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Thread: 13 Years of Nintendo Power Archived Online

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    Default 13 Years of Nintendo Power Archived Online

    If you’d like to catch up on some Nintendo Power nostalgia, you may want to visit a new section of the Internet Archives. Over 140 issues are now up on the website, starting with the very first magazine in 1988 up until mid-2001. You can check out the full selection here.
    Now you're playing with power.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    Now I'm bookmarking with power.

    Thanks, that IS a keeper. I at times still wish I had at least the first year or so of the things, but the weight and size they're long gone and now the pricing on some of them are just foolish. I do have a couple fun clubs though, would like more as they're not too bad if you're smart.

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    Peach (Level 3) fluid_matrix's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tanooki View Post
    Now I'm bookmarking with power.

    Thanks, that IS a keeper. I at times still wish I had at least the first year or so of the things, but the weight and size they're long gone and now the pricing on some of them are just foolish. I do have a couple fun clubs though, would like more as they're not too bad if you're smart.
    I was a subscriber for at least the first year. Not sure if I renewed after that or not. Like you, I stupidly got rid of them.

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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    I had every single issue even the bonus strategy guides they did to move into monthly all the way through when it turned to 100% complete shit under FutureOne when I cancelled it. That first issue was just entirely offensive reading all the print in it and coupled with the online presence. They had pulled staff from other system/magazines and clearly some were resentful a little to entirely, and I recall one of them admitting online to shitting on Nintendo games because he wasn't happy with being put on it. I'm not going to PAY to get insulted by some (he was on PS stuff) Sony fanboy troll. I called to cancel, they got defensive on the phone, I quoted what their employee had turded out in the magazine and online about his lack of professionalism, and they buttoned up fast, acted nice and just refunded me the entire balance. Nintendo had to be desperate or stupid to hand over the reins to such an awful company. Before Nintendo folded it they had put out around 150+ issues, and I think you can figure how much weight was behind that many 100-120~ page magazines with the occasional one being fatter than that in pages or tossed in comics/catalogs. The whole mess filled the inside of a bedroom closet floor in magazine holders.

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    Nice. There used to be another site where you could download NP issues, among other magazines, but I think it ran into legal issues and went poof. I hope Nintendo doesn't hassle this archive and lets them stick around, but it probably helps now that NP is long dead.

    I own from Issue 9 (though I'm missing the SMB3 guide) to Issue 131. My personal subscription started with Issue 78 (actually I think it started a couple issues later, but back then I paid Nintendo full newsstand price to order a couple back issues), so I read everything cover to cover from there till Issue 130, I think. By then I was getting so fed up with the downgrade in quality of the magazine that I let my subscription run out and didn't bother reading the last one I received. In retrospect, it was kind of douchey of me, considering they had just printed my art in Issue 129, haha (which you can't really see in the scan because it didn't pick up the faint background art). In the mid 00s, I bought a huge box of older NPs, so that's why I now have issues before 78. Out of those, I've read cover to cover 9 through 55. Slowly working my way to catching up to where my subscription began, but I only read a few issues a year, if that, as the box is in storage at my mom's house on the other side of the country. I'm not even going to begin to entertain the idea of transporting all those issues as my collection is probably around 75 pounds (based on the fact that I know the original box I bought off of eBay was 55 pounds and thankfully only cost me about 10 bucks to ship because it was coming from only a few towns over).

    I'd love to fill in those early gaps someday, but I imagine those early issues are pricey now. I also now kind of regret not letting my subscription run longer. As sub-par as the issues were getting, I still would at least like to finish the N64 run. It'd be cool to see what the early coverage of the GameCube and GBA was like. Of course, I could just use this archive now, haha, but I like these kinds of archives more for seeing what each issue covers. When it comes to actually reading the mags, I prefer to do so with the real deal.

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    Cherry (Level 1) leatherrebel5150's Avatar
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    I have the first hundred and fifty issues. I think #150 has luigis mansion on the cover and was the last issue to feature anything N64. Im not a fan of gamecube or anything after so thats where i stopped. In total i believe there are 250 issues i would like to get the last one some day

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    The last issue is pretty nice. I didn't mention that before, but I did make it a point to pick that one up, even though I have none of the others from the Future Publishing run. It's a little chintzy compared to the hefty issues of the past, but it's got some nice fan service for longtime NP fans. My favorite part is the Nester comic revival, which makes me a little misty-eyed. It's kind of impressive that I liked it at all considering the Nester comics stunk after they first switched to a new artist and only got progressively worse, and the other revivals were pretty meh. But yeah, that final Nester comic was the perfect sendoff.

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    I had that last issue too, never had the heart to open it given how Future One ruined the thing, but I liked the cover picture. I think I still have it around here somewhere.

