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Nintendo Power To Shut Down
stillnotelf writes "Ars Technica is reporting that the official Nintendo magazine, Nintendo Power, is shutting down after 24 years. The gaming magazine has been run by independent publisher Future US since 2007, but Ars Technica's source and deleted Twitter posts say that Nintendo is uninterested in continuing the paper magazine in today's digital age, and also unwilling to convert it into a primarily digital experience. There's been no official confirmation of the cancellation or word of how many issues remain of this bit of childhood nostalgia for so many gamers."
Now where will I get my biased game reviews from?
All other sources refuse to cover how renting games is "grey market" and wrong.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
This package has been superceded by the package nintendochannel, proceed with install? [Y/n]
Here's a cookie... *psst* it's MAGIC
but white power is still going strong!
if only i could get back that first copy of nintendo power i had back in 1988. its worth so much now on ebay. very nostalgic. would love to have it back, but i can't afford to spend 80+ dollars on a magazine.
....as Nintendo Underpowered?
Fanboi mod me funny. The gamecube was the last "powerful" nintendo.
Yes, if that family member was clearly a corporate shill.
I miss Uncle Unilever.
Got it when I was in 3rd grade. Had a subscription for years afterward. That was a great time to be a kid and be fortunate enough to have access to high-tech gadgets like the NES/Super NES.
I am surprised to find out that this is not due to it be the front of some sort of energy company that gets energy from baby seal pelts.
Steve Wozniak was denied a Game Boy Tetris high-score listing in Nintendo Power, so he resubmitted his score with his name spelled backwards (Evets Kainzow), and they printed it! Classic moment in crossover Apple/Nintendo geekery... They later gave in and published his photo and a paragraph about his Tetris obsession.
For those who remember Nintendo Power and are feeling nostalgic, there's a good cover gallery with a smattering of selected inside pages (sadly, Woz's high score in issue 24 doesn't seem to be among the scans).
Venetian Snares - Pwntendo
All I can say
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Nintendo Power has been "just another gaming mag" for too long now. I'm not sure if the shark-jumping point was when publishing shifted away from Nintendo, or when they started publishing advertising, but the copies I've picked up and thumbed through didn't feel like the magazine of yore.
Personally, I'm still more depressed by Nintendo no longer publishing official game guides (I believe the last was for Super Paper Mario) than this news.
If only for nostalgic reasons. I used to read Nintendo Power in the 80s and early 90s. My friend had and probably still has a huge stack of them from that time period. I felt similarly sad when GamePro suffered the same fate. I used to read those all the time back in the 90s.
It's kind of like hearing that a relative or old friend you haven't seen in years died.
As a kid I had a subscription to Ninteno Power from like 1990 until 1998. Sad to see it go but I honestly hadn't looked at an issue since then. The internet (and me not being a kid, as it was clearly marketed at the 10-16 year old demographic) made it totally irrelevant. I'm honestly surprised it managed to stick around this long.
I remember the promotional material they did for the original Final Fantasy. It seemed like that went on forever, but i was a kid so it was probably only one or two issues right before the game came out. Then the next three issues after it came out they did trivia contests. I entered all three, and got second place in one of them!
I won... a neon pink fanny pack. I believe it came stuffed with a t-shirt and some chocolate coins. The t-shirt was kind of crappy, and the coins were quickly consumed. And the neon pink fanny pack was... neon pink and a fanny pack. So kind of the worst prize ever, but i remember the shit out of having actually won something!
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
My old boyfriend Subway.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Nintendo Power is one of the few magazines that could have thrived in a digital format, due mainly to their enthusiastic fanbase. I think quite a number of people would have subscribed to a digital version of Nintendo Power that had exclusive sneakpeak videos, developer interviews, NES game emulations, et al. I think it shows that Nintendo still doesn't 'get' how the internet can benefit them.
I haven't read Nintendo Power since I had a NES back in the '80s, but I have fond memories of it. It was a classy mag with good features; at least the kid version of me thought so. Good quality paper stock, nice art direction. I remember the multi-page dungeon maps of Legend of Zelda. I remember the Legend of Zelda 2 preview and thinking it looked like the best game ever, and then I got the game and it totally was. Metal Gear, Ninja Gaiden. I remember looking at those previews and wondering how a videogame could look so cool. Heady times for videogamers. Constant innovation (well, at least from the top studios) because the industry was still so young.
Corporations are people too, you insensitive clod.
I own every single issue of Nintendo Power ever printed, even all the Nintendo Fun Club newsletters. Sad, I know, but I felt that I should continue my subscription as it was one of my favorite magazines when I was a kid. I remember getting Metal Gear strategies from there, and actually getting in the magazine for maxing out the score on Xenophobe (had to send a Polaroid pic, which was my only camera, but it had to show your TV and Nintendo. Not an easy shot.). I guess I'll eBay them all when they finally nail it to the cross, just like I did my EGM2 collection. It's decent that something like this is revealed, unlike EGM, who just ended production and unceremoniously replaced my subscription with a sub to Maxim. Not that I minded, but it'd have been nice to have a choice. Anyhow, these things happen, its the digital age now, and kids don't hang on every word from a video game magazine nowadays. Hell, those were the ONLY places that you could get video games tips / strategies / cheats back in the day. Now, we have the internet. As biased as it was, I gotta say: Fly high, Nintendo Power!
I too had the very first issue; the one with Super Mario Bros 2 on the front cover. However, I have to admit that I dropped my subscription a few years later, and afterwards only re-subscribed because each time my subscription was about to run out they offered free Player's Guides worth the same (if not greater) cost as the annual subscription. Not only was this in an age before GameFAQs, the art was pretty and wasn't going to be found anywhere else.
