We’re continuing on to Nintendo Power #37 for June of 1992. Our cover story is Lemmings. No, not the lead singer and bassist of Motorhead, that’s Lemmy – I meant Lemmings. Clean out your ears. The call for letters this issue were for feedback about the changes in the magazine. The responses are generally favorable, though we do get a complaint about the George Column, saying that it’s wasted space that could used be for more strategy guides, adding “I don’t care about two guys opinions on video gamesâ€. I hate to bust your bubble mate, but that’s the future of games journalism. The same guy also complains about the comics too. Another letter complains about all the coverage the SNES is coverage – again, I hate to burst your bubble but despite what Nintendo was saying several CES events ago, 16-bit is not a fad.

Lemmings Guide

We get a run down of the different Lemmings and what they’re capable of (which is important, because you’ll need to know what they can do on the fly). We get some maps for some of the trickier levels, like Fun 13, 19, 21, 22, 25; Tricky 5, 7, 20 (which has a title that references Blackadder), 23, 25; Taxing #2, Mayhem #1.

DragonStrike Guide

This is the guide for the port of SSI’s Dragon Riding Combat Flight Sim. We get maps for the first 11 stages because, basically this version of the game turns it into a shump.

Stanley: The Search for Dr. Livingston Guide

We get a run down of the items in the game. We also get some notes for levels 1 through 8, but not maps.

Legend of Zelda Comic

Link defeats Aghanim by deflecting his magic back at him with the Master Sword. Unfortunately, this sends Link and Zelda to the Dark World with an almost two-page spread. Here Link learns of Ganondorf, who, in this world, holds all of the pieces of the Triforce and with it has plunged the realm into darkness. Link saves a fairy from a group of goblins to wrap up this issue’s installment of the comic.

How's that for a 2-page spread.

Metroid II: Return of Samus Guide

We get maps (not screen shot maps, but more drawn maps, which is fine, because the environments are big) of areas 1 through 9 and the final boss fight.

Star Wars Guide

This is for the Game Boy version of the game, which doesn’t look too dissimilar to the NES version actually, aside from the basic visual differences, such as Greyscale.

NBA All-Star Challenge 2 Guide

Since this is a sports game most of the detail in this guide is spent on what athletes are in the game, like Larry Bird, Michael Jordan and, representing for the Portland Trail Blazers, Clyde “The Glyde†Drexler.

Super Mario Adventures Comic

We see Peach and Mario at the chapel, about to marry, when Bowser carries off Mario and is about to take Peach as his own, before she wakes up from her nightmare… in Luigi’s outfit. Okay, so who precisely undressed Peach so Luigi could follow in the footsteps of Darcelle last issue. However, Peach figures out what’s going on, and gets brought up to speed by her retainers. On the inside, Luigi still in disguise, gets the signal to Peach and her retainers, managing to get the Trojan Pizza Delivery person into the castle. You know, if this story had been done more recently, I would hope we would get the following exchange.

Peach: Well, it looks like we got hear in the nick of time. What does that make us?

Toad: Big Damn Heroes, Princess.

Peach: Ain’t. We. Just.

At the Arcades

Nintendo Power tends to ignore the Arcades. That’s kind of reasonable – it’s a magazine dedicated to a specific company’s home console and portable systems. However, they’re going to take a moment to talk about the big games at the Arcade. Most of these have already gotten covered in the EGM recaps, so I’m not going to go really in depth about what the games are like. We start out with Street Fighter II Champion Edition (with Street Fighter II for the SNES getting covered next issue), along with Capcom’s 6-person X-Men arcade game (which doesn’t get a home release – so you either have to go to an arcade that has it like Ground Kontrol or get it on MAME).

We also have a sequel to Smash TV titled Total Carnage from Midway, as well as a football game titled Super High Impact. Namco has the racing game Driver’s Eyes, which uses 3 screens to the driver some of the peripheral vision that most racing games lack.

Arcana Guide

There’s a new RPG for the SNES. This one has a bit of a first-person perspective thing going on, with a 3^rd person world map. I’m kind of interested in giving this a try. I could be wrong, but it looks like it’s got a bit of auto-map, instead of needing to bust out the graph paper. We get a map of the first dungeon in the guide itself, and a bunch of additional maps in the posters.

Top Gear Guide

No, this game doesn’t let you control the Stig. It also doesn’t have licensed cars. We get maps and notes for 12 of the courses in the game, with potentially 6 more courses to come in the race series.

F1 ROC: Race of Champions

Formula 1 Racing game with a potential death spiral option if your winnings don’t earn enough to cover damages to your car over the course of the race. We get maps for 5 of the courses.

The Simpsons – Krusty’s Super Funhouse

We get a map of the hub plus 5 of the sections of the game.

Nester’s Adventures

This time Nester is playing RoboCop 3 and the hint is basically that you need to grab every power-up you possibly can… which I already stated when I discussed the guide an issue or so ago.

Now Playing

George and Rob think Baseball Stars II is okay, if you never played the first game. They also liked Casino Kid 2, which is a casino game with boss fights. They kind of like Defenders of Dynatron City from Lucasarts. They also kind of liked Power Punch II, though they thought it was pretty hard. In their opinion, the Game Boy version of Pit Fighter was superior to the SNES version, which is rather impressive.

Top 20

Metroid II has regained the top spot on the Game Boy, while Mario retains the top spot on the SNES and NES.

Celebrity Player Profile

This issue we get a profile of David Faustino, who was at that time appearing on Married with Children, and since that show ended he’s basically just had lots of guest starring roles.

Pak Watch

So, the only upcoming title that I find notable is Out of this World from Interplay.

That wraps up this issue of Nintendo Power. My Quality Control pick for this issue is going to be Arcana. That’s right, I’m going to try another RPG. I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to beat it, but I could be surprised.

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

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