Reviewing Issues 1 to 30, What a Terrible Magazine.
I am only reviewing issues from 1 to 30 of Nintendo Power. Back then, I do remember them as I subscribed to the magazine every year for a few years. Then, I lost interest because the magazine was making a transition from NES to SNES. The biggest positive feature about the magazine is how colorful the artwork (at times, became too much while the actual screenshots of the games were too little) was. The worst feature of it was the paucity of information I was getting about the games that I actually played on. Let's not forget back then that NES games were too expensive to buy, even with the lowered salaries our parents actually earned. There were too many games mentioned in Nintendo Power that it was impossible for any average kid to own many of them. Needless to say, Nintendo Power became a huge shameless marketing tool to try to persuade the kid readers to succumb to their temptations and get their parents to give in to buy the games for them. Now, after 20 years, I've finally a look at the old issues and see what I currently think of them. First off, the writers did very well in explaining the basic moves for certain games. However, they didn't reveal very much about advanced moves. Sometimes, they didn't bother showing the readers other features of the game. It was just a load of irrelevant artwork. For example, in Super Mario Bros. 2, there was no illustration of using coins to pull the lever for slot machine at the end of each stage. Looking at the first issue, they did a very good job in explaining a lot of details and including a full scale of maps of each level so you can see what comes next throughout. But, why did they stop covering any more after a certain level and never look at the final two or three stages? A great example is Issue 1 where they covered Super Mario Bros. 2 from worlds 1-1 to 2-3 and just abruptly stopped thereafter. Same thing goes for Gauntlet where there were 100 rooms to explore, but only three were covered in Nintendo Power. In Issue 10 which was among the worst, there was so little information about Batman and Double Dragon 2 that the coverages became a joke. They didn't even try to explain what happens during a fight with Bosses. And there was nothing about the late stages of the games. Come on, that's all they got? Contra got absolutely weak coverage too despite its popularity. There is a lot of times that this happens, and it makes me to think that the writers actually never got that far or have not beaten these games. Moreover, the writers have exaggerated a lot about the features of the games (many of them were in fact terrible) which supports the notion that there was a clear bias involved. Looking at Nintendo advertisement where you use the Powerline to the Pros by calling them and then noticing in the table of contents where it says, "Our pros can get you out of any video jam." why establish the phone line already when it should be published in the magazine? Is that the magazine's goal to help you out on that because you paid for the subscription to it? Bah...they want to make more money off from the readers. On page 54 of Issue 1, what a weak advice about how to beat Mike Tyson. They can do better than that. Reading a lot of the advices elsewhere, Nintendo Power seems to be more interested in giving out cheat codes rather than instructing the readers in how to beat a game the pure way. Why was there information about movies, music, and celebrities who happen to play Nintendo? The magazine was supposed to be about the games of NINTENDO! What a waste of space. Then, there is a silly page of NES ACHIEVERS where players were recognized for their highest scores per game (um...Game Genie, yes? Of course, it came out in early 1990, making cheating very plausible; plus Nintendo Power never endorsed it due to supposed copyright infringement). Really, beating the game was, and still is today, always the ultimate goal, and nobody cared about points. Even a worse embarrassment was the recognition of achievements by "Power Players."  Time to get out of the house and smell the roses. What's with this Nester and the smug Howard Phillips? Get rid of them already! Why do they show crappy made up stories too? Can we stick with strategies of NES games? Every time I pick up an issue, it's always Zelda, Super Mario 2, Zelda, Metroid, Zelda, Super Mario 3, MegaMan, Super Mario 2, Super Mario 3, Zelda, Super Mario 3, etc. These games got the most coverage of any. Most unfair of them all, there was a 85 page issue (number 13) that was entirely devoted to Super Mario 3. Some of the other games received so little of coverage, and the rest had none (I was really surprised about the lack of coverage for The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants) at all. You were out of luck if you were playing any of them because you were trying to figure out how to get past a certain point. Most likely, whichever the company paid the magazine the most got the most coverage. I still can't get over the sight of the dork in white jersey titled Nintendo Power every time I see him and his goofy hair. Damn, issue 5, pg. 19. features what may be the worst accessory of all time in NES history...the Power Glove (That commercial was very convincing. By the way, what happened to the review of the Super Glove Ball game in Nintendo Power?). Let us not forget the wonderful toy called U-Force. They really made it sound so good. The shameless promotion of crappy NES accessories was embarrassing; it would have been nicer if they could have admitted the truth that these accessories were in fact unworkable. However and interestingly, both of the accessories including some others were never mentioned again in future issues (sort of got swept under the rug quietly). Elsewhere, the PowerMeter was the most biased and worthless feature of the magazine because all of the games were thought of so highly and possessed no negative marks, but we all know after getting them, we recognized how truly crappy these games were. Some of the advices the "counselors" (what a ridiculous title) gave for certain games have been questionable at best, and there are certainly far easier solutions than them. One of the "counselors" claimed to have beaten Contra with one life left by using a Power Glove (either it is true or that guy needed a life). Looking at the work done for Mission: Impossible, I am 100% certain that nobody at Nintendo Power had ever beaten the game because they did a rubbish layout of the stages without going much into details. The whole coverage was entirely devoid of any strategy. For the game, I had already written a good review of it that included way, way more helpful tips in trying to beat it than they could do in those wasted pages. Looking at the letters of Mailbox, at least half of them had kids crying and begging to become a "counselor" while majority of them was bragging about their NES achievements. Hmm...so tell me...how many hours a day did these kids waste playing NES games (believe me, they take a very, very long time to master), and how much of that should have been put into homework from school? I love the endless pumping by the writers of the magazine, making sure people were directed to buy whatever the writers were pushing such as call line, cleaning products, technical repair, strategy guides, SNES, Game Boy, etc. Gosh, that Nester character was so annoying that he needed to be entirely cut out of the magazine. The comics were so boring, and they became page wasters. In the later issues, the layout of maps had improved considerably, and that alone will make Nintendo Power worth looking at. However, it was still limited to certain games. Rarely ever the writers will choose the most challenging NES games for greater coverage probably because their "counselors" probably couldn't advance further in the levels, let alone beating them. Hence, lots of cheat codes were provided in every issue. The biggest mistake of the magazine was the combination of NES and Game Boy, and then eventually SNES, coverages into one magazine. The result? Less and less exposure, then eventually extinction, for NES games which is a shame since we all know that the NES console is arguably the greatest console ever in Video Game history. Now I think of it: that was probably the biggest reason why I stopped bothering with Nintendo Power. The simple solution? They should have had separate magazines for each console. Thus, a lot of games could have been given more exposure, say 15 to 20 NES games per issue with 5 to 10 pages per. Also, get rid of the irrelevant art work and boring details about something else that are totally unrelated with NES games. Stick with the maps, strategies, and walkthroughs. Then, the writers would have been sitting on a goldmine. They never bothered with NES games made before Nintendo Power first came out which is another shame. All in all, Nintendo Power is truly a joke of a magazine, and we've discovered how thoroughly excellent gamefaqs and youtube of the games are today.