Sure Nintendo Power was very biased, but you have to admit that they really knew how to make every game, even the crappy ones, sound like a lot of fun. With the maps, walkthroughs, and extensive coverage of the games they reviewed, they really knew how to hype up pretty much anything. Being from an era when video games weren't as popular and gamers were not nearly as connected, they pulled off things that can't be pulled off anymore.
They fell out of relevance fast once arcades and other companies started to give Nintendo consoles some decent competition, and I never would have guessed that they would have outlasted EGM-- or even survived this long after the internet started running circles around gaming magazines. But when they first began they were all young gamers had, and that will earn them a special place with many.
My other two posts are one of the 37 current comments on this thread. Thought everyone loved original Nintendo / SNES? Just for cozy feelings, at least!
Why close it if it makes money?
Move it to a quarterly magazine, hell even only twice a year if you really wanted.
But close it permanently? Sounds retarded.
Not everyone has internet and it is better to have an official magazine than it is to allow 3rd parties to have it all.
No, nobody is going to pay you a premium that you want, Nintendo, to release that oh-so-juicy news. Certainly not the price you are hoping.
Of course, THEY DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO DIGITAL.
What is wrong with them? Really? Why are Nintendo so broken right now?
Wii U seems to be the only thing anyone even remotely gives a damn about. Not even 3DS since everyone only bought it when the price was slashed. (which Sony badly needs to do! Those PS Vita ain't gonna move themselves you know!)
And if it ends up the awful mess Wii was, I think they will lose considerably more fans than they did with Wii.
RIP old Nintendo - The Nintendo that actually gave a damn.
Now who is left?
that people still want to pay for what is basically advertising. Sure, I used to buy the Official magazines back in 'nam, but then I turned 14 and realised that being "Official" meant following specific lines. Couple of years later I realised it was all of games journalism that was like that
How much "news" about Mario and Zelda do you really need from a magazine? I don't think there was one issue printed that didn't have Mario or Link in it. I mean my nephew showed me an issue I thought it was one of my old copies, but it was brand new issue and showed another history of Super Mario Bros which they usually print about 2 or 3 times a year. I think the only other magazines that are entirely self promoting are Martha Stewart Living and Oprah.
They are probably shutting it down due to the fact the core demographic of people still playing Nintendo can barely read or have enough allowance to afford a magazine in any format, or maybe there just isn't anything more you can say that you haven't said a thousand times already about Mario. It must be hard to write for a magazine when the content is so limited and vapid.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
The fact that the early years the spine on the books, when on a bookshelf in jan-dec order would make a neat picture
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I had this Nintendo since I was 12 yrs. I thought for a long period of time they are working with it. Got the reason why it has been more fun and not fun at all. -- poptropica | funbrain
Other than the occasional maps, Nintendo Power was shit.
I got a couple free issues and every review was basically, "This is the greatest game ever". Didn't bother subscribing after that.
The article said Nintendo Power has over 400,000 print subscribers. How could they not make a go of this? What did they need from Nintendo, anyway, other than early access to games to review them? I get Nintendo Power currently since I can let me kids read it and not have to explain, again, why they can't play M rated games.
I suspect the threat of shutdown is part of a ploy by the publisher to get something from Nintendo (which was hinted at in the article). If the shutdown actually happens, then the publisher is stupid to throw away several million dollars/year in subscriptions.
There used to be a 2-page spread near the end of many of the Nintendo Powers I had that showed a picture of a gamer dream room with black and white tiled floor, an industrial shelf stocked with games and toys (joystick, power gloves, etc), and a huge fanboy blown away in amazement staring into the screen, in a dimlit room. This was a promotion for the sweepstakes they were running for a chance to win game hardware and prices. I remember how cool that room was and how I always wanted one for myself (I had to argue with my parents just to get a tv into my bedroom by the time I was starting high school).
Anyways, my man-cave now is so much cooler now (I've got a dual monitor setup and a crazy fast computer!) and with all the gadgets that we have now, you can't help but realize NP, as we knew it, was a cultural relic fit for another time. Great times as a kid, we feel sad because this reminds us of then, but we and the kids today have it so much better today, it's time to move on.
Wow, sad to hear this, I have very good memories of begging, borrowing and buying Nintendo Power. As an online marketing professional it's irritating to hear that they're not going to switch to a digital version or a 'nintendo power blogger network', the brand has a huge following and could easily be revitalized in a new medium. It's probably a management fuck up, it usually is.
I actually didn't even realize the magazine subscription still existed (I stopped caring about it long ago). Anyway, as my title states, I am not surprised by this. With the widespread wealth of information the Internet provides, having a magazine to advertise upcoming games is just redundant. All the latest information can be posted and archived online anyway where is it accessible without any special subscription. Same goes with game hints and tips.
Back in the late 80's and early 90's, this was an awesome magazine to have when Internet access was not so widely available like it is today. Otherwise you and friends were left to your own devices to figure out secrets and getting a new game was a leap of faith so to speak unless you could read up on it first. On the other hand, since when would Nintendo Power say "don't buy this game, it sucks" so yes, biased indeed.
On a side note, I wonder how long before auctions start popping up which include a literally "complete" collection of Nintendo power from the first issue to the last.
...because there were so many great games to focus on editorially. Despite the expected cat-calling above, during that period NP staff worked hard to keep the integrity stellar even as forces were increasing pressue to put business interests over those of gamers. I have lots of great memories from that time period...