I found that Retromags had, back in 2011, written about the early years of Nintendo Power itself, had written up things about Nintendo Power magazines, with eight previous ones. While I won't update my previous reviews to link to them, I'll probably post them in the next few reviews of Nintendo Power.

Volume 9 is all about Tetris, specifically the NES port. It has just now occurred to me that by this point, the Game Boy is out on shelves and Super Mario Land is there when this magazine went to print, but at this point the Game Boy is just one of the things in the world of Nintendo and Nintendo Power is a magazine dedicated to the Nintendo Entertainment System and all the things officially for the Nintendo Entertainment System, so no unauthorized books and certainly no unauthorized cartridges ("Game Pak" is a Nintendo trademark, I doubt they'd consider unlicensed games as Game Paks). But Super Mario Land won't go unnnoticed.

Player's Pulse has a poem written by a 75-year-old who beat The Legend of Zelda (writer, game player, and born before World War I ended, interesting) and an amusing typo that later would be talked about for years. As it turned out, it wasn't a real letter, sometimes fake letters were written to address customer service issues, and this was one of them (their answer shills the NES Cleaning Kit). I've kind of brushed over the other section of Player's Pulse, the Video Spotlight, as it's basically kids bragging about how good they are at video games. Outside of more unusual characters like Mark Discordia from last issue. This issue features a reader from Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands. Despite being a foreign country, Kwajalein is a de facto American territory due to the naval base and needing to be either American or have their permission to live there. (In 1989 there were 2,000 people living there, nowadays there's half that).

Onto the games. Like any good show, the opening act is a lesser one, in this case, Willow. Willow is one of the better licensed games on the NES with special note to the hand-drawn level maps, though if you compare them to the real maps you can see they're a bit stylized.

The feature for Tetris shows what every level up to level 19 looks like, which was stated to be the end of the game (the magazine states there are 20 levels in all, level 0-19). In future issues, gamers will list their Tetris high scores, but no one will get very far, and even though it was found there were ten more levels afterward, with level 29 being the last "real" level, no one knew what the real, actual limit was. Many of the greatest Tetris players weren't even born yet. But remember, they were standing on the shoulders of giants...

Howard & Nester this month is skippable, then there's a bit on Ivan "Iron Man" Stewart's Super Off-Road. This game was released in April 1990, well after the November/December 1989 issue's release. It wouldn't be like the later Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves disaster, but possibly the first incident of such a thing happening. It was one of the first games that had four player simultaneous play.

After Ivan "Iron Man" Stewart's Super Off-Road (what a mouthful), there's IronSword: Wizards & Warriors II, and then a two-page feature on 10 NES endings. On one hand some of these were spoilers (not that there were big twists at the end) but on the other hand, if you weren't good at the NES you might never see these. They included the classics like Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, Metroid (Samus is a girl!), and Super Mario Bros. (I'm sure kids would've beat SMB by now, SMB2 would've been the better choice), but no Blaster Master, the ending with Jason and Fred on the cliff.

Next, strategy for RoboCop, which starts on Stage 2 for some reason. Nintendo Power had the bad habit of covering the easier levels before "okay, you figure out the rest" for the last half, so I guess they had to actually balance it this time...but because it's only four pages, Stage 5 and 6 are only just a few paragraphs (and the NES RoboCop is rather unforgiving—one life, three continues, and no free health refills between levels). NES Play Action Football is covered, then a few pages on the more unusual controllers, the U-Force by Brøderbund Software and Mattel's Power Glove with some of the games they play well with. Mattel had previously had experience in games hardware, with Mattel Electronics releasing the Intellivision, but that division had been shut down five years prior and now strictly on toys, which is probably why the Power Glove, well, was so bad. (More on that later this issue.)

"Winter Winners", is next (this is the holiday issue, after all), covers five new games, most of which are rather lame: Wheel of Fortune Jr., a scaled-down Wheel of Fortune for kids, Jeopardy Jr., same sort of thing, The Three Stooges, Activision's port of Cinemaware's game for computers, Stealth Eagle, and Godzilla.

The poster this month is the full rip of Willow's overworld with IronSword on the other side.

Next, there's an actual section on the Game Boy games. Super Mario Land gets two pages only covering World 1 (Birabuto Kingdom). Revenge of the Gator, the first pinball game for the Game Boy, shares a page with Castlevania: The Adventure. It ends with the previews for the Game Boy, including an RPG similar to Dragon Warrior called "Saga". This game (Makai Toushi Sa・Ga) was released in the West as The Final Fantasy Legend, branding it as a Final Fantasy spinoff rather than its own original series. The SaGa series would be cut in the West after a few games (the Super Famicom games on the series, Romancing SaGa, and its sequels, weren't localized), and it wasn't until it jumped to the PlayStation as SaGa Frontier did the SaGa name even show up in the West.

Previews has Shadowgate (the port of the Macintosh point-and-click adventure, though while the NES port was a classic in its own right, it was made way easier for the NES), Silent Service, A Boy and His Blob, and 720°. 720° was a port of an arcade game by Atari Games, and Tengen is mentioned as the copyright holder. The Power Meters (now the Power & Player Meters to combine both) all look kind of the same when you compare them all and nothing is particularly bad or good, not even LJN's Back to the Future, covered later in the issue.

Next up is The Guardian Legend, published by Brøderbund Software as a NES exclusive. The game, Guardic Gaiden in Japan, is a sequel to the Japanese MSX title Guardic, but its outing on the NES was the last time anyone heard of it.

