Player's Pulse starts this issue with some reader thoughts on Star Fox good and bad, before getting into Secret of Mana. They don't talk about how the title is actually a sequel to Game Boy title The Final Fantasy Adventure (as that was what Seiken Densetsu was localized as, with Secret of Mana being Seiken Densetsu 2.

At this point, they're running a sports section every four issues (see Volume 48 and Volume 44). The games here start out with World Soccer '94: Road to Glory (based on the then-upcoming 1994 World Cup, which until 2026, was the last time the United States hosted a World Cup)...although the World Cup branding was only for the North American market, it had been released in the PAL regions two years prior as Striker. Next Tony Meola's Sidekicks Soccer, True Golf Classics: Wicked 18, Dig & Spike Volleyball, International Tennis Tour, Tecmo Super Bowl, Top Gear 2, F1 ROC II: Race of Champions, Madden NFL '94, NBA Showdown, and NHL '94.

Next up is four pages on SimAnt. They mention the original game can "take up from 20 to 60 or more hours". I'm guessing the Super NES SimAnt is MUCH slower than its computer counterpart considering I can beat the main game in maybe 20 minutes. I can't remember, as the SimAnt review on this site is among one of the oldest in the collection.

Aero the Acro-Bat shares space with the poster for Batman: The Animated Series for the Game Boy. Before the last game covered, Jurassic Park (Super NES, not to be confused with the NES and Game Boy versions covered previously), there's a Nester's Adventures that once again covers the last month's issue (Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back). At this point, it's too little too late for Nester's Adventures, as this is the last comic that uses the last month's feature.

Classified Information has no NES games this time, just B.O.B. (start with near infinite weapons), Pocky & Rocky (stage select), Super Ninja Boy (near unlimited money), E.V.O.: Search for Eden (become a human...or a mermaid), Super Bomberman (becoming tiny or accessing the sound test), Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (take away the HUD display), The Duel: Test Drive II (customized cars), Raging Fighter (Player vs. Player), and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. The last two are Game Boy games, with the Link's Awakening tips including stealing from the store, winning the Trendy Game consistently, and a glitch that I'm pretty sure was removed from the DX version.

The Star Fox comic continues with a tenth part, then there's Power Player's Challenge, then the Game Boy games, starting with Ultima: Runes of Virtue II and continuing with Kirby's Pinball Land, and Gear Works, with Counselor's Corner covering Out of this World, Dungeon Master, Kirby's Adventure, and Alien³ for the Game Boy.

Before we get to the Game Boy, they there's a few pages on Nintendo's new system developed with Silicon Graphics, "Project Reality". Project Reality became the Nintendo 64 we know and love, but the system they talk about here is more advanced than what the system actually was.

For example, they claim the system had a "high-resolution display that exceeds NTSC and PAL standards—it will be compatible with HDTVs of the future"...which was not the case at all. It still had a lower resolution than SDTV, and wasn't compatible with HDTVs...though in their defense, nobody had HDTV in the mid to late 1990s.

The NES section started out with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters, the final Konami game for the NES. I'm not sure how well it sold as Turtlemania was for all intents and purposes over, and we'll talk about that later this issue. Next up on the NES list was Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man. Not only was Pac-Man quite an old game at this point, but you may remember that Nintendo covered the release of Pac-Man for NES back in Volume 2. But that version was published by Tengen, and Tengen's licensed releases were retroactively blacklisted (there are also versions of Tengen Pac-Man that were released post-licensee). The new 1993 version was published by Pac-Man's own IP holder Namco, yet Tengen's version of it (and Ms. Pac-Man is widely seen as the better port). Tengen also published a port of Pac-Mania for the NES, which Namco did not bring over (and thus, no version of Pac-Mania existed for a Nintendo console until 2001's Pac-Man Collection).

The Player's Poll Contest had the Grand Prize winner go to the 1994 NHL All Star Game to see "the hottest players in the NHL face off in Madison Square Garden" in New York City (sight-seeing, I imagine, was part of the trip), as well as receiving an NHL All Star jersey and NHL Stanley Cup for Super NES. The second prize winners got the jersey and the Game Pak, while 50 more winners got a different sort of jersey.

