I should note that one of the things that did change in January 1994 and I didn't mention in the coverage for Volume 56 was the list of Super NES, Game Boy games, and NES games in the index aren't separated by console anymore. Sure, the order is still the same since 1993 (Super NES, then Game Boy, and NES) and the text colors are still the same (green for Super NES, purple for Game Boy, red for NES), but they're combined together in a list now. And unlike 1992 when they were first introduced and largely balanced, there's seven Super NES titles this issue, two Game Boy games, but just one NES title.

Anyway, this month (Feb. 1994, Volume 57) is the first and only time Bugs Bunny made cover. Player's Pulse opens with a man switching from being addicted from substances to Nintendo games, a letter which is most certainly edited to make it sound like that was his fault for using an "unlicensed product" to clean the Super NES, and painting a wall to look like Super Mario World.

Game coverage starts with platformer Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage, then Young Merlin, a title by Westwood Studios but published by Virgin Games as a Super NES exclusive (the magazine describes it as a "Super NEW version of the story"—a typo, but one that still sort of works) with some maps of its maze-like areas, Skyblazer, and Inspector Gadget. There are some extended maps for the game...or you can remove it for the Super Metroid poster.

Unlike what we're used to, the sports game section ("The Sports Scene") hits early with Volume 57. Tommy Moe's Winter Extreme: Skiing and Snowboarding by Electro Brain is covered first, but they don't mention the Tommy Moe branding; I'm assuming that because it was released in Europe by this time, the U.S. name had been chosen, with the Tommy Moe branding added late in development. Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 (the final name) was discussed next (by U.S. Gold), then Riddick Bowe Boxing (Extreme), Brett Hull Hockey (Accolade), Pro Sport Hockey (Jaleco), Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball (Malibu, a brand of T*HQ—there was a previously a Game Boy game with the same title back in Volume 53), ABC Monday Night Football (Data East), Relief Pitcher (Left Field Entertainment—a port of the arcade game by Atari Games), The Billiard Congress of America presents Championship Pool (Mindscape), and Side Pocket (Data East). Of all of these, ABC Monday Night Football gets criticized the hardest, especially as the Japanese staff had programmed it before the American side of Data East even saw the game with poor AI and other features. The classic ABC Monday Night Football ceased to exist in 2005 when parent company Disney moved it over to ESPN...though the game does include at least a rendition to the theme at the time.

Next we get to Lester the Unlikely. You've probably heard of it through YouTube videos like the Angry Video Game Nerd (NSFW warning: language), and even in Now Playing later in the issue, they criticize it for being too unforgiving in a puzzle-platformer where you need to experiment (only three continues). As for AVGN, Lester's spinal issues do get a little better around halfway through but it's not much of an improvement.

Choplifter III is the last Super NES game covered in the issue. The next article is on the Nintendo Gateway System, at the time mostly in-flight Super NES games on select airlines. By 2001, the system evolved to have Nintendo 64 games instead, and found in many hotels domestically. (It was unlikely for the average Nintendo Power reader to be flying international on Northwest, China Air, or Virgin Atlantic). The controller (see picture) looked a bit awkward and there weren't that many games to choose from. Next comes Classified Information. The Super NES games covered this month are Alien^³, Super Baseball 2020, Run Saber, Super Turrican, SimCity, F1 ROC II: Race of Champions, Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge, and Alien vs. Predator. There's one Game Boy title (The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening) and one NES title (Battletoads & Double Dragon). I'm not sure if the exploit discussed in Link's Awakening was patched in the DX version, I think it was. Things like the fishing exploit and the two shovels bug (discussed later in the issue) were patched.

This issue marks the start of a new comic on Super Metroid. In Player's Pulse, there was a discussion that marked that while they knew what Samus was sort of supposed to look like in the best endings of the Metroid games, it was harder to come up with close-ups, so the compromise was "something between Princess Leia and Ripley from the Alien series".

Counselor's Corner covers Dungeon Master, Secret of Mana, and The 7th Saga for the Super NES. It also covers The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which regards a question that was actually a bug in the original game (and only Version 1.0 of said game, the v1.1 and v1.2 revisions patched it).

Next is a puff piece on the "Super Mario All-Stars Report Team" before the Game Boy games, in this case, the Game Boy version of Super NES title Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, as well as another Simpsons title from Acclaim, The Simpsons: Bart and the Beanstalk.

Last but not least we get to the only NES game covered this month, Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II. It gets eight pages with promises of a second part next issue.

The game this month in Player's Poll Contest is NBA Jam from Acclaim, which if you got second prize you'd win along with official NBA Jam basketballs from Spalding. But if you got the grand prize, instead of mere basketballs, you'd get the arcade version of NBA Jam, a Huffy Sports Cyclone Portable System (a driveway basketball hoop), and "an Apex One Team Jacket for the team of your choice". Volume 57's mail-in card in the Player's Poll Contest features another Player's Guide (the 12th) joining the ranks, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. I actually have a real copy of Volume 56, it wasn't there in their card...but the guide for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past isn't there either. It is possible that it came and went, but I didn't see that.

