Before we even get to Player's Pulse this issue, there's an advertisement for the "new style NES", which has a dogbone-style controller style to the Super NES (only with less buttons) and a top-loading cartridge slot.

The issue (September 1993, Volume 52) starts out with covering Final Fight 2 before moving onto cover feature Super Mario All-Stars. While Super Mario All-Stars features the classic Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, and Super Mario Bros. 3, all of which have been covered in various forms by Nintendo Power or with affiliated strategy guides, the focus is on "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels", which is what they call the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2, a game far more difficult than any of the other titles. They don't have complete strategy for it but it does go over a few maps and pointers. If you can get to World 9 without warping and send a photo by October 31, 1993, you could get an iron-on patch.

Next up is Rock 'N Roll Racing. This is where the poster is (Mortal Kombat, here called "Mortal Kombat Competition Edition"). I guess every four issues now (quarterly) they do another Super NES Sports Games segment, done in the same style as Volume 44 and Volume 48. This time around, there's Boxing Legends of the Ring (Electro Brain), Super Baseball 2020 (Tradewest), NFL Football (Konami), Super Off Road: The Baja (Tradewest), GP-1 (Atlus), and F1 Pole Position (Ubi Soft). After a very brief look at Family Feud, it's Classified Information featuring a way to quit out Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (but why?), seeing the end credits in Cool World, looking at character profiles in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, another game where you can just go back to the title screen (Firepower 2000), extra characters in the two player mode of Street Combat, stage select in Sonic Blast Man, and even more codes for The Combatribes (a full page's worth!). At this point, Game Boy and NES are basically token inclusions, with the codes being for Turrican and Adventure Island II, respectively.

After the Star Fox comic, it's onto the Game Boy section with several pages and maps for Final Fantasy Legend III (like the previous games, it's a rebranded SaGa, in this case SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha). But at this point, it's the end of the series, with no more Game Boy titles (it would move to the consoles) and the next in the series being in the West, PlayStation's SaGa Frontier in 1997.

Other Game Boy games following this include Felix the Cat and Pinball Dreams.

Counselor's Corner covers Super Ninja Boy (two questions), Shadowrun (three questions—something about a dog collar and a magic fetish), Battletoads in Ragnarok's World for the Game Boy (three questions), and two questions for Battletoads & Double Dragon...and four more pages of Star Fox maps!

After four pages of the making of Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, it's time to cover the Top 20 and it's changes since last issue. Either Top 20 moved before the NES games, or the NES games moved after Top 20, but they're closer to the middle of the magazine now.

Star Fox continues to hold #1 but only by less than a hundred points as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past makes a comeback to #2. Meanwhile, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is not only getting old but cannibalized by Street Fighter II Turbo (I think it will only get worse), falling into third place (with Zelda beating it by over 2,000 points). Super Mario Kart and Mario Paint hold #4 and #5 respectively, as they were last month. Street Fighter II Turbo premiers as the new #6 (bumping Final Fantasy II all the way down to #13), Batman Returns taking #7 (it was #11 last month). Super Star Wars goes back to #8 from #12 last month, SimCity holds #9, and #10 is Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, which was #14 last month. In addition to Final Fantasy II, which other ones fell off? Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time dropped to #18 from #10, Super Mario World went back to being #12 from its brief time in the top 10, and Tecmo Super NBA dropped from #8 to #17.

In the Game Boy section, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is moving fast, shooting up to #2 as it pushes Super Mario Land into #3 (which in turn pushes Metroid II: Return of Samus to #5, as Kirby's Dream Land held #4). It was still a narrow win for #2 (less than 200 points) and Super Mario Land: 6 Golden Coins still takes #1 by a 600 points shy of a 2:1 margin. There's little movement in the charts otherwise, with Tetris and Dr. Mario still holding #6 and #7, respectively, but Yoshi's Cookie premiering at #8, Final Fantasy Adventure holding #9, and FaceBall 2000 at #10 (from #14). The Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures dropped from #8 to #11, while Battletoads dropped from #8 to #13. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers still holds #20 but The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly has vanished from the Top 20.

