Playing With Power

Playing With Power – Nintendo Power #4

After patiently waiting since first being announced in issue 3 of the Nintnedo Fun Club News, we finally get a full length feature on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link!  Highly anticipated by everyone who played the first game, Zelda II was very different than the original Legend of Zelda and the game was much more difficult than the first game.  If you ever wanted a perfect picture of the 80’s though, just look at the cover of this issue.  The mullets, the perms, and is Link wearing an earring in that picture???  The cover of the magazine could have been the cover to a rock album of the day.

Before we get to Zelda though, we see one of the first licenced wrestling games, WWF Wrestlemania.  While not a good game, it was the first wrestling game to licence an American wrestling federation and this was during the time that the WWF and wrestling in general was in their first golden age.  Over in Classified Information, we get a special tip for Mega Man and surprisingly, other than in the Top 30 lists, this is the first mention of Mega Man in the magazine going all the way back to the Nintendo Fun Club News.  Mega Man’s first outing didn’t get much coverage from Nintendo but his second game will be changing that soon.  Appropriate with the Super Bowl recently occuring, Nintendo gives us the Nintendo Bowl which highlighted three football games that were out on the NES and it looks like Tecmo Bowl comes out with the win over John Elway’s Football and N.F.L. Football.  Also buried in the pages of the magazine is a short feature on a small Konomi release called Metal Gear.  While the original release was for the MSX Computer in Japan, this is the first time American audiences had the chance to sneak around as Solid Snake.

Other highlights in the magazine include a feature on a hands free controller that Nintendo released so those with physical disabilities could enjoy gaming and a look at the Playchoice 10, an arcade machine that played NES games.  They even slipped in an announcement that Super Mario Bros 3 would be coming soon!

Another month, another great issue.  Next month, we get another classic NES title on the cover so watch out for it!

Play with power!