Nintendo Power V189

Nintendo Power V189 is an issue of Nintendo Power released in March of 2005. It featured Star Fox: Assault on the cover, and within featured the 2004 Nintendo Power award nominations, strategies for Resident Evil 4, Feel the Magic: XY/XX, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Super Mario 64 DS, and Banjo Pilot. Many other games were also covered.

Nintendo Online
This month five new websites were covered, including sites for Star Fox: Assault, Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, WarioWare: Touched!, and a site for the Nintendo Street Team. New sages on the Nintendo Forums included BBQ, Pelord, Kittykatstar, Eliwood.exe, and Desertmonkeymanaz.

Game Watch
Man new games were showcased here, mostly for the newly released Nintendo DS. Games for this console that were featured here included Need For Speed Underground 2, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (then simply known as Castlevania), Trace Memory (then known as Another), Kirby Canvas Curse, Jump Superstars]] (which was disappointingly never released stateside), and Nintendogs. On the GameCube Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix and Batman Begins were covered.

Strategies

 * Star Fox: Assault - This game covered the heroes and villains, the ground weapons, and strategies on how to complete some of the earlier missions and for the multiplayer mode.
 * Resident Evil 4 - Featured a spoiler-free walkthrough up to Sadler.
 * Feel the Magic: XY/XX - Featured the locations of all 60 hidden rabbits.
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Featured the locations of all 40 heart pieces, and as an extra featured a short interview with Capcom's Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Nintendo's Eiji Aonuma, two of the game's creators.
 * Super Mario 64 DS - Featured the locations of all the red coins in the game.
 * Banjo Pilot - Featured maps of the game's stages and tactics for them.

2004 Nintendo Power Awards nominations
Each year Nintendo Power has rewards the best of the best for each console, genre and so fourth after the year's end. Before doing so, however, they list the nominations and the picks of select writers. The nominations for overall game of the year included:

Game of the Year (GCN)
 * 'Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles''
 * Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes
 * Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Alan's pick)
 * Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (Steve's pick)
 * Pikmin 2 - (Seven's pick)
 * Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
 * Second Sight (George's pick)
 * Tales of Symphonia (Chris' pick)
 * Viewtiful Joe 2

Game of the Year (GBA)
 * Astro Boy: Omega Factor (Steve and Steven's pick)
 * Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django (Chris' pick)
 * Final Fantasy 1 & 2: Dawn of Souls
 * Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories
 * Mario Golf: Advance Tour
 * Mario vs. Donkey Kong
 * Metal Slug Advance (Alan's choice)
 * Metroid: Zero Mission (George's pick)
 * Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen

Game of the Year (DS)
 * Asphalt Urban GT
 * Feel the Magic: XY/XX (Steve and George's pick)
 * Madden NFL 2005 (Chris' pick, accidentally chose Madden 2004)
 * Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits
 * Spider-Man 2
 * Sprung
 * Super Mario 64 DS (Steven's pick)
 * Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 (Alan's pick)
 * The Urbz: Sims in the City

Other features

 * Their first special feature was an interview with Free Radical, where they discussed TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and Second Sight.
 * They had a four page special focusing on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes that showcased off exclusive artwork of the game by a Nintendo employee in Japan.
 * Other games showcased included MVP Baseball 2005, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, games within the Street series, Fight Night: Round 2, and WarioWare: Touched!

Now Playing (reviews)

 * Star Fox: Assault - 4/4/5/4/4
 * Resident Evil 4 - 5/5/5/5/5
 * NFL Street 2 - 3.5/4/4/4/3
 * Virtua Quest - 2.5/3.5/3.5/3/3
 * The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - 4.5/5/5/4.5/5
 * Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2005 - 2.5/3/3/2.5/2.5
 * MC Groovz: dancecraze - 3/2.5/3/2.5/3
 * Pinball Hall of Fame - 2/2/3.5/3/2.5
 * Zoo Keeper - 3/2.5/2.5/2.5/3
 * Banjo Pilot - 3/3.5/4/4/3.5
 * Monster Trucks - 2.5/2/3/2/1.5
 * Racing Gears Advance - 4.5/3.5/3.5/3.5/4.5
 * Strawberry Shortcake: Summertime Adventure - 2/2.5/2.5/1.5/1.5

Next Issue (volume 190)
In the next issue, they claimed that they would cover Fight Night Round 2, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, Retro Atari Classics, Yoshi Touch & Go, WarioWare: Touched!, WarioWare: Twisted!, and various other titles.

Trivia

 * On the over, there are three Arwings flying above Fox McCloud, each one with Fox in the cockpit. This was addressed in a later issue in the pulse section where a reader asked if Fox found out how to clone himself.