It is funny how I can still remember
walking through the mall with my dad and hearing him talk
about a magazine dedicated fully to Nintendo. I was both confused
that I had never heard of this before, and also very intrigued.
A week later, my dad signed me on for a one-year subscription.
My first issue, which I still have
horded away, came with a little membership card (that I unfortunately
misplaced). It was Volume 21, dated February 1991, that featured
Star Tropics on the cover. I remember reading the entire issue
at least fifteen times completely. Whether it was on my school
bus (I can't remember if I was in first or second grade at
the time) or on my parents bed next to where my NES had been
hooked up to an old switch box TV. I thought NP was one of
the greatest things I had ever had the pleasure reading at
that time. And as it grew with more issues, so had I with
more years.
Last week I received the most recent
issue in the mail from my same renewed subscription address,
volume 147 (that's 126 issues since my first experience).
And honestly, I cannot tell a lie -- my reading time clocked
in at about ten minutes. Afterwards the sleek, new issue was
stuffed in a pile with my other game magazines never to be
seen or flipped through again. This feeling that I now have
cannot even come to grips within an inch of my past enjoyable
hours of the same magazine company.
This didn't come as a surprise to me.
Actually, it has been happening to me for quite some time
lately. I think this newly adapted "flip-throw-repeat"
ritual began sometime around the early 100 issues. One day,
I stepped outside to get the mail and felt a familiar thick
and slick touch that I had come to know as another Nintendo
Power. I remember opening it and seeing something I had never
expected. A moment that put life into a new, different perspective
- or, at the very least, sealed the truth of my recent denial.
What I am referring to is an advertisement-filled
magazine; the first of NP. After paging through the ads, which
were a 1-to-3 ratio, I was utterly shocked. Naturally, the
sly Nintendo put a little message explaining that adverts
were added to inform readers of new games and that none of
the content would be adjusted. I thought to myself, what a
bunch a bull those words really were and how Nintendo changed
so much since the first airplane ride visit outside of Japan.
I was pretty depressed, to say the
least, while paging through and reminiscing the issues of
the past that had dealt with a major portion of my childhood.
You may think I am being too rash with this statement, but,
after putting down my once-opened magazine, I realized that
nothing in this country was sacred anymore. (I don't dare
to say in this world. Not just yet, at least. I still have
room for more jadedness.)
Could it have been that I was blinded
by the awesome, bright rays of Nintendo's dominant bliss at
such an early age that they managed to somehow create a greater
influence on me, and many other gamers worldwide, that is
now dimming? Whatever the reason was, I did not take this
change so lightly. I guess I should have anticipated this
kind of action was, indeed, on the way, seeing that they took
out many of the things that had made NP such a joy to read.
Going back into time, as the months
of my subscription went by, so did the numerous sections;
the comics (Howard & NESter, Legend of Zelda, Star Fox,
Super Mario Adventures), the dorky power counselors, and drastically
less strategic printed tips and walkthroughs. Impressive drawings,
sketches, and (even) modelized video game pictures were turned
into cold, computer-generated images. The saddest, however,
was the colored pages' renown personality slowly being sucked
away by newer, more-current, unemotional, robot writers and
editors.
While reading the responses of the
only opinionated section of the new magazine, mail
bag, it was as if I was holding out one hand to catch an automatic
response print-out from some computer programmed to deal with
such questions.
After making these complaints, why
do I still hold a subscription? That is a good question.
There is something inside of me hoping for the past to grace
the future. I do not know for sure, but whatever the reason,
I continue to receive the same mail every month for what has
now been a total of 10 years. I ask myself: How long can I
keep wasting my money like this? I hope the staff at Nintendo
Power realizes this (which you can beat I'll be sending them
this little editorial that will probably by followed by a
typical, unsatisfactory reply) and brings back some of the
fun that I remember oh-so well.