The lackluster appearance of the Battletoads triple system extravaganza may have paid off a little bit...in the NES list, Battletoads & Double Dragon premiers at #5 but the original NES game drops from #4 to #10. Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda snatches the #1 spot from Super Mario Bros. 3 by less than 300 points, Tecmo Super Bowl roars back into #3 from #8, Mega Man V drops from #3 to #4, Final Fantasy gets pushed to #6 from #5, Yoshi's Cookie appears at #7, and Dr. Mario recovers to #8 (from #13). Tecmo NBA Basketball improves to #9 (from #10, pushing the former #9, Dragon Warrior IV, off the list entirely).

Now we get to the NES games, starting with Ubi Soft's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It is not to be confused with a Taito title of the same name released a few years earlier, it's a rather abysmal port of a Game Boy title of the same name (quite atrocious for 1993 standards). The other game covered is Tiny Toon Adventures: Cartoon Workshop.

The Player's Poll Contest is a $5000 certificate of deposit, and a copy of Mario is Missing! by The Software Toolworks. Instead of the COD, second prize winners get a Super NES backpack with licensed Super Mario school supplies. (Third prize is "Nintendo Power Ts", still with Nester on the front). This contest is lame. Rather than cash or a cool trip, it's one of the worst Super NES games that has Mario on the cover (maybe not the worst Super NES game altogether, because it can get REAL bad there), and yeah it's $5000 but you won't cash that in until 1998.

Most of the titles in Now Playing were covered this month in bigger features (or in the case of 4-in-1 Funpak Volume II, from last month)...so the SNES list includes Family Feud (Gametek), Boxing Legends of the Ring (Electro Brain), Rock 'N Roll Racing (Interplay), Rocky Roden (Interplay), The 7th Saga (Enix), Super Mario All-Stars (Nintendo), Super Off Road: The Baja (Tradewest), Super Slap Shot (Virgin Games), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (LJN), Wing Commander: The Secret Missions (Mindscape), The Wizard of Oz (Seta), and Yoshi's Safari. For the NES they did Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade (Ubi Soft) but gave everything 3.0 or higher. Wayne's World from T*HQ, which pulled the same "port the Game Boy game" didn't get the same benefit. Finally, the Game Boy games included Felix the Cat (Hudson Soft), Final Fantay Legend III (Square), 4-in-1 Funpak Volume II (Interplay), Jurassic Park (Ocean), and Pinball Dreams (Gametek). The highest rated game this month was of course Super Mario All-Stars.

After Power Player's Challenge, there's the and Battletoads is down to #10 from #8 (and again, that's the original, not Battletoads in Ragnarok's World). FaceBall 2000 fell from #9 to #14, The Simpsons: Escape from Camp Deadly is at #16, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Back from the Sewers is struggling to stay on the Top 20, at #20 (below Golf, at #19).

Pak Watch discusses a new game from Raya Systems, the makers of the infamous Captain Novolin (which was completely ignored by the magazine, see, Conker's Bad Fur Day? You're not special), Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon. "You control a miniaturized surgeon who is trying to repair damage inside the body of a person who has been a long time smoker. To make matters worse, the tobacco company has implanted hundreds of mini robots to insure (sic) that you fail". Uh-huh, the tobacco companies can't fight the attorney generals but they do have a budget for nanobots. Whatever, it's not like anyone thought Rex Ronan was good. They also cover Mario & Wario, which despite being in English, wasn't released in the West, and it wasn't until 2025 when it received an official release as part of the Nintendo Classics service on the Nintendo Switch.

Other than the page describing the contents for the next issue, there is an advertisement that shows all seven Player's Guides, NES Game Atlas, Game Boy, Super NES, Top Secret Passwords, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Mario Paint. (See my review on the Game Boy book, posted last month!)

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