The Cover of Nintendo Power #7
Well, Nintendo Power has begun its second year, and it’s starting off rather nicely, with a Mega Man II cover story, with some rather nice sculpture work on the cover. The magazine is still bi-monthly though, and it’s also significantly shorter than the past few issues, with it only being 100 pages long-ish.
Mailbag: Of note this issue is a leter about hard working gamer who put built his own arcade cabinet using at TV, a NES, two NES Advantage sticks, and, of course, his own arcade cabinet framework. He even painted the sides. Very nice. They’ve also moved their Power Players spotlight to the front, but as it’s basically people hyping how awesome a gamer they are, I’m skippingthis. I really don’t need to cover people showing of their E-Wangs (which is the same reason, basically, why I don’t cover high score lists as well).
Mega Man 2 Strategy Guide: We’ve got a strategy guide for Mega Man 2 (which can be found in the Mega Man Anniversary Collecton), and their advised order for taking on the Robot Masters, which, I must admit, I haven’t played in (while I was playing it on the aforementioned Anniversary Collection). The order they reccomend is Air Man, Crash Man (my number 4) then Metal Man (who I actually started with), then Heat Man, Bubble Man, Wood Man (my Number 2), Flash Man (my number 3), and Quick Man (my Number 5).
Faxanadu Strategy Guide: Well, we have a strategy guide for Faxanadu, the clone of Xanadu for the NES (the title is short for Famicom Xanadu), and maps of some of the other areas in the game.
Councelor’s Corner: The games we’re getting counsel on this time are Legacy of the Wizard (advice on finding the crowns), Bases Loaded (how to get a bench clearing brawl due to a bean ball), Ninja Gaiden (getting past a couple areas), Dr. Chaos (a game I’d never heard of before), Friday the 13th (getting the sweater and Pitchfork).
Top 30: Yeah, we’re getting this a little earlier than usual – in general the layout has really been re-done with the start of the magazine’s new year.
- Super Mario Bros 2 (12,900 pts.) – Up 1 (6 issues)
- Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (13,498 pts.) – Down 1 (6 issues) – Wait a goddamn minute! Either that’s a misprint, or there are some shenangans going on. We’ll see if we get a correction next issue.
- Ninja Gaiden (6,822 pts.) – New!
- The Legend of Zelda (5,158 pts.) – Down 1 (7 issues)
- Tecmo Bowl (4,885 pts) – Up 10 (2 issues)
- Blaster Master (3,077 pts) – No Change (3 issues)
- Bionic Commando (3,051 pts) – Up 1 (4 issues)
- Castlevania II (2,929 pts) – Up 3 (4 issues)
- Mega Man II (2,858 pts) – Up 21 (3 issues)
- Double Dragon (2,857 pts) – Up 3 (6 issues)
- Ultima (2,766 pts) – Up 1 (2 issues)
- Track & Field II (2,594 pts) – Down 7 (3 issues)
- Metroid (2,351 pts) – Down 4 (7 issues)
- Contra (2,260 pts) – Down 10 (7 issues)
- Skate or Die (2,225 pts) – Up 4 (2 issues)
- Mega Man (2,196 pts) – Down 2 (7 issues)
- Blades of Steel (2,016 pts) – Up 1 (3 issues)
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1,660 pts) – Up 9 (2 issues)
- Rampage (1,584 pts) – Down 9 (3 issues)
- Wrestlemania (1,555 pts) – New!
- Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (1,546 pts) – Down 5 (7 issues)
- Operation Wolf (1,519 pts) – New!
- Double Dribble (1,459 pts) – Down 2 (7 issues)
- Super Mario Bros (1,442 pts) – Down 7 (6 issues)
- Castlevania (1,436 pts) – Down 5 (7 issues)
- Legacy of the Wizard (1,282 pts) – New!
- Bad Dudes (1,158 pts) – Down 5 (2 issues)
- Adventures of Lolo (1,105 pts) – New!
