Super Mario Bros 3
Super Mario Bros. 3 arrived on the cover as the game hit shelves in February, with Silent Service, A Boy and His Blob, Astyanax and Pin-Bot behind it. Dragon Warrior's coverage continued from the bound-in guide, and Super C was previewed as the Contra sequel. A Nintendo Guide to Gaming pull-out listed Power Meter ratings for the whole NES library.
Where did I go wrong? [...] It must have been something I ate.", "Yeah, ten pounds of sand.
Nester and Howard
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 11
This issue featured an interview with Sara Gilbert — American actress (born 1975).
Darlene Conner on Roseanne, television's number-one show, and fifteen at the time, from a family that ran from The Honeymooners' creator to a sister on Little House on the Prairie. She got her NES from her mother for Christmas 1988, cleared both Marios with her friends, and had just moved on to Game Boy, linking up Tetris with the casts of The Wonder Years and Growing Pains and refusing to reveal her best score. She later created and co-hosted The Talk, then brought Darlene back for the Roseanne revival and its spin-off The Conners, which she also produced, and which ended its run in 2025.
If you're near the end of the game you can easily save the Princess if you're big and just run through the dragon.
Sara Gilbert, Nintendo Power #11
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 11Howard & Nester
2-page strip · from p. 32
Howard Phillips, Nintendo of America's bow-tied Game Master, and Nester, the know-it-all kid who never took his advice. Two pages an issue from the first volume on, with a different game's world to get lost in each month.
Nester takes the court in Super Spike V'Ball against two musclebound spikers, with Howard as his partner and a plan to out-smart them by blocking every super spike at the net. The scoreboard tells the rest: 0-4, 0-7, 0-12, and Nester face down in the sand asking where the entrance to Level 7 is. Howard's actual tip is to stand back from the net when playing the computer rather than block everything, which Nester blames on something he ate — ten pounds of sand.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Mike Tyson's Punch-Out‼
- The end is near
- Bad Dudes
- Enlist assistance
- Mega Man 2
- Slow down Quick Man
- Cobra Triangle
- Fast points
- Hydlide
- Magical steps
- Double Dragon II: The Revenge
- Early Stage continue, Double your chances
- Adventures of Dino Riki
- Quick continue
- Cybernoid
- Transform, 1-Up, Recharge
- Vegas Dream
- Win millions instantly
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Willow, Dragon Warrior, DuckTales, River City Ransom, Shadowgate and Legacy of the Wizard.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Mar/Apr 1990, as voted by Nintendo Power readers. Arrows show the move since the previous issue's chart; the peak is the best position the game had reached by then.
| # | NES |
|---|---|
| 1 | |
| 2 | ▲4 Mega Man 2 |
| 3 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ▼4 Ninja Gaiden |
| 9 | NEW DuckTales |
| 10 | ▲1 Tecmo Bowl |
| 11 | |
| 12 | NEW Tetris |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ▲4 Mega Man |
| 15 | ▼6 Faxanadu |
| 16 | ▲4 Metroid |
| 17 | ▼2 Strider |
| 18 | |
| 19 | ▲8 Contra |
| 20 | ▼4 Bad Dudes |
| 21 | |
| 22 | NEW California Games |
| 23 | NEW Paperboy |
| 24 | NEW Goal! |
| 25 | ▼8 RoboCop |
| 26 | |
| 27 | ▼8 Batman |
| 28 | NEW Baseball Stars |
| 29 | |
| 30 | NEW Wheel of Fortune |