Star Tropics
StarTropics made the cover, with Nintendo predicting Mike would join Link and Mario among its heroes. A special report explained the Power Meter ratings and how games were evaluated at Nintendo headquarters. TMNT II: The Arcade Game, Kabuki Quantum Fighter, Magician and Ultima: Quest of the Avatar filled the features, and a Game Boy basketball roundup covered three new titles.
You're about to witness the most remarkable advance for world peace since I stomped out The Mafat Conspiracy!
Nester, about to introduce his three robot clones
- TMNT II: The Arcade Game
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 21
This issue featured interviews with Vlade Divac — Serbian basketball player and executive (born 1968), A.C. Green — American basketball player (born 1963).
The Lakers' rookie centre from Yugoslavia, who set up his first NES from the pictures because the manual was in English and not Serbo-Croatian, and teammate A.C. Green, whom he converted over an afternoon of Super Spike V'Ball. Divac was seven feet of national hero at home and already getting bit parts in Hollywood, including a shaving-cream commercial that cost him his beard. He played sixteen NBA seasons, ran the Sacramento Kings as general manager, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2019. Green won three titles with the Lakers and holds the NBA's iron-man record, 1,192 consecutive games without missing one.
I sit down to play for just a little bit and end up playing for hours. It's the best!
Vlade Divac, Nintendo Power #21
Sweepstakes
A three-day trip to Chicago for the winner and three guests to pilot 'Mechs in a special session at FASA's Battletech Center, scheduled for spring 1991. Second-prize winners got a selection of Battletech board games and other loot from the setting, and the jersey rounded out the ladder.
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 21Howard & Nester
2-page strip · from p. 24
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 swears Dr. Wily has turned over a new leaf and drags Howard through Skull Castle past friendly robo-rabbits and Mega Man III's Rush to see the surprise they've been building: Nesters Mark II, III and IV, three robot copies of himself. The copies immediately turn on the original, and Howard has to fight them with a Mega Man arm cannon while working out the trick — only one takes damage, and after they rematerialise a different one is the target. The robots are scrapped, and Howard wonders whether he saved the wrong one.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan
- Bonus game locations, Bonus game select, Power-up code
- The Immortal
- Coffee pot curiosity
- Dr. Mario
- Quick reset
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Anchors and P-Wings
- Mendel Palace
- Extra stages
- Conquest of the Crystal Palace
- Sound test
- Crystalis
- Wild warp
- Journey to Silius
- Option select
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Dragon Warrior II, Maniac Mansion and The Legend of Zelda.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Feb 1991, 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 | |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | ▼3 Crystalis |
| 7 | NEW Dr. Mario |
| 8 | |
| 9 | ▼2 Tetris |
| 10 | |
| 11 | |
| 12 | |
| 13 | NEW Mega Man 3 |
| 14 | ▲4 Tecmo Bowl |
| 15 | NEW Ghostbusters II |
| 16 | |
| 17 | |
| 18 | |
| 19 | NEW Maniac Mansion |
| 20 | NEW WWF WrestleMania |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | NEW Mega Man |
| 27 | ▼12 Batman |
| 28 | NEW Shadowgate |
| 29 | |
| 30 | NEW Pin•Bot |