In the Top 20, Nintendo Power congratulates Mortal Kombat for holding #1 three months in a row but the margin is victory is a much tighter one. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past now trails Street Fighter II Turbo by around 3,000 points and Mortal Kombat by 4,000 (instead of over 20,000). However, A Link to the Past increased its margin against #4 (still Super Mario All-Stars) from around 2,000 points to around 5,000. Star Fox gets back to the top 5 (from 6) with Jurassic Park premiering at #6. Super Mario Kart holds #7, with Secret of Mana re-appearing from its disappearance a few issues ago to #8. Mario Paint leaps up to #9 (as Mega Man X seems to have disappeared entirely), and then Final Fantasy II takes #10 (from #8). With Mega Man X accounted for, the only other one to get pushed off was Street Fighter: The World Warrior, which dropped to #11 from #5. The SNES launch titles are still doing okay this month (Super Mario World at #13, SimCity at #14, and F-Zero at #15).

In Game Boy's category, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening pulls forward again against #2 Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (3,000 points), Mortal Kombat remaining at third, Kirby's Dream Land remaining at fourth, and Tetris moving to #5 from #7. Super Mario Land holds #6 but Metroid II: Return of Samus tumbles to #7 by just three points (ouch). Jurassic Park holds #8 (the magazine noted Jurassic Park is on the top three of all lists). Final Fantasy Adventure, perhaps lifted by Secret of Mana's success, jumps to #9 from #16, and Dr. Mario improves from #11 to #10. The losers this time around include Faceball 2000 (#9 to #14) and Final Fantasy Legend III (#10 to #13).

The NES charts had The Legend of Zelda get the jump on Super Mario Bros. 3 again, but Tetris 2 premiers at #3 as Kirby's Adventure drops to #4 (from #3), Tecmo Super Bowl drops from #4 to #5, Final Fantasy takes #6 (from #8, they wrote Final Fantasy II, I'm sure this was a mistake), Jurassic Park drops to #8 (from #5), Baseball Stars appears at #9, and the original Battletoads goes from #19 to #10 as Battletoads & Double Dragon disappears from the list.

Now Playing has a huge list of Super NES games this time around. Alphabetically, there's Alfred Chicken (Mindscape), Art of Fighting (Takara), Barbie Super Model (Hi-Tech Expressions), The Billiard Congress of America presents Championship Pool (Mindscape—simply listed as "Championship Pool"), Brett Hull Hockey (Accolade), Bugs Bunny Rabbit Rampage (Sunsoft), Choplifter III (Extreme), Dennis the Menace (Ocean), Lester the Unlikely (DTMC), Mario's Time Machine (Mindscape—we may see more of that, maybe not), Pro Sport Hockey (Jaleco), Ranma ½ (DTMC), Relief Pitcher (Left Field Entertainment), Riddick Bowe Boxing (Extreme), Robocop vs. Terminator (Virgin Games), Side Pocket (Data East), Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball (Malibu Games), Super Chase HQ (Taito), Winter Extreme: Skiing and Snowboarding (Electro Brain), Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 (U.S. Gold), Young Merlin (Virgin Games), and Zool (Gametek— listed as "Zool: Ninja of the 'Nth' Dimension"). NES simply gets Alfred Chicken listed (Mindscape), while Game Boy has Alien vs Predator: The Last of His Clan (Activision—listed as "Aliens vs. The Predator, not quite even the Japanese name, The Real Ghostbusters (Activision), The Simpsons: Bart and the Beanstalk (Acclaim), and Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge (Acclaim).

Pak Watch discusses some developments. A game showed last year, Special Tee Shot, has now gotten a Kirby facelift to become Kirby's Tee Shot (and eventually released as Kirby's Dream Course)...the change from FX Trax to Stunt Race FX is mentioned again...a game called Matrix Prime by Accolade has screenshots but despite getting a few name changes was ultimately cancelled...Sound Factory as announced in Volume 54 is now Sound Fantasy...Fandom points out that Mutant League Hockey would ultimately be canned and only release as a Sega Genesis exclusive...they mention Impossible Mission 2025 from "the new Microprose" (likely the post-merger company with Spectrum HoloByte) though the Super NES version of the game was never released...and discussing a new developer, as described below.

"Beavis & Butthead are on line for a future video game from new developer, Viacom" reported Nintendo Power, referring to Viacom New Media, the new in-house video game/CD-ROM company founded under the multimedia giant (which had been around for many years at that point). Viacom New Media never amounted to much, however, it created a few titles based on Viacom's own properties before it was folded into Virgin Interactive in 1996 (which Viacom owned at the time), then spun off in 1997, with Electronic Arts buying the U.S. division in 1998.

There's an ad for a Kellogg's/Nintendo promotion on the inside back cover, rather than anything about the Player's Guide series.

Next up: Volume 58 will have coverage on NBA Jam and sixteen pages on Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, as well as the Nester Award Nominees for 1993.

Written October 3, 2026

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