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Inside the NES Worlds of Power Series

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shamed-and-amused-at-the-same-time dept.

If you grew up in the 80s, chances were you'd at least heard of the Nintendo Entertainment System. For those of us that read Nintendo Power, ate Nintendo cereal, and (ahem) for a brief time even wore a Nintendo hat, the NES experience was fairly powerful. As such, reading about Nintendo games is a perfectly logical step. 1up has a long piece looking at the World of Power book series, a series of novelizations of some of the most popular NES titles of the day. Castlvania, Master Blaster, and Metal Gear all received the literary treatment ... with varying degrees of success. From the article: "This trend toward whitewashing death and violence also extended the books' text. In Blaster Master, all the defeated 'underboss' characters that look like mutated animals turn out to be holographic projections placed over formless blobs. In Metal Gear, Solid Snake is described as a 'walking arsenal,' yet he only uses his various weapons to shoot locks off doors. In Ninja Gaiden, Ryu's father is shown losing a duel to the death in the game's prologue, and is said to have passed away in the book's early chapters. Yet he turns up at the very end of the book, very much alive. In Infiltrator, a double agent that is ordered to be sent away to be 'voided' has his fate described as either having his memory wiped, being exiled, or getting demoted." So, how many folks (besides me) actually read these thing?

2 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. I did! by Dial-Up · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I read the Metal Gear novel when I was very young. I remember it being a very interesting book too, though that may have been because it was my first action novel. I had never even played the game, heh. The book gave hints on how to play the game after every chapter, which I thought was neat. Of course, having never played the game, I didn't know if the tips were actually useful, or just filler to try and push the game. I did eventually play the game Metal Gear with an emulator and was severely disappointed. I don't think I could make it off of the third screen.

  2. Talk about an understatement... by vistic · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If you grew up in the 80s, chances were you'd at least heard of the Nintendo Entertainment System.

    Are you kidding me? I don't think there was anyone then who had only heard of the NES. At least for people born around 1979-1981. No one had just heard of it... you had heard of it, seen the commercials, marveled at it at your friends house, begged your parents, seen the shows, talked about it at school, read comics, played with demos at the Captron World of Nintendo store in your local mall...

    The NES was everywhere. It was *THE* toy of my generation.