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    I was a subscriber from the Fun Club News days and then had my one year with Nintendo Power. My magazines had a watery demise a couple decades ago (poor storage on my part-didn't realize my shed had a leak) so I had rebuilt my collection over the years. I also got the Legend of Zelda guide as well, just likevI did as a teen.

    I too picked up the last issue of NP. It was bittersweet. I did and currently subscribe to Nintendo Force but it's sadly not the same.

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    I have the issues from vol. 1 (1988) to 2009, all minty mint and unread because I had always at least two subscriptions. (reason: with every renewal you got a $12 guide for free. and the yearly mag cost anyway only $15)

    NP was great. It wasn't the best videogame journalism and it wasn't a mere advertisement mag as many believe, it was great because every mag contained guides for various games. That made it the best mag around for hints and tips at a time with no internet and youtube.

    Nintendo saw the need of gamers for strategic help with games from the beginning, and with the Fun Club News and later with NP they created at the same time what we call today a 'community,' and both goals were achieved and contributed to Nintendo's success. NP was good marketing and a good service for gamers.

    Coincidence: Just yesterday I pulled out the very well stacked first 35 issues of NP from the attic. (no space in the gameroom anymore for all the Gamepro's and EGM's to NP) It is great to read a mag from a time which wasn't more innocent when it comes to the game-business but appeared to be more innocent and certainly didn't suffer from very high expectations, sarcasm and quibbling of the gamers. The late 80's and 90's were still more about the playful bonkersness of games, something I miss a lot nowadays in the era of triple A titles, high production costs and movie-like experiences.

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    These were all scanned by Retromags, and most of them have been online for years. They sent them to Archive.org for hosting, which is a nice place to make them easily accessible.
    <Evan_G> i keep my games in an inaccessable crate where i can't play them

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    The 36 page Dragon Warrior guide is missing from the Tetris issue

    I remember the original, hand-drawn artwork for all the items you could obtain in the game. Wish I'd kept that issue, er, all of them..

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    Well, that's that. And AM2R, too.

    http://www.polygon.com/2016/8/8/1240...online-archive
    Last edited by Eternal Champion; 08-08-2016 at 10:31 PM.

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    Somebody needs to package this into a nice little torrent so it can live on forever.

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    *sighs* I can understand why the Metroid 2 remake got the cease & desist, but the Nintendo Power archive was completely unaltered from how Nintendo created the issues, it didn't contain the more recent issues (it was only, what, up to the early 00s?), nobody was profiting off of them to the best of my knowledge, and let's be real, Nintendo isn't going to do jack with the issues, short of maybe showing the covers somewhere.

    Does anybody know of a site that at least documents the contents of each issue, even if they don't offer scans? It's nice to easily look up what games are covered in each.

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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    Seems legally I get it, but they appear to clearly want to alienate their older fan base who grew up and appreciated both their classic games and the magazines. There really was no good reason other than just being prickly with the DMCA attack on the magazine, the game I get a bit because they still half ass something out with Samus still, but the magazines that was sheer senseless spite.

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    The only thing I see them doing with them is the comics.
    The Zelda comics have been reprinted, and I hear the Mario comics have been announced for a new reprint (the old one was at like $100 when I checked!).
    I'd imagine StarFox (from the 1993 issues) and Metroid (from 1994) could follow as well.

    I know Nester was popular, but those were 1-2 pages per issue, right? Don't know if that's enough to fill a book.

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    Oh right, I forgot about the comic reprints, that's a good point. But I would imagine that'd be Viz Media's bone to pick more than Nintendo's. I wonder if it could fly if they just left out those issues, or the scans of those particular pages.

    I doubt they'll bother with the Star Fox and Super Metroid comics. Though still by Japanese artists, the style of them was very Western-inspired, as opposed to the traditional manga look of the Zelda: ALttP series and Super Mario Adventures, so it's not really Viz's shtick, and those later two aren't nearly as fondly remembered either. Nester is even less likely since barely any modern gamers are familiar with the character, and it's only really the Howard & Nester comics that are well-loved. I can only imagine what kind of legal mess it'd be since those ones have Howard Phillips's likeness. After Phillips left the magazine and it switched to "Nester's Adventures", practically everyone hated the comic and it died a slow and painful death.

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    Kirby (Level 13) Tanooki's Avatar
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    I'd like to see the Starfox one redone and Super Metroid but I could have sworn they weren't totally complete but more like lead in stuff to the games so that may not work. The Mario stuff though I think was part of the Valiant comic line, that I have more or less in that hardback Best of Nintendo Comics Series Super Mario Bros (also to that red book is a blue one which has Cap'n N, Gameboy, Metroid, Punchout and more and I have that too.) I've kept my Zelda one since it was sold over 20 years ago and it's still in pretty good shape too.

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    Checked it out. Pretty cool. Thanks for the link.

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