Man, that really blows. I was getting sad enough with EGM, GamePro and all that closing down....but now the Big N doesn't have a magazine anymore? Not only A magazine, but THE magazine?!
For anyone under the age of ~20, this probably doesn't mean much to you. For us old school geezers, it's saying farewell to an era. Nintendo Power was a friggin awesome magazine, it had so much good stuff in it. All the secrets and codes you couldn't get as the interwebs hadn't been created yet. I still remember keeping the issues close by which had the finishing moves of the Mortal Kombats on it.
My favorite memory of Nintendo Power is awesome though.
I was playing though this new N64 game called Mischief Makers, and it kicked ass. However there was a puzzle I just didn't get. Hours of trying to figure it out to no avail. So I decided, 'hey, I have a subscription to Nintendo Power, they should be able to put this in their magazine maybe?' I wrote some snail mail with terrible handwriting, and my mom shipped it off for me.
Around 1-2 weeks later I got a letter back from Nintendo, very official looking. I had that christmas-tier level of excitement as only a little kid could have. I eagerly shredded the envelope to see what they had sent back to me. Keep in mind this is probably around 1998 or so, and computers were barely just starting to get popular, and like I said no one had internet really.
Nintendo Power had sent me a 4 page step by step custom letter, with color pictures, all about how to solve the puzzle! I couldn't believe it! Did Nintendo just personally take time out of real work to construct a puzzle solution for a 12 year old kid? It makes my boner more enormous thinking that someone had customized something piece by piece so I could have something super awesome looking, and not just pkaing text on printer paper. My jaw dropped and I was soooooo excited. To this day I deeply regret not keeping that letter......and figuring out how to solve the puzzle while the mail was in transit *sadness*
Well anyway, thanks for all the memories Nintendo Power! You and your writers certainly made a mark in many kids lives', more importantly mine! I'll have a drink in your honor! Maybe a Chianti in celebration of the rich Italian heritage of Mario.
Sad day indeed. It was the Legend of Zelda for NES forest maze for me. I was maybe 6yrs old and I spent hours trying to figure out what to do. A friend brought over his Nintendo Power with the maze solved and a detachable map. Needless to say he never got his copy back. I kept that magazine until about 2002-2003 and I regret tossing it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, now I'm gonna go nastalgia in sadness :p