dat cover. Reading these makes me want to play Mario 3. I'm not its biggest fan but damn if it wasn't the hugest event of my ten year old life when it was released.
TOC -
Final Fantasy sighting. CES 1990 is in here too - maybe some Mega Man 3? Nintendo Power award voting too, yay. Many of the main games in this issue look pretty bland.
Mario 3 stuff is more of the same so I'm gonna skip it.
CES 1990. Nintendo with a 30,000 foot booth? What? Nintendo had such a death grip on the industry that all games were shown at their booth. Lots of games were announced here, many didn't actually come to the US. Crystalis, Ninja Gaiden 2, Super C and Chip n Dale's Rescue Rangers were all revealed.
A Boy and His Blob was so damned weird. It isn't just the premise, it's how all the jellybeans came together in one weird blend of action and puzzle. I could never get into this game despite wanting to.
Top 30 -
Mega Man 2 makes a comeback but not enough to top TMNT. Mario 3 makes the top 10 despite not being available on home consoles. It was only available on Playchoice - a weird timed arcade machine that was basically like playing NES roms. Next month Mario 3 is going to like quintuple second place. Duck Tales soars into the top 10 while Mega Man somehow stays in the 11-15 range for a full year. That game never goes up or down.
First FF1 sighting. FF1 came out of nowhere and just got an absolute blitz of coverage from NP. I was actually kind of upset that they were wasting entire issues covering it at the time because it felt like they were paid to do so (and they probably were). It's funny to see them advertise the fact that you see the characters swing at air as a positive. I guess that's better than Dragon Warrior.
Not to be outdone, here's a really cool full DW1 map. There's also a crazy CYOA on the right side that lasts like six pages. Dragon Warrior and NP were always ridiculously close and the game was way overcovered. It was even given away with subscriptions to NP for a while.
GOTY nominees. Not sure why they do these in the middle of the year. I like BEST CALLENGE myself. My picks - best graphics/sound - MM2; BEST CALLENGE - Ninja Gaiden; Best fun - MM2; Best control - uhh Tetris, Best character (holy TMNT!) - Mega Man, Best ending - Ninja Gaiden, Best PVP - Tecmo Bowl (though Super Dodge Ball is awesome), GOTY - MM2. Yeah, I like Mega Man 2.
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xyzzy