Aladdin
Disney's Aladdin took the cover, with NHL Stanley Cup, ClayFighter, Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions and Battle Cars inside. A Super Scope roundup covered the light gun's games, and the Info Zone looked at Raya Systems' Life Fitness exercise bike. Mega Man IV and Tom & Jerry covered the Game Boy pages.
I guess my carrot-top [hairstyle] finally paid off.
Nester's final line of dialogue until 1997
- NHL Stanley Cup
- ClayFighter
- Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions
- Battle Cars
- Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics
Sweepstakes
The winner joined a dinosaur dig with the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. Ten second-prize winners got Jurassic Park for the system of their choice plus a prehistoric Power Package from the museum, with castings of a T. rex tooth and a Troodon egg, a patch and a signed copy of Digging Up Dinosaurs, and 50 T-shirts went to third place.
Comics
2 in this issue · Volume 55Nester's Adventures
One-page strip · from p. 35
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.
Jurassic Park: the power's out and a few of the dinosaurs have broken loose — did you run out of Barney Chow? — and the warden's cattle prod wouldn't stop the Energizer Bunny. The tame ones have been trained to sneeze on command for a date on Letterman, and the safe spot near the trees turns out to be where they serve the T-Rex's lunch. Nester's carrot top finally pays off: the T-Rex hates vegetables.
Star Fox
Chapter 11 of 11 · 12 pages · from p. 52
Benimaru Itoh's serial ran alongside the game, with the Arwing pilots as the magazine drew them: Fox, Falco, Peppy and Slippy against Andross, with a subplot the game never had.
The finale. Andross lures Fox to the energy core with a voice from the past — Vixy, Fox's mother — and confesses: he loved her, and the bomb he rigged for Fox Senior's ship killed her by accident, which is why the ship was later lost in the black hole. Fox goes into the core alone and needs to do this one himself; the clone flees in a pod with Herbert, straight into the black hole where Fox's father is waiting, and Fox lets him go, because that pod won't get far. The parade resumes with no interruptions.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- Yoshi's Safari
- Hard mode
- Wings 2: Aces High
- Radar screen
- Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge
- Name change
- Street Fighter II Turbo
- Special move select, Special move shut-off
- Mortal Kombat
- Strange finish
- Kendo Rage
- Stage select, Quick end code
- Super Turrican
- Sound test
- Dragon Warrior III
- Easy spells
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
- Free bow, Bomb arrows, Grab the guy
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: E.V.O.: Search for Eden, Dungeon Master, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Battletoads & Double Dragon.
Top 20
These were the top Nintendo games in Dec 1993, 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.
| # | Super NES | Game Boy | NES |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | NEW Mortal Kombat | ||
| 2 | |||
| 3 | |||
| 4 | ▼1 Kirby's Dream Land | ||
| 5 | ▼2 Star Fox | ||
| 6 | — Tetris | ||
| 7 | ▼3 Street Fighter II: The World Warrior | NEW Jurassic Park | ▲3 Metroid |
| 8 | NEW Aladdin | NEW Final Fantasy Legend III | NEW Mega Man 6 |
| 9 | NEW Mortal Kombat | ▼5 Mega Man 5 | |
| 10 | ▼4 Mario Paint | NEW Mega Man IV | |
| 11 | NEW Secret of Mana | ▼1 Faceball 2000 | |
| 12 | NEW Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back | ▼5 Dr. Mario | |
| 13 | NEW F-ZERO | ▼2 Tetris | |
| 14 | ▼1 SimCity | ▲6 Golf | ▼7 Dr. Mario |
| 15 | ▼2 The Ren & Stimpy Show: Space Cadet Adventures | NEW Yoshi's Cookie | |
| 16 | NEW Kirby's Pinball Land | ||
| 17 | NEW The Lost Vikings | ▼9 Final Fantasy Adventure | |
| 18 | ▼11 Alien³ | ||
| 19 | NEW Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind | NEW Widget | |
| 20 | NEW Madden NFL 94 | NEW Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly | NEW Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Tournament Fighters |