Dr Mario
Dr. Mario took the cover as the magazine went monthly, with a 21-page Castlevania III feature, Solar Jetman, Little Nemo and a preview of the 4-Player Extra guide inside. The Top 30 became the Top 20, and the Game Boy section ran its first Classified Information codes. A seven-page Pak Watch looked ahead to Mega Man III, The Immortal and Gremlins 2.
Be careful not to touch anything. It might not be what it seems.”, “Right, like your bow tie probably shoots anti-zombie missiles.
Howard and Nester
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 18
This issue featured an interview with Kadeem Hardison — American actor (born 1965).
Dwayne Wayne on A Different World, the Cosby Show spin-off entering its fourth year and by then a hit in its own right, flip-up sunglasses included. He'd learned the NES playing Baseball between takes on Spike Lee's School Daze, favoured the sports games, and had just been ambushed on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, where the hosts produced a console and a Nintendo World Championships finalist from the audience; the finalists' profiles run on the pages either side of his. A Different World ran until 1993, and he has worked steadily since, most visibly as the dad on Disney's K.C. Undercover and in Netflix's Teenage Bounty Hunters.
They surprised me by bringing out an NES and a Super Spike V'Ball game. Then they pulled this guy out of the audience who just happened to be a Nintendo PowerFest finalist. Man, that guy was good! He beat me cold.
Kadeem Hardison, Nintendo Power #18
Sweepstakes
A three-day trip for the winner and three guests to Super Bowl XXV, the weekend of January 27, 1991 in Tampa. Twenty-five second-prize winners got an NES Satellite with NES Play Action Football and Super Spike V'Ball for four-player nights, and 50 more got the jersey.
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 18Howard & Nester
2-page strip · from p. 14
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.
Howard, Nester and the game's punk, Razor, creep into Maniac Mansion and split up to search it, Nester determined not to look scared in front of her. Every room has something Howard warned him not to touch: a weight machine that pins him, a shower curtain with a mummy behind it, a green tentacle, a nurse with a chainsaw. He ends up hiding in a bush by the porch — 'just going to rip it out so we could crawl into the basement through the grating' — and Howard concludes something fishy is going on in Maniac Mansion.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Fire free Bowser, Two Bowsers
- Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos
- Sound tests
- Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II
- Add lives
- Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
- Warp Warp Warp
- Double Dragon II: The Revenge
- Trade punches
- Solstice
- Unlimited wizards
- The Magic of Scheherazade
- Head start, This is the end
- Tecmo Bowl
- More mirror images
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Crystalis, Tombs & Treasure and Super Mario Bros. 3.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Nov 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 | |
| 3 | ▲3 Mega Man 2 |
| 4 | ▲3 Tetris |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ▲8 Ninja Gaiden |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | |
| 11 | NEW Crystalis |
| 12 | |
| 13 | |
| 14 | ▼1 Super C |
| 15 | ▼6 Batman |
| 16 | ▲1 Tecmo Bowl |
| 17 | |
| 18 | ▲4 Metroid |
| 19 | ▼7 Shadowgate |
| 20 | |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | NEW Mega Man |
| 25 | |
| 26 | NEW Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs |
| 27 | NEW Tombs & Treasure |
| 28 | |
| 29 | NEW Mega Man 3 |
| 30 | ▼11 Bionic Commando |