Farewell, Nintendo Power..

[SandEagle]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/21/farewell-nintendo-power

publication for it will be coming to an end. in the 80s, this and EGM were my favorite video game magazines. i still have the premier edition in mint condition with map intact. hopefully i can get $1,000,000 for it some day

some of NP's best covers:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/21/nintendo-powers-best-covers

to me, Castlevania II and Zelda II and Ninja Gaiden covers were the best. sigh.... nostalgia..

 

[fustercluck]

So sad

They were the coolest Magazine ever, and during the best years of gaming. Still great to read old issues. They did a tremendous job.

 

[exdeath]

What ever will I do with all the "I became Bowser's worst nightmare" subscription cards in all my complete boxed SNES games now?

 

[Pr0d1gy]

So sad. I loved this mag when I was a kid in the 80's.

 

[BD2003]

I still have the free dragon warrior.

 

[PowerYoga]

I loved reading this thing in the libraries. I'd check out every single issue and read through all the great games on NES and SNES that I wanted to, but couldn't play.

You will be missed, Nintendo Power.

 

[darkewaffle]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/final-nintendo-power-cover-brings-the-magazine-full-circle/

I love what they did with the cover. I forget if I kept all my old Nintendo Power mags or not, I think I might have some of them in a box somewhere downstairs. I hope so. It and EGM were such a big deal to me lol, they and the games they introduced me to really changed my life as they cultivated my interests as an isolated kid.

 

[Jadow]

when I was a kid I loved long screenshot maps of Zelda 2 dungeons they had!

Wish I still had those old issues

 

[sao123]

I will miss the full edition strategy game guides.
Like this original one i still have somewhere.

 

[purbeast0]

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/11/final-nintendo-power-cover-brings-the-magazine-full-circle/

I love what they did with the cover. I forget if I kept all my old Nintendo Power mags or not, I think I might have some of them in a box somewhere downstairs. I hope so. It and EGM were such a big deal to me lol, they and the games they introduced me to really changed my life as they cultivated my interests as an isolated kid.

hah man that cover is awesome for the final issue.

 

[darkewaffle]

I will miss the full edition strategy game guides.
Like this original one i still have somewhere.

Probably my favorite one ever, still have a copy tucked away somewhere.

 

[SandEagle]

when I was a kid I loved long screenshot maps of Zelda 2 dungeons they had!

Wish I still had those old issues

yep, that issue was my favorite. was a huge fan of zelda 2. i have that issue here somewhere. brings back a ton of memories.

 

[Aikouka]

I kind of want to buy an old issue 1, get the last issue and frame them. It's a bit geeky, but I used to read the heck out of Nintendo Power during the NES, SNES and N64 days.

 

[JujuFish]

yep, that issue was my favorite. was a huge fan of zelda 2. i have that issue here somewhere. brings back a ton of memories.

Zelda 2 is easily the worst of all the non-CD-i Zelda games.

 

[Wyndru]

Sad to see it go, I still have my issues of Nintendo fun club news (before they changed the name), as well as the first 2 years of np.

 

[Oyeve]

Zelda 2 is easily the worst of all the non-CD-i Zelda games.

Agree a billion percent!

 

[SandEagle]

Agree a billion percent!

never understood the hate for zelda 2. did you play it all the way through? its easily one of my favorite zelda games, then and now. sure it was a dramatic change from 1, but at the time of release it was still groundbreaking.

 

[Oyeve]

never understood the hate for zelda 2. did you play it all the way through? its easily one of my favorite zelda games, then and now. sure it was a dramatic change from 1, but at the time of release it was still groundbreaking.

Of course I played it. Hell, I was 22 when it came out and it was horrid. I only finished it because it cost so much money!

 

[Pr0d1gy]

Of course I played it. Hell, I was 22 when it came out and it was horrid. I only finished it because it cost so much money!

Yeah a lot of people feel that way about Zelda 2 as evidenced by it being the only one released with that type of gameplay. heh


I actually really enjoyed it, too, Sand.

 

[exdeath]

Really? I lusted after that game and saved every penny for it. I'd look at it in the store every time and had this article in a magazine about it memorized before I finally bought it.

Games like that new in the store... Sigh I long for those days when video game sections in a generic retailer were bigger than a typical dedicated Gamestop today. You could walk into a Toys R Us 3 years after a consoles release and they had every game up to that point stocked. On the other side a complete isle from front to back of 2600 games at the same time you could pick up a NES, Genesis, and Turbo Grafx 16 in the same store. I want to say the shelves were stacked to the ceiling but when you are 10 yrs old everything seems bigger.

Now days each system gets one shelf and has to compete with Call of Duty and Madden for half of it.

