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Nintendo Games

Nintendo Power To Shut Down 78

Posted by Soulskill from the thanks-for-the-dragon-warrior-3-maps dept.
stillnotelf writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the official Nintendo magazine, Nintendo Power, is shutting down after 24 years. The gaming magazine has been run by independent publisher Future US since 2007, but Ars Technica's source and deleted Twitter posts say that Nintendo is uninterested in continuing the paper magazine in today's digital age, and also unwilling to convert it into a primarily digital experience. There's been no official confirmation of the cancellation or word of how many issues remain of this bit of childhood nostalgia for so many gamers."
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Nintendo Power To Shut Down More

Nintendo Power To Shut Down

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  • Noooo! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Now where will I get my biased game reviews from?

    • Re:Noooo! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Lord_of_the_nerf ( 895604 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:25PM (#41077313)
      Gamespot, like everyone else.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        For that extra bit of bias and stupidity, I recommend Jim Sterling or Colin Moriarity.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Metacritic (their secret is that they pretend to be unbiased).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by noh8rz7 ( 2706405 )
      to be fair, so many nintendo-designed games are incredibly awesome, and it was cool to dedicate an entire issue of nintendo power to them. remember the zelda cartridges came in gold? that was cool too.

      • Re:Noooo! (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @12:20AM (#41077553)

        No shit. This is about Nintendo Power, not Nintendo. If Nintendo were to shut down the Internet would explode and millions of gamers around the world would simultaneously commit suicide by banging their heads against bricks, jumping down random pipes, and eating strange mushrooms.

        • banging their heads against bricks, jumping down random pipes, and eating strange mushrooms.

          Sounds like a good weekend to me!

    • Now where will I get my biased game reviews from?

      To be fair, I'm not a gamer anyway, but I never understood the appeal of "official" games review magazines.

      There may be a case for official endorsement in other areas, but for magazines, there's no obvious benefit beyond (possibly) getting privileged access to (e.g.) Nintendo's news and announcements- when it suits *them*, that is. And that's the issue- isn't any official magazine always going to be compromised at some level, and isn't the reader going to be aware of that?

      Even if it's not a blatant mout

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cinder6 ( 894572 )

        A lot of people have fond memories of Nintendo Power because of the walkthroughs and hints the magazine had for various games. I, on the other hand, was always resentful of Nintendo Power, because it often felt like games were intentionally obtuse just to make you go out and get a subscription.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by captjc ( 453680 )

          I always figured that games were made intentionally obtuse because they were made for the Japanese audience and only later given to Americans as an afterthought. I also figured that the reason (Japanese published) games started getting simpler was because they realized the value of and started catering to western audiences.

        • I was a subscriber when I was a kid back in the early days (late 80's to early-90's) before gaming info was widely available online. My favorite part was the really well done maps they had of the various scrollers. They had what appeared to be linearly stitched screenshots with pointers to important areas, items, and enemy bosses that referenced legends of useful information (e.g. the location of a heart container). It was really fun to play the game and then go back and open the magazine and see all the

  • Now how will I know that renting games is wrong? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:24PM (#41077305)
    All other sources refuse to cover how renting games is "grey market" and wrong.
  • This package has been superceded by the package nintendochannel, proceed with install? [Y/n]

    • This package has been superceded by the package nintendochannel, proceed with install? [Y/n]

      You only wish installing stuff on the Wii and 3DS were that easy.

      For those people who don't know what I'm referring to, Nintendo Channel is a Wii channel available for free in the Wii store that Nintendo posts videos and other info about their current and upcoming games.

  • if only i could get back that first copy of nintendo power i had back in 1988. its worth so much now on ebay. very nostalgic. would love to have it back, but i can't afford to spend 80+ dollars on a magazine.

    • That was the copy with the clay figures of mario, featuring super mario bros 2, right? I have a copy, but it's in terrible condition.

  • ....as Nintendo Underpowered?

    Fanboi mod me funny. The gamecube was the last "powerful" nintendo.

  • I had the very first issue (Score:4, Insightful)

    by m93 ( 684512 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:40PM (#41077389)
    Got it when I was in 3rd grade. Had a subscription for years afterward. That was a great time to be a kid and be fortunate enough to have access to high-tech gadgets like the NES/Super NES.

    • Re:I had the very first issue (Score:5, Informative)

      by GoodNewsJimDotCom ( 2244874 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @12:31AM (#41077607)
      Nintendo power was fun propoganda to get you hyped up to play video games in the 80s. As a kid, I loved that stuff. Games were already fun, but when you have a magazine talking about strategies, and easter eggs when there was no internet to get any discussion, that was indeed great times!

