 Hi there, here's another edition of Drunk with Nintendo Power, this time we're going back to the first issue I ever owned, Volume 22, March 1991, with the game Metal Storm on the cover. I wonder if anyone out there still has this action figure mech thing they used for the cover model. This month's mailbag features a Nintendo Wrap written by four kids, and yeah, it's about as painful as you might expect. Anybody out there with kids, if you ever want to show them what the 90s were like, read them this letter. This month's comic is Howard and Nester, back when Howard Phillips was still around as the president of the Nintendo fan club. Here we see Howard working on the subsea from Star Tropics, but he can't get it to dive properly. Nester tries his hand at it, and he gets it to sink the old fashioned way. Next there's classified information, and here's the reason this is my first issue of Nintendo Power. I didn't even own an NES, but my best friend down the road did, and he showed me this chart from Mega Man 3 that demonstrates the number of hits it takes for every boss weapon to defeat each boss. I was so blown away by this as a kid that I just had to own it for myself. It's weird to say, but it's this little chart that really got me into video games because it proved to me that there was a real science behind the game. You weren't just running to the right and shooting stuff, there was real strategy and planning and forethought. So as a result, Mega Man 3 became my first favorite game ever, and I'd bug my friend to rent it all the time. So yeah, I made my dad go to Sears and buy the specific issue for me, but that wasn't enough. In the meantime, I had to copy the chart down in my notebook. There's also a tip here to have Mega Man avoid death after falling into a pit by holding right on the second controller and pressing jump on the first controller as soon as your life bar goes black. Or as I say in my notebook here, take a mega leap super jump out of pits. There's also passwords for Silver Surfer, extra lives for Turtles 2 the arcade game, a continue code for Nark, and hidden items in Shadow of the Ninja. There's also a classic code section here for older games, which is a nice touch. This month's poster is for Battletoads. I covered the issue that goes over that game a few months back. Now playing goes over Bandit Kings of Ancient China, Times of Lore, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, War on Wheels, Kicks, and WWF WrestleMania Challenge. Strategy action puzzles, wrestling and roller skating, you can't get much more variety than that. NES achievers features one poor soul who finished Kid Cool. I wonder if there's any residual damage that dude still feels today. There's no contest this month, instead it's the 1990 Nintendo Power Awards for best graphics and sound, theme and fun, challenge, play control, best hero, best bad guy, most innovative, best co-op games, and the best overall games for Game Boy and NES. I'm not going to read through the nominees on each of these because it'll take too long, but you can pause the video on each spot so you can see them for yourself. I will say it's funny to see NES play action football in the same category as all time great stuff like Castlevania III, Super C, and Mario 3. Counselor's Corner has some questions about Mega Man 3, like how to defeat the infamous Rock Monster, some questions about Maniac Mansion, like how to get out of the dungeon, some more questions about Dragon Warrior 2, and one for Shadow of the Ninja. Here's a shot at this month's counselors, including this dude, who says he beat Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden 2 in two hours. This month's top 30 has Mario 3 at the top, of course, but rounding out the top three are Final Fantasy and Crystallis, which is a bit of a surprise. We've also got all three Mega Man games on here as well, it's quite a prestigious honor. The celebrity profile is Rain Pryor, otherwise known as TJ on the old sitcom Head of the Class. What, they couldn't get the smart ass fat dude that sat in the back? Pac-Watch talks about Powerblade, which ends up on the cover of Next Month's Issue, Euphoria, Tailspin, and Star Wars. We also have a quick feature on Howard Phillips visiting the Consumer Electronics Show, where he got to see the Ultimate Warrior without face paint, and among other things that are on the way like this thing called the Super Famicom. Hmm, in fact on the next page we get our first look at stuff like Actraiser, Gradius III, Bombuzal, or what later became known as Kablui, Ultraman, and Street Fighter, with the screenshot clearly being Final Fight. Another interesting bit here in the coming soon section is that they mention Earthbound. I know they were planning on localizing Mother for NES, but I didn't realize they were planning on calling it Earthbound. Alright, let's move on to the main features. We've got 12 pages here on Metal Storm going over each special weapon, and the M308 Gravity Control Device so you can flip upside down. It's all pretty straightforward stuff here, no read between the lines comments or anything like that, but it's all really well done. If you like this game you gotta get this issue. Next in kind of an odd twist is a gigantic 20 page feature on Star Tropics, which is weird because that's the game that was on the cover of the last issue. I guess they only cover the first two areas in that issue and save the rest of the game for this one, but yeah the maps here are really useful and help make some of the dungeons less painful to get through. There's also rundowns of Adventure Island 2, GI Joe, and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. Dang, put those three with Metal Storm and Star Tropics and that's a really good group of games right there. The Game Boy section covers Operation C, the third Contra game that's one of the best games you can find for the original Game Boy. I did a video on that one a long time ago, and there's also a Boy in His Blob. I didn't even know this one got a Game Boy release. The Game Boy's classified info section goes over Power Mission, Fortress of Fear, Boomer's Adventure in Asthmik World, Castlevania the Adventure, and an Infinite Livestrick in DuckTales which is pretty cool. It works the same way as the NES game. Now playing for the Game Boy covers Solomon's Club, a follow up to Solomon's Key, and Roland's Curse, a pretty cool looking top down adventure title. For the Game Boy Top 10, Super Mario Land takes the top spot, and there's not much else notable here. Last but not least we have a really interesting feature looking inside the guts of both the NES and the Game Boy. When I was a kid I would just flip past this because it was way over my head, but reading it now they did a really nice job explaining all this stuff in layman's terms. They go over the function of the 72 pin connector and the RF modulator, explaining how the ladder translates the composite video signal to the TV. They even talk about the shift register and the controller and how it communicates with the Control Deck's CPU. They have a nice analogy here to explain how the CPU works too, saying that the game cartridge is basically a cookbook and the CPU is the cook who follows the recipe, although in this case it's making every single recipe in that cookbook at once. They continue to talk about how the Mario sprite is made up of 8 different characters and that every screen has 960 different characters at once. It also briefly goes over how a game can scroll and RF transmission versus an RGB signal. Finally we take a look at the guts of the Game Boy and they keep it pretty simple here talking about how the LCD screen works by reflected light. The darker the area on the screen the more electrical current is flowing through that area so less light can be reflected creating a darker image. Whew man that is a lot crammed into one issue and that's how great Nintendo Power was back in the day, but yeah I want to thank you for watching and have a good rest of your day.