Battle Toads
Battletoads got a 36-page extravaganza, the biggest single feature the magazine had run. NES Open Tournament Golf, The Hunt for Red October and Day Dreamin' Davey filled out the features, and the Game Boy section covered Super R.C. Pro-Am and Fortified Zone. A special report offered the first look at the Super NES hardware.
I'll never forget you, Howard, no matter how hard I try.
Nester bidding farewell to Howard
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 25
This issue featured an interview with David Leisure — American actor.
Joe Isuzu, the pathological liar of the Isuzu commercials, and Charley, the freeloading neighbour on Empty Nest. He tells the magazine a surprisingly earnest story: a self-described fat kid who lost sixty pounds one summer, found acting through the confidence that gave him, and started out as a Hare Krishna in Airplane!, head shaved for three months. His wife had got him started on Super Mario Bros.; he'd moved on to Golf. Empty Nest ran until 1995, and Joe Isuzu was revived for a second run of commercials; since then he has kept working in television guest spots and on stage.
Nintendo is like anything else, if you set a goal and persevere, you'll succeed—even if it's difficult at first.
David Leisure, Nintendo Power #25
Sweepstakes
Timed to NES Open Tournament Golf, whose review sent readers to the contest pages for 'the ultimate NES Open prize': a golf cart and two clubs for the links. The jersey filled out the lower rungs, as it did every month that year.
Comics
2 in this issue · Volume 25Battletoads
Special · 8 pages · from p. 16
Rash, Zitz and Pimple, introduced in comic form ahead of the game's cover story.
Four two-page intermissions scattered through the Battletoads cover issue, framed as a broadcast: Professor T. Bird's Vulture Vision recaps the Toads' rescue mission level by level while the Dark Queen and Silas Volkmire cut in to gloat. Ragnarok's Canyon and the psyko-pigs, the descent into the pit, the Arctic Caverns and the surfing, Volkmire's Inferno and the Intruder Excluder, the stolen Gargantua mothership, and finally the Queen's tower with the Toads on their way up — it doubles as a tour of the game's stages.
Howard & Nester
2-page strip · from p. 68
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's last strip, 'The Lone Nester Rides Again!': in a masked western, Nester's horse is impounded at the Drawbridge for a hitching violation, and the sheriff wants the outlaws rounded up before he'll release it. Nester's ambush works because the outlaws think he's Zorro, the town tries to elect him sheriff, and Howard — in a ten-gallon hat and bow tie — says it's about time he hung up his tie and hands it to Nester. They ride off in opposite directions into the sunset with 'So long, Howard! Good luck!'
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Power Blade
- Sound mode, Power-go-round
- Mega Man 3
- Passwords revealed, Design your own password, Energy Tank totals, The second set
- Chase H.Q.
- Stage select
- Abadox
- Invincible and power-up
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Warp whistles
- Double Dragon II: The Revenge
- Double strength dragon
- DuckTales
- Bonus stage
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: RoboCop 2, Dragon Warrior II and The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Jun 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 StarTropics |
| 6 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ▼3 Dr. Mario |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ▼4 Tetris |
| 11 | |
| 12 | |
| 13 | |
| 14 | |
| 15 | ▼3 Mega Man 2 |
| 16 | |
| 17 | NEW G.I. Joe |
| 18 | |
| 19 | ▲1 The Immortal |
| 20 | |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | ▼8 Mega Man |
| 27 | ▲3 Shadowgate |
| 28 | |
| 29 | NEW Wizardry |
| 30 | NEW Tecmo Bowl |