- Robocop (947 pts) – Down 5 (2 issues)
- R. C. Pro-Am (822 pts) – Down 5 (7 issues)
Absent from the list: 1943 (3 issues), Life Force (3 issues), Bases Loaded (4 issues), Kid Icarus (6 issues), Metal Gear (4 issues).
Dragon Warrior Strategy Guide: The guide gives you some basics on the UI, and some info on the basics of the game, including the spells. This is the first RPG I’ve ever beaten. I’m going to take a moment to mention that while the character design for the creatures in the game is by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball and Dragonball Z, the art in the article is totally different. It’s significantly more Swords-and-Sorcery (though not quite on the level of Berserk, or something out of Heavy Metal, but it’s unlike Toriyama’s work in every way). I’m not going too much in depth on this in part because this doesn’t go too in depth, but also because, as I said earlier, this is the first RPG I ever beat.
Strider Strategy Guide: The guide gives you some info on the basics of the game, and maps of the first 4 levels of the game.
Previews: We start off with a preview of Robocop, and I have played that game and I hated it. We also have a preview of Duck Tails, as well as a map on the Amazon Jungle stage. We also get some coverage of the Who Framed Roger Rabbit game, Wizard & Warriors II: Ironsword.
Howard & Nester: This time they’re playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Nester is insistant that they should have 99 pizzas in storage before going into area 3, but Howard, being always right, knows that you should get 99 scolls. No idea how you grind for those 99 scrolls though.
Classified Information: We’ve got a lot of tips here for TMNT, such as using fine control when jumping (rather than going for a full power jump every time). There’s also advice for Gyruss, Sieruss, Zelda 2, and Cobra Triangle (specifically, ways to get a bunch of bonus points to get you extra lives), and a couple tricks for playing Jackal with 2-players.
Video Shorts: The games being covered this time include Bad Dudes, Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Guerrilla War, Defenders of the Crown, Kings Knight (from Square – the game that flops and leads them to create Final Fantasy), To The Earth (a Shump that uses the Zapper), and Bandai has its own shooting game, called appropriately enough Shooting Range. We’re also getting one more Sesame Street edu-tainment game, and cave-man-style Ikari Warriors clone Adventures of Dino-Riki.
Pak Watch: We’ve got some more coverage of the Game Boy, including the launch title list – Tetris (which explains why we’ve seen hide nor hair of Tengen), Tennis, Alleyway, Baseball, and Super Mario Land. I’ve already bitched about Nintendo snitching Tetris from Atari, so I’ll just say here that remember, during this period of the game industry’s history, Nintendo of America was Fucking Evil! Moving on, Double Dragon II is coming to the NES, as well as a video game adaptation of The Terminator which didn’t turn out very well (link is to an episode of Angry Video Game Nerd – and is not safe for work), Ghostbusters II, and Super Off-Road, which is one of the first games that will support the NES Satellite, which is the first multi-tap for the NES. We also have previews of upcoming 3rd party controllers from Beeshu and Hudson.
1up Special: Nintendo Power is 1 year old, so they’re doing a 3 page special on where you can find 1ups in various games, both first party and 3rd party games.
NES Journal: The Nintendo corporation is 100 years old, having started in 1889 in Japan making playing cards, and later moving on to electronic games – no mention of the Game & Watch. We also have a preview of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show – with no mention of Captain Lou Albano’s presence in the game. We also have a profile of Michael Dorn, whose favorite game is Duck Hunt, though he thinks that Worf favorite game would be one that’s fairly serious, like a cross of Legend of Zelda and Punch-Out. Vic Tokai is doing a few touring things in malls to promote Golgo 13.
Letter from Howard Phillips: Howard is pumped for Nintendo Powers 2nd year, and he likes the format changes to the magazine (I must admit the letters towards the beginning of the magazine works better than having them towards the end.
That wraps this issue of Nintendo Power up. Now there’s the question of my Quality Control game. I’ve played (and beaten) Dragon Warrior. I’m currently playing Mega Man II. Strider is (rightly) hailed as a classic, plus there are superior ports for the Genesis and Playstation. So, I’m going with Faxanadu, the first RPG I’ve picked for a Quality Control column. We’ll see how wise of a choice this was.
