Our Nintendo Power Recaps continue with Issue #27 for August of 1991. Our cover story this issue is a Game Boy game – Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge.
Letters: This issue our focus is on a Little League baseball team from the US that got to play in Japan, with a little help from Nintendo of America.
Ninja Gaiden III Guide: The Ninja Gaiden series comes to not its final installment – but the last one for quite some time. Irene Lew has been murdered, and Ryu has been framed, and now Ryu must avenge his her murder and clear his name. We get the powers, including all the new ninja arts and power-ups. We also get maps for Acts 1 through 7, with some storyline notes, and notes on beating the bosses up to level 4.
Nester’s Adventures: This issue Nester is playing Robin Hood.
It's good to see some great art in Nintendo Power again.
Dragon Warrior III Guide: The 3rd installment in the Dragon Quest series is coming out in the states, and we’re getting another strategy guide, with this installment including a class system, and the ability to change classes. We also get some notes for finishing Dragon Warrior II if you hadn’t beaten that one yet. We get a map of the world in Dragon Quest III, as well as infromation on all of the classes and their strengths, as well as some quest notes. The guide also spoils that the hero becomes Erdrick, who the main character of the first game is the decendant of.
Councelor’s Corner: We have more questions about Dragon Quest II, as well as Bart vs. the Space Mutants, Ultima: Quest of the Avatar, and The Lone Ranger.
Darkman Guide: Sam Raimi’s homage to Batman and The Shadow is out, and it’s got a game adapation. This is probably going to be my pick, just because I love the movie it’s based on so much. We get notes on some of the special moves for Darkman and some of the characters he poses as. We get maps of all of the levels in the game, as well as a poster for the Star Wars game that’s coming from JVC.
Game Boy Coverage: We get a guide for our cover game, Mega Man in Dr. Wily’s Revenge, with maps of the stages for Elec Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, Cut Man, and Dr. Wily’s Lab. There’s also a guide for Final Fantasy Legend II, which is the second game in the SaGa series, and which has gotten re-made for the DS in Japan (with no word as yet on a US release). Anyway, the Memo feature looks pretty useful, though I don’t know how well it works in the final execution. We don’t get maps of all the levels of the game, but we get maps of a lot of them, and notes on the ones we don’t get maps for. Finally, there’s the NASCAR racing game Days of Thunder, based on the movie. We get maps of all the courses in the game.
More SNES Coverage: We get more notes on the starting lineup for the SNES, particularly Super Mario World, Gradius III, along with the notes on the first 3 bosses in the game. We also have some notes on Actraiser.
Now Playing: Among the also-rans for this issue are Super Jeopardy, the fantasy chess game Triumph, and a Where’s Waldo game.
Top 30: I’m not cheating this issue by not hand-typing out the list. I’m fortunatee in that this time, I’m able to give you an image of the entire list. This way, if you’ve never seen a Nintendo Power Top 30 list from this era before, you can take a look at it and see what it looked like. Or at least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Celebrity Profile: This issue’s celeb is one with considerably more name recognition than some of the prior ones, (aside from Wil Wheaton and Michael Dorn) – Macaulay Culkin, star of Home Alone and many other films to come, though he faded out of the limelite for a bit, until he had a recurring role on Kings until that was unfortunately canceled.
Pak Watch: Well, CES has come and gon, and all the interesting titles were all for the SNES – particularly Zelda III, Super Castlevania IV.
Letter to The Readers: Well, now that Howard is gone, it looks like they’re going to rotate the writers of the letters for now, with one of the Nintendo Councelor’s taking up the pen this issue to talk about his visit to Nintendo HQ in Japan.
My Quality Control pick for this issue is Darkman. Yeah, it’s a game licensed from a movie, but it’s licensed from one of my favorite movies.
