Last week, the gaming world received some sad news. Nintendo Power magazine will cease in December 2012. The magazine was a big part of my childhood, and after hearing that news, I wanted to write a blog about my favorite memories of that long-running magazine. I know putting up a blog this week isn’t as timely, but I have a lot of other things to do, like write game reviews and life in general. Plus I wanted some time to collect my thoughts. So here are some of my personal favorite memories of Nintendo Power!

Nintendo Fun Club

Actually, Nintendo Power started out as Nintendo Fun Club. It was a smaller newsletter that came once every two months, and featured game news, reviews, and strategies for the recently released NES. I didn’t have the first issues of Fun Club, as I didn’t get a NES right away. Like I said in an earlier blog, I was perfectly happy playing Pengo on my Atari 5200, until Zelda came out. But when I finally got a NES, I did sign up for the newsletter. You got a membership card (which I think I still may have somewhere), but I only got a couple of issues before Nintendo made a special announcement in the last one.

First Issue Was Free

In the last issue of Nintendo Fun Club, they announced that they’d be publishing a bigger magazine called Nintendo Power! To promote it and encourage people to subscribe, they gave out the first issue for free! Like the newsletter, the magazine would come out once every two months. As a kid, that was a long time to wait! I think in the second year, the month they didn’t have a magazine, they’d send out a strategy guide from one of the popular NES games at the time, like Ninja Gaiden or Super Mario Bros. 3. That’s one of the things that made Nintendo Power stand out from other magazines was that they offered game strategies and even maps of levels in the pages, which was pretty amazing back then. After that, Nintendo Power went to a monthly magazine. But they still published some very well-written strategy guides that you could order or get free when re-subscribing, like Mario Mania and the guides for Final Fantasy 6 and Chrono Trigger.

Art Fart

Another way that Nintendo Power was different than other magazine was the artwork. Many of the covers stood out from the rest of the gaming mags out there. Who could forget the first issue showing off a clay modeled Mario in Super Mario Bros. 2? The second issue had Simon Belmont holding Dracula’s severed head, which Nintendo Power themselves said later on caused them a headache as parents complained that cover gave their kids nightmares! Other great covers I remember included Mario 3 (still in clay), Mega Man 2, DuckTales, and later Sonic the Hedgehog (who would guess Sonic would end up on a Nintendo magazine back then?).

I guess official press art and materials weren’t as common back then, because the pages of Nintendo Power were full of creative art on the inside, too. I remember in the issue with Mario 2, they had two pages that just showed the four playable characters at a track meet, and each one was doing a sport to show off their skills. This wasn’t official Mario art, so they looked pretty wacky! I bet they wouldn’t do that nowadays.

Nintendo Power also had a long-running comic called Howard and Nester. It starred a Nintendo of America employee named Howard Phillips, and his fictional kid friend Nester as they shared game tips and went on Nintendo related adventures. When Howard Phillips left Nintendo, the comic just starred Nester, but it wasn’t as good. Nester appeared in a few games as well. He was an announcer in NES Play Action Football and was a playable character in Pilotwings 64. He even got his own game on the Virtual Boy called Nester’s Funky Bowling!

Nintendo World Championships 1990

Speaking of Howard Phillips, I did get to meet him once. During the NES heyday, they sponsored a NES tournament and tour called Nintendo World Championships, but I think later they changed the name to Nintendo PowerFest. Cartridges they used for this competition can fetch a high price on eBay now, I hear. Anyway, I have a lot of great memories of this event when it hit Dallas. One of those was meeting Howard Phillips in person! He was really fun to talk to. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, but I think he asked what my favorite games that I played at this event were, and I told him about Lolo 2, Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers, and Mario 3. I also got a signed business card from him, which I think I still have, too.

I have a lot of other great memories of that event, like seeing the giant raccoon Mario balloon greeting us as we went in. I didn’t get too far in the competition, but I did win a free T-shirt from it. I loved playing all the new and upcoming games in the preview booths, and I even talked about having fun hanging out with HAL at the Lolo 2 area in my last blog. Before we left that day, there was a booth giving out Mario fruit snacks, and they were packing up and didn’t want to take the leftover boxes of fruit snacks home, so they gave me a whole case! I think I was packing Mario fruit snacks in my lunch for the rest of the school year!

RPG Power

RPG fans should have respect for Nintendo Power, too, because they really helped promote RPG awareness in the US. They featured the heck out of early RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. The latter got an extensive contest with lots of prizes. And they even gave out free copies of Dragon Warrior when you subscribed! I didn’t take advantage of that offer because I already had a subscription, plus my friend had the game and I was perfectly happy playing it over at his house.

Nintendo Power…Educational?