      NES era was a huge time in my childhood because the jump from atari2600 to NES was so huge that you never knew what they could make next as a video game, and the games for NES were really fun compared to atari2600 games which rapidly got boring, but I played them anyway because there was no alternative. Around 1989 is when I realized I wanted to be come a computer game programmer, and it was when I was standing around a bunch of NES games we played out and I was getting kinda bored with.
      • posting to remove accidental moderation, sorry
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • The problem I always had with the NES is despite the "Nintendo seal of quality" the amount of shitty shovelware they let into the channel was just insane. For every decent game you probably had a dozen truly crap games, not even counting all the movie license crap they let loose upon their system like a chili fart on a bus. Friday The 13th or Total Recall anyone?

          All consoles had (and have) a lot of "shitty shovelware", but the ratio of good games to bad games on the NES was higher than on most other syste

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by m93 ( 684512 )
        You are indeed right on target. It WAS propaganda to get you interested in buying their games. I got my NES when it first came out (I even had the damn Robot). I remember playing Duck Hunt and Gyromite at first, and then ignoring it briefly. Then, Nintendo Power came out, and around that time the supermarket in my town started renting movies and games. From that point on I had information and a supplier. All downhill from there! Looking at some of those old covers brings back memories.
    • I still have two boxes containing most of the first few years of Nintendo Power, now they might start going up in value? My GF keeps telling me to dump them. Sadly I never had the first issue. I have the 25th anniversary issue with Mario in the raccoon suit on the cover and the original matching issue, yeah..

    • I got started with the issue that came with a free game(!) It was Dragon Warrior, the start of my RPGing...

      Not sure what issue that was, but it was probably a bit later (#12 or so).

    • I remember getting the little subscription card included in the NES box before the first issue came out and the marketing made you feel like you were getting in on something special and exclusive. Then getting my first issue in the mail, it was every bit as glorious as I've ever seen any bit of propaganda. I was a subscriber for a good many years until I started moving around a lot, at which point the SNES was starting to show its age and the N64 wasn't really appealing to an overachiever with more school

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Phusion ( 58405 )

      Oh man, yeah I got a subscription in the early 90's and was so very excited every month when it came. Kids my age had a collective shitting of bricks when the SNES came out and promptly developed some Nintendo thumb. It was a great magazine, but I have no idea what happened to it after the 90's.. I suppose that other company bought it?

  • I am surprised to find out that this is not due to it be the front of some sort of energy company that gets energy from baby seal pelts.

  • Woz (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guttentag ( 313541 ) on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @11:43PM (#41077403) Journal
    Steve Wozniak was denied a Game Boy Tetris high-score listing in Nintendo Power, so he resubmitted his score with his name spelled backwards (Evets Kainzow), and they printed it [gonintendo.com]! Classic moment in crossover Apple/Nintendo geekery... They later gave in and published his photo and a paragraph [redditlurker.com] about his Tetris obsession.

    For those who remember Nintendo Power and are feeling nostalgic, there's a good cover gallery [zeldadungeon.net] with a smattering of selected inside pages (sadly, Woz's high score in issue 24 doesn't seem to be among the scans).
  • Venetian Snares - Pwntendo [youtube.com]

    All I can say

  • Nintendo Power has been "just another gaming mag" for too long now. I'm not sure if the shark-jumping point was when publishing shifted away from Nintendo, or when they started publishing advertising, but the copies I've picked up and thumbed through didn't feel like the magazine of yore.

    Personally, I'm still more depressed by Nintendo no longer publishing official game guides (I believe the last was for Super Paper Mario) than this news.

  • Sad to hear (Score:3)

    by flimflammer ( 956759 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @12:18AM (#41077547)

    If only for nostalgic reasons. I used to read Nintendo Power in the 80s and early 90s. My friend had and probably still has a huge stack of them from that time period. I felt similarly sad when GamePro suffered the same fate. I used to read those all the time back in the 90s.

    It's kind of like hearing that a relative or old friend you haven't seen in years died.

  • Kinda sad (Score:3)

    by ildon ( 413912 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @12:33AM (#41077613)

    As a kid I had a subscription to Ninteno Power from like 1990 until 1998. Sad to see it go but I honestly hadn't looked at an issue since then. The internet (and me not being a kid, as it was clearly marketed at the 10-16 year old demographic) made it totally irrelevant. I'm honestly surprised it managed to stick around this long.

  • Final Fantasy Fanny Pack (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daetrin ( 576516 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @12:42AM (#41077645)
    I remember the promotional material they did for the original Final Fantasy. It seemed like that went on forever, but i was a kid so it was probably only one or two issues right before the game came out. Then the next three issues after it came out they did trivia contests. I entered all three, and got second place in one of them!

    I won... a neon pink fanny pack. I believe it came stuffed with a t-shirt and some chocolate coins. The t-shirt was kind of crappy, and the coins were quickly consumed. And the neon pink fanny pack was... neon pink and a fanny pack. So kind of the worst prize ever, but i remember the shit out of having actually won something!

