The Nintendo Power recaps continue today with Issue #25 for June of 1991, with our cover story of Battletoads. Just to say right now, I’m not picking Battletoads for my Quality Control pick. I’ve played it before, it’s really freaking hard, and it’s a classic – which is all the more reason to check out what came out around the same time. This issue clocks in at 108 pages and the cover art is unfortunately crap. This is doubly unfortunate as this is Howard’s last issue with Nintendo Power. Who will be writing the letters at the end of the issue next? Who will Nester team up with? What will happen at Nintendo of America’s offices without somebody wearing a bow tie?

Letters: This issue it’s all about pets and gaming, particularly cats with a fixation on gaming equipment, and video games themselves. Unfortunatley, we don’t have any particularly Lolcat worthy pictures. Ah well. Read more

Alright, our Nintendo Power recaps continue now with issue #24, for May of 1991. Our cover story is Vice: Project Doom, which I’ve previously reviewed, so we can reasonably say in advance that this probably won’t be our Quality Control pick for this week.

Letters: This issue we have an art heavy letters section. Specifically we have a bunch of Mega Man III fan art.

Vice: Project Doom Guide: We get a run-down of the weapons in the game, though they describe vice squad’s signature weapon as a whip, though it looked more like sword in the game. We also get screen shots of the cut-scenes, and gameplay notes of the levels 1 through 9. Scores: Graphics & Sound 4.3, Play Control 4, Challenge & Excitement 4.3, Theme & Fun 3.8.

Howard & Nester: This issue, Howard & Nester are playing Monopoly, and Nester ends up going to jail, and has try to get a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Read more

Our Nintendo Power recaps continue apace today with our recap of issue #23 for April of 1991. Our cover game this issue is Power Blade… and frankly I’m not too impressed by the art this time. I wonder if the brisk pace of the issues is making it more difficult for the artists to really bring the quality.

Letters: Operation Desert Shield is underway, and our Servicemen in Saudi Arabia love the Game Boy. We have a full page of letters from Servicemen who brought their Game Boy and are playing the crap out of it. I wonder how many Servicemen in Iraq now and in Afganistan brought their DSes and PSPs. Though, I suspect that you could probably bring more PSP games because of their size, but you could possibly lose them more easily for the same reason.

Power Blade Guide: The game is out, though the look has been re-worked to make the protagonist a bit more of a Ahnuld/Stallone Musclehead. We get a list of the moves and power-ups for the game, and we get maps of the all 7 sectors of the game. Scores: Graphics & Sound – 3.7, Play Control – 4, Challenge & Excitement – 4.2, Theme & Fun – 4. Read more

Alright, this week’s issue of Nintendo Power is issue #22 for March of 1991. Our cover story is the mecha action game Metal Storm (which was the poster game last issue), and a lot of the art on the cover is very similar to last issue’s poster (but that’s okay).

Letters: We have a letter from a kid who managed to be a Nintendo Game Counselor for a day thanks to a letter he wrote to the Mickey Mouse Club. So, I guess something good came out of the Mickey Mouse Club (instead of just Brittney Spears and Justin Timberlake). We also have the Nintendo Rap… which I’m just going to tip toe on by.

Metal Storm Guide: We get some notes off the bat about the “reverse gravity” system and some of the weapons and power-ups in the game. We then get some maps of the first 6 levels. On the bright side, the game has a password system (which, frankly, a lot of games on here don’t have). Apparently stage 2, by the way, there have unlimited vertical scrolling on the levels (with the maps wrapping). That could make it easy to get lost in the levels without the map. Anyway, the general visual theme of the levels is pretty industrial, with not a lot of visual variation to it, at least in the the levels we get pictures of. Ratings: Graphics & Sound 3.8, Play Control 3.7, Challenge and Lasting Interest 3.7, Theme & Fun 3.7. Read more

We move on to issue 21 of Nintendo Power. Our cover story is StarTropics. The cover art is much better than last issue, with an interesting mix of drawn art with papercraft art. Again their editorial is hyping the coverage in this magazine (re-stating the table of contents). Though, they do say one contraversial thing… only it’d probably only be contraversial if the internet was more wide spread – they say that the NES port of Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is better than the PC version. I’m going to have to take issue with that. Not a big issue, but a slight one.

Letters: We get more letters about invincible NES Control Decks and Game Boys. We also have a woman with a pet racoon that she named Tanooki. For the record – Exotic Pets Are Bad!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II – The Arcade Game Guide: I’m surprised this wasn’t on the cover, considering that at this point, Turtlemania is running wild, brother! Anyway, we get some small screen shots comparing the NES and Arcade versions of the game. Basically, the sprites on the arcade version look a little bigger, and you’ve got 4-player multi-player. We get maps of some of the early areas of the game, including notes on what enemies come out when and, just as helpfully, how many there are for single player and multi-player (as, in two-player you get more enemies than in single-player). Also, we get the number of hit-points for the bosses, and again, the bosses (well, some of them) have more HP in two-player than in single-player. Anyway, we get maps of the first 7 stages. We also get some two-player strategies, including the basic stuff, like “Who uses the health power-up”, and slightly more advanced stuff, like “Which Turtles go well togeather.” We also get the 10 turtle cheat for the game. Score: Graphics & Sound – 3.9, Play Control – 4.1, Challenge & Entertainment – 4.3, Theme & Fun – 4.0. Read more

Anyway, it’s time to get started with Nintendo Power’s 4th year. This is issue #20, and our cover story is Mega Man III, and I have to say the cover art isn’t as good as some of the stuff from the previous year, particularly Rush. However, US cover art for the core Mega Man series has never looked good in general. Anyway, this issue is of average length, at 107 pages. This issue also gives us a start-of-issue “editorial” section which is, basically, re-stating the Table of Contents – except we haven’t actually gotten the Table of Contents yet (where as GamePro, which puts it up after the Table of Contents). Anyway, I’ll finally be discussing the scores they’re giving this time, as with this issue, I can finally tell what the heck their scores are! Previously they had a kind of really rough mercury thermometer thing going on, which made it difficult to tell what score they were trying to give. Now they’ve changed the scores to more solid numbers, so I can actually tell what they’re supposed to be.

Letters: The Woz Loves Tetris. No, seriously. Steve Wozniak has written a letter saying how much he enjoys playing Tetris, complete with a photograph of his high score. Also, our servicemen in Iraq for Desert Shield love their Game Boys too, which make sense because they can take a bigger beating than a Rolex and Samsonite luggage combined. Read more