Game Player's Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games Vol.2 No.3 (June-July 1989)

You might be on to something. I never saw the earlier issues of GP at our news stands or magazine sections in department stores or grocery stores. But they were all over Toys R Us and Children's Palace. Our KayBee (KB) Toy Store carried EGM only for the first year, it was the only place you could really get EGM in 1989 at retail in our area. 

This also reminds me, I asked my sister to buy me the newest issue of GamePro. So she comes home and says Matt I'm not mad but these magazines are just too expensive. And I thought well yeah I guess to her, $3.95 is a lot to spend on something I'll read a few times and throw away. But then I see that she has the GamePro Guide To Street Fighter II Turbo haha. She happened to be at Blockbuster, saw the GamePro logo on something, and bought it.  Blockbuster didn't have any issues of GamePro, just their strategy guides. It was like $12, which would be like $25 in 2024 money! That said I still have the guide 30 years later, so it was worth it.

5 hours ago, TresHombres said:

You might be on to something. I never saw the earlier issues of GP at our news stands or magazine sections in department stores or grocery stores. But they were all over Toys R Us and Children's Palace. Our KayBee (KB) Toy Store carried EGM only for the first year, it was the only place you could really get EGM in 1989 at retail in our area. 

The problem is, I don't actually remember where I picked up this mag, but it seems incredibly unlikely that it was a Toys R Us, as I'm fairly certain I had no access to a Toys R Us where I lived at the time.  Back then, to me, Toys R Us was just this magical place I saw sometimes on TV commercials for timed shopping spree contests (where you got to run through the store, putting as much stuff into your cart as you could for 5 minutes - oh, the dreams I had about winning THAT.)  I'm not sure I actually saw a Toys R Us IRL until 1994 or so.

Our Toys R Us was close to an hour away I think Children's Palace had a lockdown on our area. As soon as they folded here in about 1992-1993, Toys R Us immediately arrived here.

Never heard of Children's Palace, but we definitely had a KayBee Toys in the mall.  I have no idea how far away the nearest TRU was, since my parents would have never taken me out of their way to a toy store, but there must have been one SOMEWHERE, since otherwise they were wasting their time buying advertising slots in all the cartoons I watched every day.

I may not have ever seen a TRU until I was too old to get excited about it, but those commercials made their mark regardless, as even today I can recall their jingles.

More bikes, more trains, more video games

It's the biggest toy store there is

I don't wanna grow up, 'cause baby if I did

I wouldn't be a Toys R Us kid

Kit it is so funny that you say this. My parents sound like your parents. Going to a toy store was already a slim chance, but travelling more than 10 minutes to one, no way, haha. But then in 1989 I convinced my brother to drive me there to buy Super Mario Bros. 2. After a year of owning a NES and only a few games (Mario, Zelda, Tyson, Ice Hockey, and Excitebike) my parents finally said it was ok to get a new game. So my mom gave him the one sole credit card they had. It was this huge deal.

So we get there, and as I'm looking for SMB2, he's calling my mom from a payphone asking her if he can get a game, too. She says no, so he tries to convince me to buy Golf instead. GOLF. So I said no way no how. No Golf. Eventually...he bought both. At home he tells my mom "He made me buy both" and I got in trouble. Haha. 

Children's Palace was also called Child World in other areas of the US. Their logo was a panda bear. It was a cool store that it indeed looked like a castle inside of a warehouse. They must have had a gentleman's no-compete agreement with TRU because as soon as Children went bankrupt TRU came swooping in to our area. 

"In 1991, it emerged senior executive James Maybury had been diverting revenue to fund a museum he intended to open in Dracut, MA."

Well, that's one way to bankrupt a  company, haha.

2 hours ago, TresHombres said:

GOLF.

LOL. 

GOLF.

And the best part...he pops Golf in, plays 3 rounds, says "This sucks" and never plays it again. So now I'm the proud owner of Golf, and also 2 weeks of grounding for being at fault for this, even though I was not at fault in any way at all, ha.

My mom would rather believe that I was a bratty kid, which in reality I never really was any more than your average kid, then to believe he duped her into getting a game for himself, and also the fact that she was dumb enough in the first place to hand my brother her credit card. I loved my brother but he was just the kind of guy that would find some crazy story about how he helped a woman deliver a baby on the side of the road and how he just had to pay for her cab ride to the hospital, and all he had was the credit card you very foolishly let him have, and that's why you are now $300 over your limit 

2 hours ago, TresHombres said:

he pops Golf in, plays 3 rounds, says "This sucks" and never plays it again.

Sounds about right.  Hot Shots Golf, it ain't.  It WAS the best-selling sports title for the NES/Famicom, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that most of those sales were in Japan.  And considering Super Mario Bros. 2 was out when you bought it, it must have been at least Sept. 1988 at the earliest, by which time Golf was already over 4 years old, having been released in Japan in May 1984.

So let's play a game, "what your brother should have bought instead," assuming you were there in Sept. 1988 at the release of SMB2.  You already had Mario, Zelda, Tyson, Ice Hockey, and Excitebike (at least you had all decent games), so...

Double Dribble would have been a much better choice than Golf if he really wanted a sports game.  And I enjoyed Bases Loaded quite a bit as a kid, though in Japan it's considered kusoge (shit game) for some reason.

If he wasn't set on a sports title, Castlevania, Metroid, Metal Gear, or Double Dragon would be decent choices from what was available at the time.  But I think you would have been best served talking him into buying Contra so you could both play in two-player cooperative mode.