Nintendo Power is a magazine that made dreams come true. It's just that during the late eighties and early nineties, pre-teens didn't dream of much more than early screenshots of the new Mario game and weird comic strips about a couple of terrifying troll babies call Howard and Nester. For one issue only, however, the publication that served mainly to advertise Nintendo games whilst not technically being propaganda for children went above and beyond the call of duty by running a competition. A competition which promised the winner the chance to appear in the then upcoming Super Nintendo game The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. Chris Houlihan was the lucky so-and-so selected to have a dungeon room named after him, and he was probably over the moon! Except somebody messed up, and the room (which would only be appearing in the North American release) had its door taken out. And reinstated. And taken out. It got to the point where the duelling programmers had made actually discovering Chris's room so difficult - involving a careful sequence of explosions, running really quickly and making blind leaps of faith - that nobody bothered to look for it for a decade. And then it really wasn't worth the wait.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