Counselor's Corner this month has a feature on the full page on getting pass the fourth part of the Dr. Wily stage in Mega Man II, with questions on Faxanadu, more Game Play Counselor Profiles, two questions on Strider, and a generic answer on role-playing games: "How do I defeat the most difficult enemies?". The short answer and the short answer now: grind and keep grinding. Questions on Super Dodge Ball and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles finish the section.

Classified Information has some tips for meeting Mighty Bomb Jack in Solomon's Key, pogo jumping in DuckTales, a recommended order to beat bosses in Mega Man II (helpful), wall-jumping in Strider, unlimited items and stage select in RoboWarrior, extra money in Faxanadu, and getting 1-Ups in Ninja Gaiden and Cobra Triangle.

I was a bit confused on why Super Mario Bros. 3 abruptly appeared last month on Top 30, turns out it was actually released for the PlayChoice arcades, which means it would've gotten ranks from elsewhere; despite that it's not on the list this month (and Super Mario Bros. has dropped off beyond 30) and there are major changes in the top 10. Super Mario Bros. 2 jumped back above Zelda II again, but now both are now below the new crown prince, Mega Man II which surged to #1 after dropping off top 10. Ninja Gaiden and The Legend of Zelda have dropped from #3 and #4 to now #4 and #8. New to the list is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (#5), Faxanadu (debuting at #6), Dragon Warrior (debuting at #7), and Strider debuting at #9. Bionic Commando is now at #10. So where are the others now?

* Castlevania II: Simon's Quest...total wipeout. Newcomers to the list have pushed it off beyond #30.
* Metroid is now at #21.
* Blaster Master is now at #11.
* Super Mario Bros. 3 isn't on the list either but it will make a BIG return, I'm sure...
* Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, one of the top 3 at one time, is still holding at #13.
* Legacy of the Wizard is down to #24 but marked as new to the list.
* The Guardian Legend, also marked as new, is #23.

Nothing too exciting in Video Shorts this month. There's Jaleco's Goal!, Thundercade (American Sammy), P.O.W. (SNK), Twin Eagles (Romstar), Back to the Future (LJN), and The Black Bass (Hot-B, here called "Black Bass"). The fishing game is actually The Black Bass II in Japan, as the original The Black Bass was not ported over.

NES Achievers had this tip on properly photographing the high score on the TV.

NES Journal talked about "Capcom Children's Corner" where Capcom donated a NES, games, and the Hands Free Controller to ten hospitals in California. I wonder if broken arms allowed kids to use the Hands Free Controller for a change (mentioned in Volume 4), a rare experience that few have done, and you could go back to playing games normally soon. (But don't try to go the hospital to play Nintendo). Also, there's information of the Nintendo World Championships 1990, a special contest for designing the next Nintendo Power jersey, a preview of the film The Wizard, and fittingly, the Celebrity Profile on Fred Savage.

Pak Watch's big feature is Super Mario Bros. 3, which would soon be covered in Nintendo Power in great detail. The Gossip Gremlins also talk about how Asmik Ace Entertainment gave their mascot (a scribble of a brontosaurus) the name of Bronty, and how he'll be in a Game Boy maze adventure soon. But the dinosaur, known as Asmik-kun overseas, wouldn't be named Bronty in his debut adventure, he was named Boomer, and Boomer's Adventure in ASMIK World would be the North American video game name as it was released in 1990. Also, contrary to what I discussed last month, they bring back up Capcom's California Raisins: The Grape Escape, that's on the list, and on a more intriguing note, the lost Matchbox games. Matchbox Toys (the diecast cars, owned by Universal Toys at the time) had two titles in the works: Web World and Urban Convoy. Neither of which were ever released. Matchbox ultimately released one title for the NES, Motor City Patrol, in January 1992.

Both of them sound ambitious but we know almost nothing of them, there's a blurry, greyscale image of Urban Convoy that's floated around on Unseen64 and others, likewise we don't much of Web World either, but there's one blurry color screenshot of the title screen.

In addition to 8 Eyes, Abadox, Rescue: The Embassy Mission, and Top Players' Tennis, Pak Watch also talks about upcoming games from Mindscape. Like with the deal with Tengen, Mindscape, according to the official NES Games list published in 2003 is also responsible for the games released by The Software Toolworks (notice that the list does not include the The Miracle Piano Teaching System). The Software Toolworks and Mindscape merged in 1990 but post-1990 NES games for the company included things like Paperboy 2 (published as Mindscape) while The Software Toolworks published things like Mario's Time Machine, before The Software Toolworks took Mindscape's name in 1994. In any case, I'm not sure if Nintendo Power will treat the two as separate companies or not. Coming up, Acclaim and LJN will also merge, but they remained separate listings.

With that all being said, Pak Watch was still exclusively NES games. Despite its coverage in the issue, the Game Boy is still not really recognized as an equal yet, but in less than two years, something even greater was coming that would ultimately put the NES out to pasture. I should also mention Rescue: The Embassy Mission was a port of a game titled as Hostage: Rescue Mission on home computers (Hostages in Europe). I wonder if the name change was prompted by a request from Nintendo's censors...

Player's Poll Contest has a rare fourth prize. This time the grand prize is your "dream gifts" valued up to $1000, a $50 gift certificate to the "toy store of your choice" (I guess also working for discount and department stores?), a NES Satellite, and the Nintendo Power jerseys, though those were running out and elsewhere in the magazine they were looking for a new design.

The magazine also included a mini strategy guide for Dragon Warrior (found here).

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