We’re moving on to Nintendo Power’s 6^th year, with our cover story for this issue being Mickey’s Magical Quest from Capcom. There’s letters about Mario Paint, but not much of note. Also, from the Table of Contents, we have a significant note – the SNES games have been moved to the front of the magazine, with the NES games being moved to the back. It’s doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a really big shift.

The Magical Quest Guide

Pete has kidnapped Pluto, and Mickey must save him! We get notes on the special items in the game, as well as an overworld map. We get maps of all 6 as well as strategies for all the bosses.

Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye Guide

It’s a Mahjong game. What more do I really need to tell you about this?

Sonic Blast Man Guide

We get notes on the move list, information for some of the levels, and notes on beating each of the bosses for all 5 levels in the game.

Equinox Guide

This is the sequel to Solstice. We get maps for some of the areas in the game, and where you need to go in the first 3 areas.

Sports Games

We get a good long look at Madden for the SNES, and various other sports games. Really, it’s just a dedicated section for sports games on the SNES.

Firepower 2000 Guide

This is a tank and helicopter shump for the SNES, with some anime cutscenes. We get notes for all the levels and all the bosses. I like the look of this game. This could be a tough issues for me to make a Quality Control pick.

Mario vs. Wario Comic

New Mario comic. The comic kind of sets up that Mario was kind of unintentionally a dick to Wario when they were kids, and now Wario is seeking revenge. It’s a one-shot comic, and the artist isn’t credited, which is unfortunate.

Before there were achivements...

Power Players

I’ve been ignoring the Power Players pages, because there isn’t of much of interest to me here. However, now Power Players has adjusted their format – rather than just tracking high scores, they’re now assigning challenges which you need to complete. Basically, it’s proto-achivements. Here’s the list of challenges.

Incredible Crash Dummies Guide

Game Boy game based on the toy line. This is essentially an obstacle course game, and we get maps of the first 3 courses.

Battleship Guide

This isn’t the standard Battleship game – there are power-ups you can unlock to make your fleet more capable – but your opponents will get power-ups as well.

The Humans Guide

This is something of a Lemmings variant for the Game Boy. We get some notes on how to properly use the Spear.

Mega Man III Guide

We get notes on only a couple of the Robot Masters from this. The majority of this article is spent on user submitted potential robot masters. A few have potential, while a lot are kind of corny. This in turn leads to…

Mega Man V Guide

A new Mega Man game on the NES! So, the Robot Master stages we get mapped, in order, Gravity Man, Wave Man, Stone Man, Charge Man, Star Man, Napalm Man, Gyro Man, Crystal Man, (Fake) Protoman, and notes for Dr. Wily’s Castle.

RC Pro-Am II Guide

We get notes on some of the special events in the game, and a few track notes.

Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper Guide

Cogswell’s up to no good again, and only George Jetson can save the day. Is it just me or is George Jetson way more heroic in video games than he is in the cartoon show? Anyway, we get maps of the first 4 stages. We also get notes for the next 8 stages.

Nester’s Adventures Comic

We get a shift in art style as Nester is playing Desert Strike. The advice here is to try and pick up 4 POWs before you start shooting, and to head back to base when you’re damaged. The second hint is pretty obvious, but the first is nice to know.

Mario Paint Special

Being that Mario Paint is more of an app suite than a standard game, we’ve got a special article showing all the awesome things you can do with Mario Paint – or you can just go on YouTube now and look for Mario Paint, to show what you can do.

1992 In Review

A new year means the obligatory retrospective. We get a run down of the top 10 games for Nintendo’s 3 systems. They are:

SNES:

1. Street Fighter II
2. Legend of Zelda
3. Contra III
4. Super Star Wars
5. Mario Paint
6. Super Mario Kart
7. TMNT IV
8. Out of this World
9. NCAA Basketball.
10. Death Valley Rally

Game Boy:

1. Super Mario Land II
2. Mega Man II
3. Bionic Commando
4. Tiny Toon Adventures
5. Gradius
6. Batman: Return of the Joker
7. Track & Field
8. Kirby’s Dream Land
9. Looney Tunes
10. Yoshi

NES:

1. Mega Man IV
2. Darkwing Duck
3. Lemmings
4. TMNT III
5. Rampart
6. Star Trek
7. Little Samson
8. Captain America and the Avengers
9. Gargoyle’s Quest II
10. Felix the Cat

Preview of the Super FX

The SNES is getting Polygonal 3D graphics, and with this we get our first look at Starfox, as well as a detailed look at how the Super FX chip works – though I already went into this on the issue of EGM that had a similar article. Instead, we’ll get to the fun part – making an Papercraft Ar-Wing. I’m just going to post the instructions and all the parts for this one at the bottom of the article.

The full Evaluation form

How to Be a Game Evaluator

This is not about game testing. It’s about basically being in a focus group. We also, finally, get information about how the rating syste

m in the magazine works. It’s a nice change to the pretty obscure numbers that we had before. Apparently they have a pretty scientific criteria for deciding how the ratings are handed out. We even get a copy of the evaluation form.

Top 20

Here we go. Street Fighter II is still on top on the SNES. Mario 3 is still on top for the NES, but on the Game Boy, Mario has lost the top spot to Kirby.

Now Playing

I’m just going to stick with the also-rans that caught my attention, which consists of Spectrum Holobyte’s WordTris, the latest game from Alexei Pajitnov.

Pak Watch

Interplay is releasing this game from a little developer named Blizzard called The Lost Vikings. FCI’s bringing out Ultima VI, and the Game Boy is getting a Zelda game.

My Quality Control pick for this issue is going to be The Magical Quest. I feel like giving another Capcom/Disney team-up a try.

By the way, imagine if the Capcom/Disney partnership never fell through, or perhaps was restored with the Marvel/Disney games – Capcom vs. Disney. Tron Bonne and her Serv-Bots vs. Magician Mickey & his brooms!

Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read

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