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Games Entertainment

A Review of Nintendo Power #1 42

Posted by Zonk from the i-still-have-that-around-here-somewhere dept.
Via Joystiq, a review on the site X-Entertainment of the very first issue of Nintendo Power. Amusing if only for the sake of nostalgia. From the article: "There's the table of contents. The big games at the time were The Legend of Zelda and the just-released Super Mario Bros. 2. To their credit, Nintendo covered a lot of the older games kids were still into playing, mixing the stuff people wanted to see with the stuff they wanted you to see. It wasn't just one big commercial in print. While they weren't really going to come down on any of the games for their own system, all of the articles were approached honestly enough. They usually steered away from romanticizing crap - if the game sucked, they didn't say it sucked, but they didn't spend a whole lot of time talking about it."
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A Review of Nintendo Power #1 More

A Review of Nintendo Power #1

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  • but at that time, what did they have to worry about competing with?

    i still have this issue, in decent shape. i will admit that the reviews were fair (in retrospect) but it still has more to do with the fact that what could possibly compare?

    maybe i missed a few months, but one game which was truly great for the NES (life force) i never saw much about.
    • Ahhh that takes me back, Life Force the first game that I actually bought with my own money (I seem to remember it was about £30 which was a lot of money for a 9 year old). Cracking two player shoot-em-up action that I played over and over again. They tried remaking it on ther GBA but it just wasn't the same.
    • What are you talking about? They had an article on Lifeforce in issue #2. The one with Castlevania 2:Simon's Quest on the cover.

      They had maps of levels and everything.

  • Speaking of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (Score:4, Interesting)

    by everyplace ( 527571 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @02:58AM (#14516980) Homepage
    007-373-5963
    For some reason this code has been burned into my mind since I was 6, at the time this issue came out. I don't remember if this code to skip straight to Tyson was actually in the magazine or not, but it is still relevant. Sadly, this wasn't quite as known as the Konami code.
  • It helped me beat the 2nd quest of Zelda because it contained a full walkthrough for it. At that time I probably could not have done it without their help(no gamefaqs.com back then :P)
    Ah memories.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I was heavily into Commodore 64 gaming back then but I bought a Nintendo because I saw Dragon Warrior at a friend's house. I bought a Nintendo and Dragon Warrior, finished the game twice, then immediately got rid of the NES. I loved that game but the Commodore kept me too busy to consider keeping the Nintendo and letting it gather dust. :)
    • Oh man, I made out like a bandit. I was sent two(!!) Dragon Warrior cartridges by mistake, so I sold the extra one and my old copy of DW, and kept a copy of the free Dragon Warrior, which I still have.

      In fact, last year I plugged in my old NES and my level 23 character named BOOB is still there, which surprised the hell out of me since I thought the battery life was about 5 years.

      • Similar thing happened to me. I was getting 2 copies of the magazine each month (which I never paid for, somehow my Nintendo Fun Club membership carried over, and they never billed me, until it just stopped coming in the early-mid nineties), and I got sent 2 copies of Dragon Warrior. I kept one and sold the other, too.

  • Heaven help me (Score:2, Interesting)

    by MilenCent ( 219397 )
    I had the original first issue once (it was given away to Fun Club subscribers after all). A lot of the artwork in NP in those days was taken from a Japanese Nintendo publication, I believe. The issue is notable for containing some interesting character art for Mario 2, including a two-page spread that was basically just an excuse to show the characters and various enemies competing in track-and-field events. The art isn't bad mind you, but it just goes to show how random Nintendo Power could be in those
  • Even after I stopped playing console games, I still subscribed to NP. I don't really know why. There's a bunch of issues of it next to my right foot that I don't think I've ever even seen, let alone read.

    For some reason, I feel compelled to go look for the old Final Fantasy strategy guide and read about Warmech. Again, I really, really don't know why. I didn't even get past the Elf Kingdom in Final Fantasy. I'm more of an FFIX guy myself.
  • To their credit, Nintendo covered a lot of the older games kids were still into playing, mixing the stuff people wanted to see with the stuff they wanted you to see. It wasn't just one big commercial in print.

    Pushing their older games in addition to their newer games makes it even more of a commercial, imho.
  • Issue 1 started the tradition of "The new Zelda: comign soon! Really!"

    I'm still amused that Zelda II was covered in the Official Nintendo Player's Guide even though the game was years away at that point. The box art they put in the book was even hand drawn.

  • I still have that issue! (Score:3, Informative)

    by rubberbando ( 784342 ) on Friday January 20, 2006 @11:35AM (#14519048)
    I found it digging through some old stuff of mine stored in my parent's attic. It was pretty beat up though.

    That magazine used to be great. The 1st issue was probably the best one published by Nintendo. It had the most info about upcoming games, the most tips, tricks, and strategies. However, with each issue after that one, there was less and less of that kind of content. Nowadays, I think its more ads than anything.

    What also made that issue great was the fact that it was free. If you were a member of the Nintendo Fun Club (which was also free), you recieved the first issue free. However, creating Nintendo Power was Nintendo's way of saying that they wanted you to pay for those tips, tricks, etc. Before Nintendo Power, you could just join the Nintnedo Fun Club for free and get a monthly newsletter with this sort of information. I wish I still had some of those newsletters, they'd probably be worth something in the collector's market.

    Oh well...
  • anyone else remember calling this #? It rocked, they'd send you printed stratagy guides for free. I had a full walkthrough for Phantasy Star with maps. Too bad i couldn't afford $100 for the game :).
    • Dude! I almost spit my drink out!

      Yes a friend and I used to call sega every week. We requested manuals for Master System games we didn't have (we said we lost them). We used to drool over all those manuals just wishing we could play those games.

      I loved sega so much as a little kid it was pathetic, but a funny thing happened. I saw an AMIGA at a store called video concepts running tetris,then another one at somers photo and computer running a game called AWESOME. I almost fainted when I saw the intro and fo
  • I subscribed (or rather mom did) to NP for 3 years, which got me the "gold lapel pin" with the NP logo... which I still have on my desk to this day. I also have the satin NP "members only" jacket... I don't wear this even though I want to. At 30, the pin says cool retro gamer guy, the jacket says lives with his mother.

    My favorite issue was the SMB3 special issue.
  • That magazine used to be top-notch, partially because Nintendo basically was the console-game industry. More than that, though, it used to not be the propaganda machine it is today, as the blurb points out. I dunno exactly what the state of the book is now, but I stopped reading around the time they hyped up the execrable Donkey Kong Country because it had awesome graphics (and, of course, because it was a Nintendo first-party). Before that, NP really was as honest as it could be about the quality of the
  • and Nester who grew up to be every griefer/forum troll that plays video games today.
  • The second issue had the dressed up Belmont guy holding Drac's head, which was shooting lazer beams from it. I remember this because they had to re-issue that issue with a changed cover.
  • That Black Covered Player's Guide was even more interesting...its maps of Metroid made me get an NES, I knew that nothing quite like it was going to be coming out for the C=64, even if the latter was a more powerful system.

    Actually that map may have helped make me the gaming wuss I am today. It seems like that game with all its hidden stuff would be almost impossible to get through without some kind of outside support...

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