At this point, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have been turned into soup, for the first time since they were introduced back in Volume 6 when they premiered at #27, there has always been at least one TMNT game on the charts, until now. No Turtles in the Top 20 (maybe there is one between 21 and 30, but we can't see that), and their amphibian knockoffs aren't doing much better (though Battletoads in Battlemaniacs is at #15 in the SNES list). The SNES Top 20 starts out with Street Fighter II Turbo taking the top spot and knocking The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past to #2, with Star Fox being pushed to #3, the original Street Fighter II: The World Warrior pushed to #4, and Super Mario Kart pushed to #5. Mario Paint, however, takes #6 as last month's #5 WWF Royal Rumble drops to #8. Alien³ goes from #16 to #9, Final Fantasy II has slipped from #6 to #9, and Super Mario All-Stars takes #10. Other games to note include Super Mario World (from #10 to #17), SimCity (#14 to #13), Mario is Missing! (dropped to #14 from #9, still besting Super Mario World, likely from sales), and Zombies Ate My Neighbors, appearing at #18. The Secret of Mana had appeared last month at #18 and currently gone (it will be back), Bubsy in Claws Encounter of the Furred Kind was at #19 last month and is gone, not sure about that one. It also looks like F-Zero, once in the top three, is off the list (last seen at #20).

In Game Boy's list, Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins continues to lead but The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has completely demolished that 2:1 or near 2:1 advantage it enjoyed for months, now just winning by less than 3000 points. Kirby's Dream Land takes #3 by besting Super Mario Land by less than 3000 points, while Metroid II: Return of Samus languishes at #5. Tetris and Dr. Mario still hold #6 and #7 respectively for the fourth month in a row as Secret of Mana prequel Final Fantasy Adventure moves from #9 to #8, with Alien³ for Game Boy appearing at #9. FaceBall 2000 is now back on the Top 10 at #10 (previously #11). Yoshi's Cookie plummeted to #19 from #8 (guess it didn't have the staying power of Dr. Mario) while the old #9, The Final Fantasy Legend, vanished from the list.

Kirby's Adventure continues to rise to the top, taking #1 and leaving Mario and Zelda behind (Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda now take spots 2 and 3, respectively). Mega Man 5 retakes #4 (from #5), Final Fantasy knocked down to #5 again (from #4),Jurassic Park premiers at #6, Dr. Mario is up to #7 (from #11), Tecmo Super Bowl is at #8 (from #7), Battletoads & Double Dragon remain at #9, and Metroid got pushed from #6 to #10. Tecmo NBA Basketball went from #10 to #18.

Under Now Playing, the Super NES games include Top Gear 2 (Kemco), Madden NHL '94 (the second game in the series from Electronic Arts, which would not only make titles annually for the next 30+ years but continuing after the death of the real John Madden), Super Nova (Taito), The Journey Home: Quest for the Throne (Renovation), Jurassic Park (Ocean), ActRaiser 2 (Enix),World Soccer '94 (Atlus), NBA Showdown (Electronic Arts), Tony Meola's Sidekick Soccer (Electro Brain), Aero the Acro-Bat (Sunsoft), True Golf Classics: Wicked 18 (Bullet-Proof Software), Lufia & the Fortress of Doom (Taito), Arcus Odyssey (Renovation), Redline: F-1 Racer (Absolute), Dig & Spike Volleyball (Hudson Soft), Secret of Mana (Square Soft), and Thomas the Tank Engine (T*HQ). The NES games include Star Trek: The Next Generation (Absolute), Pac-Man (Namco), and Ms. Pac-Man (Namco), while the Game Boy games round out this issue with Ultima: Runes of Virtue II (FCI), Kirby's Pinball Land (Nintendo), and Metal Masters (Electro Brain). Having said all that, Renovation's games, Arcus Odyssey and The Journey Home: Quest for the Throne (a localization of Neugier: Umi to Kaze no Kodō) were not released due to Sega buying the company (Arcus Odyssey was localized...for the Sega Genesis), so that's a bummer if you were expecting to see those games (though there's ROMs and translation patches, so don't worry too much).

When it comes to Pak Watch, not too much I can say here, though the "Pak Watch Update" section is a bit more interesting. Accolade promises a Charles Barkley game (more on that in another time), Wolfenstein 3-D has a port announced and it uses the mouse (though "you can play it the way ported PC games were originally designed to be played") doesn't hold quite true as the Super NES version suffered censorship, news that Spectrum Holobyte purchased MicroProse and Bullet-Proof Software, Sunsoft announcing The Death of Superman based on th DC Comics storyline (the game was released as The Death and Return of Superman), and lastly, Sound Factory is announced, a "Super Famicom game that allows players to create sounds, rhythms, and even songs of a sort by hopping around between blocks that each represent a different tone". Ultimately the fate of Sound Factory would be adapted by the creators of a series that was already covered in Volume 54 (no spoiling the ending).

On the inside back cover, this issue also features what might be (Fandom puts it later) the first true non-game advertisement in the magazine, a Nintendo-themed instant win game from Domino's Pizza. There was that Kellogg's ad back in Volume 45 but that was "canonized" with a real "article" the following the month. Anyway, you can see the ad here. They mention Twisty Bread, but I found out that these weren't the same thing as the bread twists they rolled out in 2017 and were there when I worked there in the early 2020s.

Alright, let's go onto Volume 55!

Written September 10, 2026

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