 

[American Gunner]

Really? I lusted after that game and saved every penny for it. I'd look at it in the store every time and had this article in a magazine about it memorized before I finally bought it.

Games like that new in the store... Sigh I long for those days when video game sections in a generic retailer were bigger than a typical dedicated Gamestop today. You could walk into a Toys R Us 3 years after a consoles release and they had every game up to that point stocked. On the other side a complete isle from front to back of 2600 games at the same time you could pick up a NES, Genesis, and Turbo Grafx 16 in the same store. I want to say the shelves were stacked to the ceiling but when you are 10 yrs old everything seems bigger.

Now days each system gets one shelf and has to compete with Call of Duty and Madden for half of it.

You're so right. I went to my local Walmart and all they had is Madden and CoD. Oh wait, no they didn't. Each of those games had one row and the case was filled with a bunch of other games. I guess I can see things realistically.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Really? I lusted after that game and saved every penny for it. I'd look at it in the store every time and had this article in a magazine about it memorized before I finally bought it.

Games like that new in the store... Sigh I long for those days when video game sections in a generic retailer were bigger than a typical dedicated Gamestop today. You could walk into a Toys R Us 3 years after a consoles release and they had every game up to that point stocked. On the other side a complete isle from front to back of 2600 games at the same time you could pick up a NES, Genesis, and Turbo Grafx 16 in the same store. I want to say the shelves were stacked to the ceiling but when you are 10 yrs old everything seems bigger.

Now days each system gets one shelf and has to compete with Call of Duty and Madden for half of it.

Plus the stores never got much in the way of advertising dollars from publishers. So there wasn't a big poster staring you down about some game you never heard of and won't play simply because vivendi decided to pay for the space.

The demo units also had actual games in it. None of this 2 games to try that both suck and about 10 videos you've seen a hundred times already. Or even worse, the WiiU displays at the store don't even have anything to play. Just screenshots of a couple titles and a couple videos. Literally you play nothing. Some of the demos they put in the interactive displays are ridiculous too. They have you play the worst level of a game and you only get 5 min before it resets or some nonsense.

You're so right. I went to my local Walmart and all they had is Madden and CoD. Oh wait, no they didn't. Each of those games had one row and the case was filled with a bunch of other games. I guess I can see things realistically.

You missed the point. those games get a whole row, meanwhile every other game is squeezed in and is more or less an "also ran" to the space provided.

Go to gamestop and tell me why there needs to be a whole section (literally 4 foot section) filled with empty cases of CoD? As if people don't know about the game yet. It's ridiculous.

 

[American Gunner]

Because it's the highest selling game, so Gamestop puts it out there. It's just funny that exdeath can't go more than three posts without hating on those two franchises for being mainstream, yet he is all over Final Fantasies nuts. Like final fantasy didn't become mainstream or something.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Because it's the highest selling game, so Gamestop puts it out there. It's just funny that exdeath can't go more than three posts without hating on those two franchises for being mainstream, yet he is all over Final Fantasies nuts. Like final fantasy didn't become mainstream or something.

Actually that's not why. You're flat out wrong. They don't put them there because they are the top selling. Madden is barely holding on these days. It barely even cracked 4 million in sales in North America across all platforms. So it's not sales.

It's money. That's it. I used to be a manager at Gamestop and I was told by a non gamer who happen to be an area or district manager what to put above the register and what to fill X space with. Even when we would collectively go as managers and put our best effort forward to explain what our customers are buying and what games are excellent titles, trying to get a little bit of leeway to do our store a little differently based on our clientele. It was because some company paid some cash to get their game up there. Not because the game is any good, not because of sales, and not because that's what your store's demographic is interested in.

When I was there, my store had a lot of Fighting Game and RPG fans(we sold out of Soul Calibur 2 on every platform on the first day and had over 300 reserves on the Gamecube alone). We got standees for Final Fantasy and Suikoden. We got posters for the new King of Fighters or Street Fighter title. We never got to put them up because they were pushing such classics as "The Incredible Hulk" and "The Matrix" /sarcasm

I guess you could say that today it's more about money than the quality a good bit of the time. It's less about the games and more about "how many DLC packs will it have in the first year" or "how many people will be playing online and buying junk food for double XP". Back when the 8bit/16bit era was in full swing gaming was more niche and not so mainstream. Not as much money, many great publishers back then blew up and got greedy or swallowed by others.

More about selling your brand than selling a great title.

 

[American Gunner]

I am pretty sure that that area manager was told by corporate offices what to put where. The same corporate offices that see sales numbers and know which games are selling more than the other games. Of course it's all about money for gamestop, which is why they put the big games out there.