The magazine even encouraged me to learn things outside of video games, too, if you can believe that. A good example is when they reviewed Little Nemo: The Dream Master for NES. They had a tiny blurb about how the game was based on a comic from the early 1900’s, and they showed a picture of a book with collections of old Nemo comics in them. I was so intrigued by this that I started doing research about Little Nemo. It was hard at first, since we didn’t have the Internet back then, nor did we have big bookstores like we do today. But later on I found some of these Little Nemo book collections in Half-Price Bookstores, and was able to learn more about them. Little Nemo really was an interesting newspaper comic strip, and the creator, Winsor McKay, was way ahead of his time and was doing animation before Disney was in diapers! I don’t think I would’ve learned as much about all that if it weren’t for Nintendo Power.

Later on, when I was in college, Nintendo Power helped me get a good grade on an assignment in one of my classes, too! In one of my magazine journalism classes, we had to acquire some kind of press papers that magazines gave out to people who requested them. I chose to do that with Nintendo Power, and the folks at the magazine were EXTREMELY helpful in accommodating what I needed. Thanks to them and my existing extensive knowledge of the magazine already, I got a very good grade on that assignment!

Catalog

At one point during Nintendo Power’s lifespan, they had a catalog where you could order Nintendo related merchandise. I’m not sure if that was only for subscribers or what. Nowadays, that wouldn’t be such a big deal since you can go on the Internet and order plush toys of every Mario character ever made, not to mention Zelda, Metroid, and other Nintendo merchandise. But back then, when the Internet wasn’t as prevalent, this catalog was the only place to order some of this stuff. I ordered a lot of things for myself, but I also did some Christmas shopping in this catalog, too. My younger brother Jeff just adored Bowser when he was little, so I got him a few Bowser related items from this catalog. And my old college roommate’s girlfriend (now wife) loved Yoshi, so one year she got Yoshi dog tags, a cap, and shirt from that catalog!

Contests

Nintendo Power also had tons of contests. For a while there was one in every issue! I entered nearly every one of those contests as a kid. I didn’t win the grand prize, but I did win a couple of T-shirts from that. One time they had a special contest for Mario Kart 64. You had to get a good time trial for one of the courses (Mario Circuit), and mail in a picture. In fact, there’s even a special code in MK64 that shows your best time for that track on the title screen, and I think they did that solely for the purpose of that contest. Winners would get a gold N64 controller with the Nintendo Power logo on it. And guess what? I was one of the winners! I still have that gold N64 controller!

Future Power

Nintendo Power has always skewed towards a younger audience, which is fine. Kids need a good video game magazine, too. But because of that, in high school and college I leaned towards other magazines like EGM, Next Generation, and GameFan. But I still subscribed to Nintendo Power because I’ve always liked Nintendo and am loyal to a fault. When I got into college and later, I wasn’t quite as loyal, though. I was a poor college student so I didn’t always have the money to subscribe, so it was kind of an off and on thing then. Now that Nintendo Power is gone, I kind of feel bad about not supporting them more.

After college, Nintendo stopped publishing the magazine themselves, but had someone else do it. It was still just as good of a magazine, though. Early on, it was pretty obvious the magazine was just Nintendo propaganda, (they even gave Hydlide a good review), but they’ve gotten better about that over the years, especially now that some other company publishes it. Nintendo Power is skewed a little more maturely now, but is still a family friendly magazine. I’ve always thought Nintendo Power was very well written and laid out. The font isn’t too small to read (like Game Informer or Next Generation), and the layout is pleasing to the eye.

Inspiration and Discouragement

While getting a job at The Dallas Morning News was my foremost inspiration for majoring in Journalism in college, Nintendo Power helped inspire me, too. While it seems like a dumb idea now to major in Magazine Journalism, back then it seemed like a good idea at the time. I was already writing for a major metropolitan newspaper, and after graduation, Web sites were asking me to write for them! Unfortunately that was about the time the dot com bubble burst, and print media started going down the tubes. So seeing my favorite childhood magazine bite the dust is also a bit discouraging for me. I also hate it that the writers for that magazine may lose their jobs as well. I don’t know how much involvement Nintendo had in funding that magazine anymore, but I’m a little disappointed that they pulled the plug. So hopefully the folks who worked on that magazine will find new jobs as well.

But even though things haven’t turned out quite like I had hoped when I was in college, I’m still very happy with where I’m at. I enjoy writing for GamerDad.com even MORE than I did at the Dallas newspaper. It’s such a PERFECT fit for me, since I like to write about family friendly kid games a lot. Since Nintendo Power did that, too, maybe they inspired me in that way as well. All I know is that I’m very lucky that I can write game reviews and go to events like E3, so you won’t hear me complaining! So goodbye, Nintendo Power. Thanks for the great memories, lessons, opportunities, and inspiration!

Power Packed PAX

And speaking of events like E3, I wanted to announce that in a couple of days, I’ll be heading out to Seattle for PAX. Please keep me and my brother Jeff in your thoughts and prayers that we’ll have a safe and fun trip there and back again. I’ll see you all after the Labor Day weekend, and do be sure to please read my PAX articles at GamerDad.com when I get back! Later! –Cary

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