With Nintendo Power ending their publishing run, there are people all around the world who are heaving a nostalgic sigh as one of their long-cherished memories is finally nailed shut in the coffin of time.
My brothers and I actually used the "Family Computer" and not the American NES in the 80s. The 8-bit games were the same though the Family Computer profited from various revisions in the huge library of selections (and the smaller sized cartridges). My brother, an avid gamer, had requested for a Nintendo Power subscription from a family friend during our time in Los Angeles, who shipped the issues regularly to our address in Southeast Asia.
Suffice to say, I loved Nintendo Power not for the reviews and gaming tips but for the brilliantly rendered artwork and funny articles. As a casual gamer, I never got to play 1/10th of the games featured in the issues we had, but it was nice to flip through the magazines anyway just to see a colored Megaman or Simon Belmont drawing in the interiors (or read tips and tricks I would never use). Most of the illustrations were from Nintendo Japan and were brilliantly done. The American covers were a hit and miss, but there were pretty memorable ones including the Ninja Gaiden and Castlevania issue. Surprisingly, Nintendo Power avoided the cheap ploy of featuring sexy characters on its cover (unless you have the hots for Luigi and his mustache), unlike its contemporary comic book counterpart Wizard (which was cancelled just last year after a run that included the fall of the comic book industry in the 90s).
Death of the Printed Magazine
The end of printed magazines is a logical repercussion of the rise of ebooks, tablets, and digital media. Periodic content can never match the rapid and real-time updated content of blogs, social media, and web sites. Publications like FHM, Men's Health, and Esquire have taken steps to migrate permanently to digital media to remain current. Even their old issues will stay relevant to their testosterone-filled, macho audience. The sad reality is that unlike the aforementioned publications, Nintendo Power dealt with content that easily became obsolete and served a readership composed of players/readers from a limited time period and gaming platform.
Revisiting Back Issues
The truly nostalgic can search online for stores that carry back issues of Nintendo Power, but they can also be found in torrents (with a depressingly low number of seeders however) and devoted fan sites. You can better satisfy your nostalgia by running NES emulators than rereading back issues of the magazine, but the articles and illustrations from the publication are irreplaceable - a reminder of days long gone when innocence and bruised fingertips were mixed in an 8-bit virtual reality.
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