Here we are, eight issues in to Nintendo Power's run, and the big news of the Sept./Oct. issue is Duck Tales. In fact, it's such big news that the big N is devoting a dozen pages to it in this issue in addition to all the attention it got in issue #7. The best news is that Duck Tales is one of the rare examples of a licensed property game that didn't suck eggs, so I can't begrudge Nintendo for featuring this game on the cover. This issue also features the second half of the Super Mario Bros. 2 strategy guide that began in #7. Again, despite the fact that it is touted as a free guide (which it is, bound right into the magazine at no additional charge), it still carries a $2.50 cover price. Did these ever sell on magazine racks by themselves?

Opening the magazine is Mail Box and this one is a doozy. We get a story about how durable the NES is, since it still worked after a mother accidentally (I presume) drove over the thing with the family's battlesh-...er...Cadillac. The editor is amazed by the story, but scolds her for taking it apart and advises her to send it to Nintendo's authorized repair center the next time she needs repairs done. Another (luckier) writer sent in a picture of the special design on his birthday cake (Mario naturally) and is congratulated by the staff. I have to agree, it looks pretty darn good. We also get a letter complaining about the fact that the game counselors won't help him (her? The name is 'Kerry'...could go either way) pass Death Mountain in Zelda. The editor replies that they deliberately release only limited information about the ninth dungeon and wouldn't want to spoil the surprises for gamers. Easy for you to say, editors: you didn't just pay money calling a 1-900 number only to be told, "Sorry, can't help you." Finally, a 16-year old writes in to say he's not too old to enjoy Nintendo, and plans to join the Air Force to fly F-15s. No reply is forthcoming from Nintendo on that one...wonder if he made it?

Oh God...Player's Forum this month would come back to haunt us all over a decade later thanks to Seanbaby. The Video Spotlight is none other than Mark Discordia, a 32-year old plumber from Connecticut who likes playing the NES. Fast forward a few years, and Seanbaby manages to track him down and create a minor internet sensation by posting their very lively and profanity-laden correspondence on his website. Oh Mark, if you only knew what would come of this letter...

A trio of siblings also get profiled, one girl and two boys, for their power-playing exploits including a winning score of 987 to 152 in Double Dribble (that has to be a typo...even playing 20-minute periods and exploiting the automatic 3-point shot trick, one would be hard-pressed to score 300 points in a game, much less nine hundred-plus). Their goals are to beat every game (good luck with that one) and to get their letter published. One outta two ain't bad.

Time now for the Duck Tales feature! Some of the information about the game is repeated from what we saw in last issue's four-page preview, but there are plenty of maps and other useful tidbits that more than make up for the repetition. It takes you through the first three stages of the game, leaving the Himalayas and the Moon for you to map out and discover on your own, which is fair enough.

Following this, we get another eight pages' worth of Dragon Warrior content. Seriously, I think NP produced more Dragon Warrior-related pages in their magazine than any other game up to this point (discounting strategy guides for specific games, of course). Unfortunately, much of this information isn't very useful, especially when compared with the bonanza of goodies we saw in issue #7. But wait, there's more! That's right, Dragon Warrior is getting its own pair of strategy guides just like Super Mario Bros. 2, coming in issues 9 and 10! As much as I love the game, these 8 pages are wasted space as far as I'm concerned. Too bad.

Next up, Howard Phillips and 3 other lucky gamers model their way through a four-page article on the new NES Satellite, which is Nintendo's four-player adapter. I loved the dickens out of this thing even though there were only a handful of NES games ever made that could use it, and of that handful there were only a couple that were worth playing. The fact that it turned your controllers into semi-wireless remotes was worth it all by itself. It also ate batteries like there was no tomorrow (if you weren't using rechargeable ones with this thing, you were throwing away money). But the feature gives us nice little previews of Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off-Road, NES Play Action Football, Kings of the Beach, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Magic Johnson's Fast-break, and U.S. Championship V'Ball.

Hoops, Jaleco's poor, neglected street basketball title, manages to eke out two pages of content after all the excitement about four-player games. I'm not a big sports gamer, but even I want to see more about this game. Couldn't we have cut a couple pages from the Dragon Warrior deadweight earlier and dropped some more screenshots or other juicy tidbits? One of the reasons I enjoyed playing Hoops as opposed to, say, Double Dribble or other NES basketball games is that Hoops actually had a roster of female players you could pick from as well. It's always more fun to insult one's friends by reminding them they got dunked on by a girl.

Counselors' Corner prints hints and tactics for five different games this issue: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets 2 questions ("How do I navigate this one floor?", and "How do I kill the giant Mouser and destroy the Technodrome?" respectively), while the other four get one each. The location of the Hammer in Zelda II, the secret to getting into Castlevania in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a couple of tricks for navigating through Ridley's Hideout in Metroid, and the steps necessary to beat Stage 10-3 in Adventures of Lolo are all revealed for those who wish to know. Four more counselors get profiled as well, including a woman named Kim Racey (girl power!) who likes cross-stitch and reading, and a guy named Rob Baker who likes...um...people watching...? Uh... You know what? I'm just going to move right along here...