  • bad decision on digital (Score:4, Interesting)

    by petsounds ( 593538 ) on Wednesday August 22, 2012 @01:31AM (#41077919)

    Nintendo Power is one of the few magazines that could have thrived in a digital format, due mainly to their enthusiastic fanbase. I think quite a number of people would have subscribed to a digital version of Nintendo Power that had exclusive sneakpeak videos, developer interviews, NES game emulations, et al. I think it shows that Nintendo still doesn't 'get' how the internet can benefit them.

    I haven't read Nintendo Power since I had a NES back in the '80s, but I have fond memories of it. It was a classy mag with good features; at least the kid version of me thought so. Good quality paper stock, nice art direction. I remember the multi-page dungeon maps of Legend of Zelda. I remember the Legend of Zelda 2 preview and thinking it looked like the best game ever, and then I got the game and it totally was. Metal Gear, Ninja Gaiden. I remember looking at those previews and wondering how a videogame could look so cool. Heady times for videogamers. Constant innovation (well, at least from the top studios) because the industry was still so young.

  • I own every single issue of Nintendo Power ever printed, even all the Nintendo Fun Club newsletters. Sad, I know, but I felt that I should continue my subscription as it was one of my favorite magazines when I was a kid. I remember getting Metal Gear strategies from there, and actually getting in the magazine for maxing out the score on Xenophobe (had to send a Polaroid pic, which was my only camera, but it had to show your TV and Nintendo. Not an easy shot.). I guess I'll eBay them all when they finall

  • I too had the very first issue; the one with Super Mario Bros 2 on the front cover. However, I have to admit that I dropped my subscription a few years later, and afterwards only re-subscribed because each time my subscription was about to run out they offered free Player's Guides worth the same (if not greater) cost as the annual subscription. Not only was this in an age before GameFAQs, the art was pretty and wasn't going to be found anywhere else.

    Sure Nintendo Power was very biased, but you have to admi

  • My other two posts are one of the 37 current comments on this thread. Thought everyone loved original Nintendo / SNES? Just for cozy feelings, at least!

    • By the time the NES came out, I had a computer. And I was completely smug about the superiority of the Commodore 64. Zelda, pfft. I had The Bard's Tale and Pool of Radiance!

      The 8 Bit Wars left many scars.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by BigSes ( 1623417 )
        Indeed, my man, C64 was superior. I was a big PoR player myself, along with Hillsfar, Rocket Ranger, and Red Storm Rising (and any other Microprose game). Damn, those were indeed the days. ANYTHING Cinemaware put out on C64 was superior to most things on NES, especially in the early 1990s when shovelware really bloated the NES offerings. I was always so jealous of my friend who had an Amiga, my family couldn't afford to get me one, but the graphics looked amazing. Heck, the first DOS-based PC I had was

  • How much "news" about Mario and Zelda do you really need from a magazine? I don't think there was one issue printed that didn't have Mario or Link in it. I mean my nephew showed me an issue I thought it was one of my old copies, but it was brand new issue and showed another history of Super Mario Bros which they usually print about 2 or 3 times a year. I think the only other magazines that are entirely self promoting are Martha Stewart Living and Oprah.

    They are probably shutting it down due to the fact t

  • I had this Nintendo since I was 12 yrs. I thought for a long period of time they are working with it. Got the reason why it has been more fun and not fun at all. -- poptropica [poptropicagamer.com] | funbrain [poptropicagamer.com]

  • Other than the occasional maps, Nintendo Power was shit.

  • I got a couple free issues and every review was basically, "This is the greatest game ever". Didn't bother subscribing after that.

  • The article said Nintendo Power has over 400,000 print subscribers. How could they not make a go of this? What did they need from Nintendo, anyway, other than early access to games to review them? I get Nintendo Power currently since I can let me kids read it and not have to explain, again, why they can't play M rated games.

    I suspect the threat of shutdown is part of a ploy by the publisher to get something from Nintendo (which was hinted at in the article). If the shutdown actually happens, then the pu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by BigSes ( 1623417 )
      I suspect it might cost more than $8 million a year to run a magazine. On advertising for games, they only feature Nintendo available products, or marketing for other teen related products, such as movies, snacks, etc. Maybe its not such a financial windfall.
  • Wow, sad to hear this, I have very good memories of begging, borrowing and buying Nintendo Power. As an online marketing professional it's irritating to hear that they're not going to switch to a digital version or a 'nintendo power blogger network', the brand has a huge following and could easily be revitalized in a new medium. It's probably a management fuck up, it usually is.

  • I actually didn't even realize the magazine subscription still existed (I stopped caring about it long ago). Anyway, as my title states, I am not surprised by this. With the widespread wealth of information the Internet provides, having a magazine to advertise upcoming games is just redundant. All the latest information can be posted and archived online anyway where is it accessible without any special subscription. Same goes with game hints and tips.

    Back in the late 80's and early 90's, this was an awesome

  • ...because there were so many great games to focus on editorially. Despite the expected cat-calling above, during that period NP staff worked hard to keep the integrity stellar even as forces were increasing pressue to put business interests over those of gamers. I have lots of great memories from that time period...

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