Nintendo Player – An Unofficial, Non-Profit Fan Site

By: Mike
It is funny how I can still remember walking through the mall with my dad and hearing him talk about a magazine dedicated fully to Nintendo. I was both confused that I had never heard of this before, and also very intrigued. A week later, my dad signed me on for a one-year subscription.

My first issue, which I still have horded away, came with a little membership card (that I unfortunately misplaced). It was Volume 21, dated February 1991, that featured Star Tropics on the cover. I remember reading the entire issue at least fifteen times completely. Whether it was on my school bus (I can’t remember if I was in first or second grade at the time) or on my parents bed next to where my NES had been hooked up to an old switch box TV. I thought NP was one of the greatest things I had ever had the pleasure reading at that time. And as it grew with more issues, so had I with more years.

Last week I received the most recent issue in the mail from my same renewed subscription address, volume 147 (that’s 126 issues since my first experience). And honestly, I cannot tell a lie — my reading time clocked in at about ten minutes. Afterwards the sleek, new issue was stuffed in a pile with my other game magazines never to be seen or flipped through again. This feeling that I now have cannot even come to grips within an inch of my past enjoyable hours of the same magazine company.

This didn’t come as a surprise to me. Actually, it has been happening to me for quite some time lately. I think this newly adapted “flip-throw-repeat” ritual began sometime around the early 100 issues. One day, I stepped outside to get the mail and felt a familiar thick and slick touch that I had come to know as another Nintendo Power. I remember opening it and seeing something I had never expected. A moment that put life into a new, different perspective – or, at the very least, sealed the truth of my recent denial.

What I am referring to is an advertisement-filled magazine; the first of NP. After paging through the ads, which were a 1-to-3 ratio, I was utterly shocked. Naturally, the sly Nintendo put a little message explaining that adverts were added to inform readers of new games and that none of the content would be adjusted. I thought to myself, what a bunch a bull those words really were and how Nintendo changed so much since the first airplane ride visit outside of Japan.

I was pretty depressed, to say the least, while paging through and reminiscing the issues of the past that had dealt with a major portion of my childhood. You may think I am being too rash with this statement, but, after putting down my once-opened magazine, I realized that nothing in this country was sacred anymore. (I don’t dare to say in this world. Not just yet, at least. I still have room for more jadedness.)

Could it have been that I was blinded by the awesome, bright rays of Nintendo’s dominant bliss at such an early age that they managed to somehow create a greater influence on me, and many other gamers worldwide, that is now dimming? Whatever the reason was, I did not take this change so lightly. I guess I should have anticipated this kind of action was, indeed, on the way, seeing that they took out many of the things that had made NP such a joy to read.

Going back into time, as the months of my subscription went by, so did the numerous sections; the comics (Howard & NESter, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Super Mario Adventures), the dorky power counselors, and drastically less strategic printed tips and walkthroughs. Impressive drawings, sketches, and (even) clay-modeled video game pictures were turned into cold, computer-generated images. The saddest, however, was the colored pages’ renown personality slowly being sucked away by newer, more-current, unemotional, robot writers and editors.

While reading the responses of the only opinionated section of the new magazine, mail bag, it was as if I was holding out one hand to catch an automatic response print-out from some computer programmed to deal with such questions.

After making these complaints, why do I still hold a subscription? That is a good question. There is something inside of me hoping for the past to grace the future. I do not know for sure, but whatever the reason, I continue to receive the same mail every month for what has now been a total of 10 years. I ask myself: How long can I keep wasting my money like this? I hope the staff at Nintendo Power realizes this (which you can beat I’ll be sending them this little editorial that will probably by followed by a typical, unsatisfactory reply) and brings back some of the fun that I remember oh-so well.