Super Play Issue 3

Introduction

Unlike its successors, Super Play only published 12 issues a year, and their Christmas coverage was often within the December or January pages. The third issue of Super Play was focussed around the first Christmas for the Super Nintendo in the UK.

They kicked off the holiday season looking at a bit of a buyer's guide for the Super Nintendo, and the bundles available to gamers, and the best deals on the high street - it’s hard to believe Boots once sold video games. As always, they also covered a guide to importing consoles, and the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. They also reported back from the Future Entertainment show of 1992 - which gave some of the public a chance to sample the best games of the year, and as well as challenges to find out the best gamers from a number of top class games like Street Fighter and Super WWF. They also looked at the future of CD-Rom games, and the SNES CD system, with it facing significant delays - we all know how that turned out though!

Mickey’s Magical quest was the game of the month, with Japanese SNES gamers finally getting a taste of the action previously reserved for Mega Drive gamers with Castle of Illusion. The team praised the Graphics, Sound and gameplay, but found it was just too easy - it still gathered a final score of 89%.  Super Aleste wasn’t far behind, with the UK version getting 87%. There were plenty of other games reviewed, including the console version of Home Alone 2. 

The big gadget of the year was the Super Scope, however it didn’t review well, and many of the bundled games struggled to get over 40% - and the big launch game Battleclash only gathered 48% - and was only actually available in the USA. Unfortunately without any decent software immediately available, the gadget faded into obscurity.

As always, one of the big games of Christmas was a Mario game, with Super Mario World having only been recently released. The team duly delivered a 7 page guide to the game, covering all the tricky bits and going as far as the special worlds at the end of the game. A Link to the past also got the second part of their guide, covering the dark world and how to beat the game.

There was a lot to pack into this issue, but unfortunately there weren’t enough big game releases. As Nintendo have always done, their big releases were launched earlier in the year. Even so, the SNES’s future still looked rosy, with plenty of games on the horizon!