...to eight pages of Uncle Fester's Quest. Oh my. Oh my, my, my... I tried so hard to enjoy this game, I really did, but in the end... No, I can't even talk about it. On the bright side, the poster in this issue is crammed with maps for this game and features a really nifty picture of Batman on the reverse. If you're going to subject yourself to Fester's Quest, it's probably better to have this than nothing at all, but even so, this was just one more dud in the sea of duds that comprise most of the licensed gaming titles ever made for the NES.

So of course they're going to follow it up with five pages on another dud of a licensed title, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Much of the information on this feature, including one of the two maps, is cribbed directly from a previous issue and what isn't duplicated frankly gives you about as much help as reading the back of the box would. I get the impression that slipping deadlines caused an awful lot of garbage to make it into this issue as the editors were running around asking themselves what they could run in place of all the stuff that couldn't get finished on time.

Finally, something worth getting excited about! Eight pages on Nintendo's new handheld system, Game Boy! This is probably the feature people wound up reading the most out of the whole magazine, as it includes a ton of specifics about the unit itself, a look at the version of Tetris that ships with it (probably the most brilliant marketing decision Nintendo ever made), and a story about Nintendo of America senior VP Howard Lincoln's trip to the Soviet Union to meet with the man who invented the game, Alexey Pazhitnov, and secure the rights to distribute it in the US. Keep in mind, this was before both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, so the peaceful meeting of these two cultures on Russian soil was an incredible event at the time. It's a neat look at how a video game helped influence history, and well worth reading and enjoying today.

Previews gives us a lot to look forward to in this issue. Willow (based on the film of the same name), River City Ransom (one of my favorite NES games ever made), and Batman (based on the Michael Keaton film) all get three pages of coverage each, while NES Play Action Football gets sacked and has to settle for only two.

Eight different games get some of their innermost secrets revealed in Classified Information this month. Probably the single most impressive trick listed is the password generator for 1943, which lets you custom-start your plane on any stage with any weapon and upgrades your little heart desires. How the hell they managed to crack this is completely beyond me, but it's damned useful. Ninja Gaiden gets two mini-tips concerning the conservation of power points as well as an alternate route through a tricky area. Star Soldier's code involves a complex series of controller inputs that probably require the use of a friend (or your feet) to enter effectively, but the result is to turn your space ship into an unstoppable killing machine of death, so it's probably worth turning yourself into a pretzel. Mega Man II's tips involve effective use of Flash Man's Time Stopper power to keep enemies from showing up in the Wood Man stage as well as keeping the energy beams at bay in the Quick Man stage, using Wood Man's Leaf Shield power to rack up tons of energy and lives in the Air Man stage, and a quick and easy way to bypass all the acid dripping from the ceiling in the final stage; nifty to be sure, but by no means earth-shattering. A sound test for The Guardian Legend, a couple of passwords that let you play mirror images of your own team in Tecmo Bowl, a pseudo-glitch that lets you avoid a couple of dangerous areas and a quick-save option in Zelda II are also included. Finally, there's a long and convoluted series of codes and in-game actions for Legacy of the Wizard that does everything from unlocking a secret sound test and giving you a free set of armour to allowing a playable character to refill his or her own life meter automatically three times in a row without actually having a Life Potion in his or her inventory. Like the Star Soldier code above, you'll either need to be Zaphod Beeblebrox or have a friend help you enter it all, but the end results are totally worth it. Not a bad round-up, all told!

Howard & Nester manages to blow its own story continuity as well as use one of the most lame cop-out endings of all time while still being amusing, as Nester takes on Dr. Wily's trivia challenge while pitted against Wily's robotic H.O.W.A.R.D. creation in a duel of the (nit)wits. I can see the poor writer struggling to come up with a convincing way to anagram Howard's name, and what they come up with isn't as awful as it could have been. Sure, the story's a bit of a rip-off of the riddle game sequence from The Hobbit, but I can't hold that against it. It's cute, and it made me smile, so what more could I ask for?

Man, there are a lot of new titles coming out on the NES soon! Video Shorts gives us tidbits on Air Fortress, Sky Shark, Casino Kid, Castlequest, Jordan vs. Bird: One On One, Bad Street Brawler, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are all coming soon to a Nintendo Entertainment System near you! Of course, some of these games are better than the others, and reading the previews will clue you in to this pretty fast. Especially Bad Street Brawler's write-up, which quotes directly from the instruction manual: "You are Duke Davis--former punk rocker and the world's coolest martial arts vigilante!" I was not aware that "coolest martial arts vigilante" was a world record entry category, but I guess we all stand corrected, don't we?

