Duck Tales
Scrooge McDuck's DuckTales covered the issue, with Dragon Warrior's role-playing saga, Fester's Quest, Hoops and Who Framed Roger Rabbit inside. The Game Boy got its first proper feature as the hot new portable, and the NES Satellite wireless adapter was introduced. A batch of Video Shorts covered smaller releases from Air Fortress to Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
That's not fair. How could he know how to go outside when he's never even heard of an outside? I call foul.
Dr. Wily when Nester finally asks a question his H.O.W.A.R.D. robot can't answer
Power Profile
Celebrity profile · Volume 8
This issue featured an interview with Brian Robbins — American film producer (born 1963).
Eric Mardian, the leather-jacketed genius on Head of the Class, and host of the kids' game show Pictionary, where he admits he wanted every contestant to win. He lost at Punch-Out!! to his personal trainer every week and preferred Baseball, having pitched in school. The profile notes almost in passing that he had written an episode of his own show and planned to write more. That was the career: he moved behind the camera, directed Varsity Blues and Norbit, co-founded AwesomenessTV, and ran Nickelodeon and then Paramount Pictures until the studio changed hands in 2025.
When I was in school, I was a pitcher on the baseball team—Nintendo's Baseball is a lot like the real game, except the running of course.
Brian Robbins, Nintendo Power #8
Sweepstakes
With Data East's RoboCop on the NES and the sequel shooting, the Grand Prize put the winner on the set of RoboCop 2. The card also took the temperature on a brand-new handheld, asking whether readers definitely planned to buy a Game Boy, wanted more information first, or would stick to NES games for now.
Comics
Howard & Nester · Volume 8Howard & Nester
2-page strip
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.
Told as an illustrated story: Dr. Wily broadcasts a challenge from Skull Castle, and Nester, the awesome megamind, walks into the world of Mega Man II to match wits with him. Wily's ultimate game-playing invention is H.O.W.A.R.D., a humanoid robot in a bow tie, and the two trade Mega Man II questions — the Metal Blade against Bubble Man, which stage to clear first, how to make the impossible jump in the Dr. Wily stage using all three Item-1 platforms. Nester wins by asking how to get out of the place, which the robot has never heard of, and then wakes up: it was all a horrible dream.
Classified Information
The codes and secrets this issue gave away.
- 1943: The Battle of Midway
- Custom Made Code
- Ninja Gaiden
- Preserve Power Points, Up and Over
- Star Soldier
- Instant Offense
- Mega Man II
- Hold the Mustard, Patience Pays, Don't Stop Now
- The Guardian Legend
- Sound Test
- Tecmo Bowl
- Mirror Image
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
- Monster Maneuver
- Legacy of the Wizard
- Music lesson, Free armor, Bonus Players
Counselor's Corner
Game Counselors on callReaders wrote in to ask Nintendo Game Counselors questions about the following games: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Metroid and Adventures of Lolo.
Top 30
These were the top Nintendo games in Sep/Oct 1989, 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 | |
| 7 | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | ▲3 Metroid |
| 11 | ▼6 Tecmo Bowl |
| 12 | ▼3 Mega Man 2 |
| 13 | ▲3 Mega Man |
| 14 | |
| 15 | NEW Adventure Island |
| 16 | |
| 17 | |
| 18 | ▼4 Contra |
| 19 | NEW Metal Gear |
| 20 | |
| 21 | |
| 22 | NEW Bases Loaded |
| 23 | ▼13 Double Dragon |
| 24 | |
| 25 | |
| 26 | ▼15 Ultima |
| 27 | |
| 28 | ▼3 Castlevania |
| 29 | ▼2 Bad Dudes |
| 30 |