 again (from #9), Dr. Mario now at #15 from #8, and Mega Man 3 going from #10 to #18. Also of note, Maniac Mansion is at #12...I wonder if it was part of that "Unsung Heroes of the NES" thing.

Everything listed in Now Playing this month does have mini-reviews, except for Gods which was from last month (still no word on Chester Cheetah); meanwhile, The Hunt for Red October (Super NES version) has a mini-review but it's not scored. So for the Super NES games this month we have The Addams Family: Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt (Ocean), Aerobiz (Koei), Cybernator (Konami), Dragon's Lair (Data East—an original platformer as opposed to an arcade port), aforementioned Gods (Mindscape), Harley's Humongous Adventure (Hi-Tech Expressions), Jeopardy! (Gametek), and Wing Commander (Mindscape).

The Game Boy games reviewed are Alien³ (LJN—they list the publisher as the magazine as Acclaim, but they were basically the same by that point), Darkwing Duck (Capcom), The Little Mermaid (Capcom), Race Drivin' (T*HQ), Rampart (Jaleco), The Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures (T*HQ), Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Virgin Games), and Spot: The Cool Adventure (Virgin Games).

The NES games this month are month are Bomberman II (Hudson Soft), Time Diver: Eon Man (Taito), Tiny Toon Adventures 2: Trouble in Wackyland (Konami), Ultima: Warriors of Destiny (FCI), and Zen: Intergalactic Ninja (Konami). They lambasted Time Diver: Eon Man for having a plot too similar to Terminator 2 (probably one reason why it was scrapped), and when it came to Ultima: Warriors of Destiny, it's the first time where they just gave a little blurb and that was it. They say it's the "third in the Lord British RPG series" but that's not right, we know that the Ultima series on the NES lacked the first few games; it's actually Ultima V.

There's a word search before Pak Watch. Pak Watch covers Ace Harding: Lost in Las Vegas which now I believe to be the localized title. But like I speculated last issue, things were changing with ICOM Simulations, and in THIS article they mentioned before Shadowgate and Déjà Vu underperformed in retail. With the NES falling fast, I can see why Kemco might've quietly killed the title...and we still don't have a prototype. (There's a number of NES prototypes found over the years but it's crazy how many near-complete ones we CAN'T find).

On the inside back cover there's perhaps the not-actually-a-game advertisement for a Kellogg's promotion with Nintendo prizes. I was but a tyke in 1993, but THESE are the some of the closest to nostalgic cereal boxes to me, at least on the Kellogg's side. On the preceding cover there's the Volume 46 preview, with a Star Fox preview and strategies for Dragon Warrior IV, among others. That's it for this month...

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

© 2026 Carbon-izer.com