A Look Back at Nintendo Power: April 1991 (Vol. 23)

By Matt Calamia

We’re introducing a new series to the blog, borrowing a page from 1up.com’s Retronauts. A couple times a week, I’m going to take a look back at some old issues of Nintendo Power magazine. We’ll check out breaking news, upcoming games and other oddities in one of the oldest running video game magazines in the country. With the help of Giantbomb.com, I’ll give you a little information on the games profiled in each issue. Here comes April 1991.

Flashy

The cover is screaming early 90s, focusing on the game Power Blade for the NES. Released in the States in March 1991, it is a remake of the Japanese game Power Blazer, released a year earlier, but with tweaked characters, levels and improved controls.

According to GiantBomb, it is a 2D platformer much like Mega Man, allowing players to choose what part of a level they would like to begin in. The weapon of choice in Power Blade is the deadly boomerang.

The issue itself breaks down the game’s special abilities, including running, jumping and throwing. Yeah, real special. It also explains weapons and items, including the grenade and the ‘hamburger,’ which restores energy.

Back in the day, Nintendo Power was more of a strategy guide compilation than the magazine it is today. The magazine gives a complete walkthrough of every sector of the game, including how to defeat bosses and find hidden treasures.

Next up is another Nintendo game called Totally Rad, the most 90s title of all time. Imagine buying a game today for Xbox or PlayStation, and it being called Totally Rad? The game, also released in March 1991, stars Jake, a guy from Southern California. He and his friend Alison, meet a magician named Zebediah Pong. She gets kidnapped, and Zebediah gives Jake all these super powers in hopes of saving her.

Creepy Magician in the bottom

The magazine breaks down each magic spell Jake acquires, including the amount of energy each spell uses. Oddly enough, one spell is called “Jake.” Again, Nintendo Power gives readers a walkthrough of the entire game, including all boss-battles, from start to finish.

Sword Master: Duel of Destiny, is the next game in the magazine. This game seems to have flown under the radar, not even having a page on GiantBomb’s directory. By the looks of things, though, it looks like your basic side-scrolling hack-and-slash game taking place in midevil times. It is by Activision, back before the days of Call of Duty and Guitar Hero. Again, the magazine does a great job of walking the player through the game start to finish, in amazingly just two pages.

The game has the most generic enemies, including vampire bats, skeletons, wizards and zombies. Seems like a bit of a Castlevania clone, something that can work for that time. Back then, gamers didn’t flip out over a game resembling another series like they do today.

We step away from the walkthroughs briefly, and are presented with a feature on British developers, cleverly titled “The British Invasion.” It profiles four different British game developers: Software Creations, Ocean, Elite,  and a little company called Rare.

I personally don’t know about any other than Rare, and this was before the days of the shiny yellow logo that graced the covers of so many games from the Super Nintendo to N64. The story states that up until that point, the company has completed over 50 games on the Nintendo and Game Boy. Their feature title at that point was Slalom, a skiing game. Just a few years away from Donkey Kong Country.

Elite was responsible for Ikari Warriors, Ghosts N Goblins and a port of Dragon’s Lair for the NES, while Software Creations gave us Solstice.

Each issue also had a section on a handful of newly released Game Boy games. This month we had: The Sword of Hope, an RPG; Ultima: Runes of Virtue, another RPG; R-Type, a port of the NES shoot-em-up; Mickey’s Dangerous Chase; WWF SuperStars, featuring five wrestlers; Pac-Man and Caesar’s Palace. To the credit of Nintendo Power, each game also features an in-depth strategy guide to go along with it.

One of my favorite parts of the old Nintendo Powers is the gossip column. Today, we can jump on a number of Web sites and blogs (hopefully this one) for news about the video game industry. Back then, you had to wait a month. This month’s gossip includes THQ’s growth in licenses, a Trivial Pursuit NES game, Greg Norman’s Power Golf, sequels to Mega Man, Tecmo Super Bowl and Ninja Gaiden 2.

The most entertaining and obviously staged section of each issue is the “Celebrity Profile,” in which they ask a popular celebrity at the time about their video game interest. This month is Jeremy Miller, better known as Ben Seaver from “Growing Pains.” He talks about his time playing Super Mario Bros., and how he taught Kirk Cameron, his co-star on the show, how to play. It’s laughable to read today, but nevertheless, very funny.

So that is the April 1991 issue of Nintendo Power. As you can see, the magazine has changed since its early days of being a strategy guide. Check back daily for new issues.