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Nintendo Power – Now You’re Playing With Power!

January 20, 2007 | 1 Minute Read

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I saw this offer on Slickdeals for a 12-month subscription to Nintendo Power for like, $5. It got me to thinking about how cool Nintendo Power used to be. That’s right, used to be…

I remember getting a subscription to Nintendo Power when they had an awesome promotion where you got Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest in Japan) with a year’s subscription. That’s right, you got a video game for subscribing to Nintendo Power! The deal was too sweet to pass up, so I finally convinced my mom to get me the magazine. I ended up getting addicted to RPGs because of Dragon Warrior, too.

I pretty much learned how to read on Nintendo Power. It was so awesome. Nintendo Power would usually have entire maps of games laid out on two pages. I’d sit there and plan out how the game would actually play, even though I never ended up playing the actual games.

I also recall there being some pretty cool comic strips like the Metroid one and Zelda one. There was also a comic about the origins of Wario, which was really weird in retrospect.

I remember always trying to win prizes in the survey contests in each issue. They would be ridiculous prizes, like “win every single SNES game ever!” Too bad I never won…

I guess my love affair with Nintendo Power ended with the whole Playstation generation thing. Like the Playstation got FFVII, and the Nintendo 64 graphics were horrible. I didn’t even get a Nintendo 64 (though my cousin did, and we had a blast with Goldeneye). Plus I realized that Nintendo Power was probably the most biased publication ever. I don’t think I ever saw a score below 7.0. And there were definitely Nintendo games that were seriously bad.

I did end up getting a Gamecube, and I really want to get a Wii. Maybe it’s time I resubscribed to Nintendo Power… Then again, do I really want to pay $5 for a subscription to Nintendo ads?