Metroid
Metroid took the cover in a look back at the NES original as Metroid II: Return of Samus arrived on Game Boy. ActRaiser, Batman: Return of the Joker, Tiny Toon Adventures and The Addams Family filled the features, and the Super NES Showcase covered Pilotwings and Populous. The Game Boy pages also covered Ninja Gaiden Shadow and Hudson's Adventure Island.
I guess I really did hit the books.
Nester waking up from his dream
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 31
This issue featured an interview with Mayim Bialik — American actress, television personality, and author (born 1975).
The fifteen-year-old star of NBC's Blossom, two years after playing the young Bette Midler in Beaches, and already a piano and trumpet player, a jeweller and the sponsor of an adopted whale named Crystal. The magazine spelled her name “Bailik” across the whole page. She played Tetris doubles with co-star Joey Lawrence, and the show's technicians were so far into Golf that they lit their Game Boys when the set went dark. Blossom ran until 1995, after which she left television for UCLA and came out the other side with a doctorate in neuroscience. Then she went back: twelve seasons as Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, her own sitcom Call Me Kat, and two years hosting Jeopardy!
I love playing video games because when I pick them up, I'm suddenly in a different world.
Mayim Bialik, Nintendo Power #31
Sweepstakes
A trip to LucasArts, a tour of Industrial Light & Magic and a special screening of Star Wars, tied to the film's arrival on the NES. Ten second-prize winners got a Star Wars mask of a hero or villain plus the game, 50 got jerseys, and the page listed the THX theaters in ten cities holding public screenings over the holidays.
Comics
Nester's Adventures · Volume 31Nester's Adventures
2-page strip · from p. 18
Nester carried on alone after Howard left Nintendo in 1991, walking into one game a month and finding out the hard way that reading the strategy pages would have helped.
Nester falls asleep over Myths and Monsters of Ancient Greece and dreams himself into Kid Icarus as Kid Nesterus, with Zeus on a cloud trying to train him before the goddess Palutena falls to the forces of evil. Nester boasts he toasted Battletoads in two days and asks how long it took Zeus. The three tests go badly: the harp summons monsters instead of beautiful creatures, the question about Icarus and the sun gets 'he got waxed', and the Trial of the Tumbling Mirrors would have been passed by moving left and shooting straight up. He wakes up with arrows through his homework, having really hit the books.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants
- Hat room, Jump for items, Coin room, Tent warp
- Battletoads
- Two toad tag, 1-Up roundup
- Whomp 'Em
- Extra energy, Sound test
- Laser Invasion
- Nine chances
- The Last Ninja
- Triple take
- Super Mario World
- Freeze and collect, Invincibility extension
- Darius Twin
- Fifty ships
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Crystalis, Super Mario World, Pilotwings, StarTropics, Faria and The Goonies II.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Dec 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 | ▼1 Battletoads |
| 5 | ▲1 Crystalis |
| 6 | |
| 7 | ▲1 Mega Man 3 |
| 8 | |
| 9 | — Tetris |
| 10 | |
| 11 | |
| 12 | ▼1 StarTropics |
| 13 | ▲2 Dr. Mario |
| 14 | NEW Tecmo Bowl |
| 15 | |
| 16 | |
| 17 | |
| 18 | ▼1 Mega Man 2 |
| 19 | ▲7 Monopoly |
| 20 | |
| 21 | |
| 22 | |
| 23 | |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | |
| 27 | |
| 28 | |
| 29 | |
| 30 | ▼1 Solstice |