Track & Field II
A holiday issue with a Powerful Gift Guide, a two-part feature on the NES Advantage and NES Max controllers, and Captain Nintendo's origin story in the fiction pages. Counselors' Corner profiled the Game Play Counselors for the first time, calling theirs the best job in America. Howard Phillips also launched the Invent the Ultimate Video Game competition, with a finals trip to Washington, D.C. on the line.
If you need help, just ask. [thinking] I hope Nester knows that.
Howard Phillips
- Ultima: Legacy of the Wizard
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 3
This issue featured an interview with Jay Leno — American television host and comedian (born 1950).
In 1988 Leno was Johnny Carson's permanent guest host on The Tonight Show and the face of Doritos commercials, four years from inheriting the desk and still doing three hundred stand-up dates a year. Nintendo first heard from him the way it heard from everyone: he phoned the Game Counselors for help with Level 7 of Zelda, which delighted them. He finished both quests, and his manager had given him the console in the first place to fill the hours after the late show in small towns. He hosted The Tonight Show for two runs totalling 22 years, then turned the garage full of cars and motorcycles he mentions here into a television show of its own, Jay Leno's Garage. In his seventies he is still on the road doing stand-up, which is where this story started.
There's not much to do in many small towns at 11:30 p.m. after that second show, so I'd bring a Nintendo game with me on the road and play till 3 or 4 in the morning and then crash out.
Jay Leno, Nintendo Power #3
Sweepstakes
The first travel prize: a four-day trip for four to Disneyland, with Nintendo covering airfare and the hotel and the vacation good through the end of 1989. The same issue launched Howard Phillips's separate Invent the Ultimate Video Game competition, whose ten finalists would fly to Washington, D.C. to compete for bonds worth up to $3,000.
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 3Howard & 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.
Two friends ask Nester how to find the third mansion in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, and Nester marches them into the game in Simon's armour, whip and all. He whips a skeleton, gets everyone lost and considers asking the skeleton for directions before Howard arrives with the real route to Bodley Mansion: find the Red Crystal first, then do as you did at Yuba Lake. Nester takes the credit and is whisked off in a whirlwind, still pointing at himself.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Gradius
- Win big with rapid fire, Start with full options, Get a 10,000 point super bonus, Warp to advanced levels
- Seicross
- Double up
- Zanac
- Create many Blue Renders for extra players
- Ikari Warriors II: Victory Road
- Keep going with a secret code
- Super Mario Bros.
- Explore the mysterious minus world
- Deadly Towers
- Start out strong and powerful
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Metal Gear, Rambo, Double Dragon and Gauntlet.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Nov/Dec 1988, 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.
| # | Game |
|---|---|
| 1 | |
| 2 | ▲1 Metroid |
| 3 | NEW Metal Gear |
| 4 | |
| 5 | NEW Gauntlet |
| 6 | |
| 7 | NEW Bases Loaded |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ▼5 Kid Icarus |
| 11 | |
| 12 | ▼4 R.C. Pro-Am |
| 13 | ▼1 Castlevania |
| 14 | ▼3 Contra |
| 15 | ▼8 Ice Hockey |
| 16 | ▼2 Mega Man |
| 17 | ▼8 Rad Racer |
| 18 | — Top Gun |
| 19 | |
| 20 | ▲4 Rygar |
| 21 | ▼11 R.B.I. Baseball |
| 22 | ▼2 Renegade |
| 23 | |
| 24 | ▼11 Goonies II |
| 25 | NEW Gradius |
| 26 | ▼10 Double Dribble |
| 27 | NEW Solomon's Key |
| 28 | NEW Golf |
| 29 | NEW California Games |
| 30 |