Top 30 shows some interesting trends this issue. Zelda II and Mario 2 swap places again, with a 3,000+ point gulf between their respective positions and Link holding steady at #1. Ninja Gaiden clings tenaciously to the #3 position, but it's still 2,500 points away from overtaking Mario and company. Legend of Zelda and Blaster Master hold positions 4 and 5 respectively, while Castlevania II: Simon's Quest has surged up the charts to #6 (despite the fact that the text for it claims it is in 7th place) with Legacy of the Wizard going from it's 26th-place debut last issue up to #7 in this one, trailing Simon Belmont by a mere 7 points! I'm surprised LotW didn't demand a recount to check for pregnant and/or hanging chads on that one. Bionic Commando slips a spot down to 8, and Guardian Legend (another favorite of mine) makes an impressive opening show in 9th place as Samus Aran swats Double Dragon down into 23rd place in order to claim the #10 spot. But there's something brewing on the horizon that is poised to take the entire chart by storm...Super Mario Bros. 3 makes its inaugural appearance in the rather inauspicious 20th place. We'll be watching to see what happens in two months' time...

Pak Watch is a serious mixed bag this month. While it does highlight the coming of such epic classics as Shadowgate and A Boy and His Blob, it also reminds us that we can look forward to seeing the likes of Gilligan's Island and Godzilla. We also see some examples of titles that were dropped or changed from Nintendo's line-up, including two by Matchbox Toys (I suspect that Urban Convoy eventually became Motor City Patrol, but I've no idea what happened to Web World), one by Bandai (no clue what happened to Wild Boys, though I suspect it was canned entirely or else got converted into a Dragon Ball Z title that was released only in Japan), and a couple of simple title changes (Time Lords to Time Lord, and Baseball Simulator 9000 to Baseball Simulator 1.000).

When you absolutely have to feel like a worthless failure in the eyes of the Nintendo pantheon, you know right where to turn: NES Achievers. Nothing like seeing people scoring nearly a billion points on Bomberman, ten million points on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (five people tied for this achievement on this game...what the hell were the lot of you thinking?!), or one million points on Xenophobe (which thirteen different people submitted...WTF?!). Double dose of girl power from Dawn and Donna Jones (from Indiana, no less) in RoboWarrior, and two other girls posted high scores in Ultima: Exodus. Best name on the list this time? "Elvin McDivitt" (we can only assume his parents were really into Tolkien).

NES Journal gives us some more info on the coming saga of Captain N! A TV station near you will soon be broadcasting episodes of this series about Kevin Keene, a 15-year old from California, who gets drawn into the world of video games literally when the sexy Princess Lana abducts him from the real world and deposits him (and his faithful dog Duke) in Nintendoland, where he is to serve as one of the Forces of Light to beat back the likes of Mother Brain, Dr. Wily, Eggplant Wizard, and King Hippo. Not bad for what started out as one NP editor's work of fan fiction a few issues back. The Celebrity Profile this issue is actor Brian Robbins, probably most famous for his work on the TV show "Head of the Class". The rest of the Journal is dedicated to talking about a new way of experiencing an Othello tournament, why cleaning kits are good for your system, and showcasing Abbey Fischer's experience at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES was the precursor to E3); the 10-year old won the NP contest to experience 4 days at the CES, eat lunch with Howard Phillips and a couple of game counselors, and test-drive a ton of new NES carts. She had a blast, and I don't blame her one bit.

As we reach the closing pages of the magazine, we've got an ad for back issues as well as the Zelda and Super Mario Bros. tip books. Next Issue teases us with coming features on Shadowgate, Silent Service, Robocop and Ironsword as well as a second reminder about the 36-page Dragon Warrior guide they'll be including in case you missed it the first time through. As always, Howard Phillips pens the closing paragraph which talks about how exciting CES was and how much great stuff we have to look forward to in the coming months from Nintendo.

But wait!! It's not over yet! We still haven't done the Player's Poll! This month, the grand prize is a trip for four to the set of Robocop 2, where you get to observe the filming, meet Robocop (presumably Peter Weller, unless he's staying in-character for the event), and tour Houston, TX all on Data East's dime (makes sense...they're the ones behind the Robocop video game). Now, here's the thing...Robocop 2 is rated 'R' (for a pretty darn good number of reasons). Even if either my brother or myself had won this contest, there's no way on Earth my mom would have let us at the ages we were go watch Robocop 2 being filmed. This strikes me as a pretty bizarre prize for a magazine that is aimed at a more youthful demographic to offer, but hey, whatever floats their boat, you know? Second-place is a full stand-up Robocop arcade unit (SWEET!), and ten third-place winners will take home copies of the NES Robocop cart signed by the cyborg himself. No jerseys are offered this time around, but with prizes like those, who is going to quibble?

That wraps it up for this, uh, issue of "Let's Read Nintendo Power". See you back here soon when we delve into issue #9, and thanks for reading. Until then, folks, until then.