RePete: Nintendo Power

I miss the era of video game magazines. I used to buy so many different ones over the course of the 1990s, from Electronic Gaming Monthly and Video Games & Computer Entertainment to GamePro and GameFan. I probably could have saved money by subscribing to a magazine or two, but buying them from bookstores (like WaldenBooks and Barnes & Noble) was part of my fun monthly routine. Unfortunately, as life got hectic and I was moving from place to place a lot during the late 1990s through the 2000s, a lot of those magazines I had got lost or had to be left behind.

Nintendo Power is a magazine that I did not buy many issues of. I wasn’t really platform-focused until demo discs came with the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine in 1997, so I thought the usual magazines I bought gave me enough to work with. By then, I had shifted into a primarily PlayStation mode, too– so focused coverage of the Nintendo 64 wasn’t something I was really searching for.

Starting in 2012, though, when I started actively collecting video games, finding issues of Nintendo Power at video game stores often led to purchases. At the time, as I was collecting for NES and SNES, I bought any issue I could find from the 1990s. I realized, as I was leafing through the issues, what I was missing at the time. The pull-out posters. The Super Power Club trading cards. The comics. The sales lists. Most issues were packed with things to read, along with a tangible goodie or two. Some early issues even had World of Nintendo circulars or Game Pak Collections.

Since 2012, my library of Nintendo Power issues has climbed to more than 100. Later-period issues from the Wii and DS/3DS eras were cheaper finds. Earlier issues, especially from the NES era have been pricier and less common. A recent trip to Legends: Video Games, Movies & More helped me add to those NES-era issues from 1988-1990.

These magazines, like the others in my library, are windows to the past. The clothing styles, the writing of the time period, the quality of the screenshots, the hand-drawn maps… it’s all so comfortingly familiar, and yet new for someone like me that did not originally own and read these magazines during their respective publishing times. It also makes me feel younger, which I appreciate as I careen through advancing age. I know I would have loved these 35 years ago, as I love them now.

While it’s possible to look at these magazines digitally, and thus save room, there’s also something to be said for the tangible feeling I get when holding them, leafing through the pages, and noting certain markings that the original owner(s) of the issue may have made. I can have an issue with a map open while I’m playing a game and refer to it, instead of the small screen on my phone. I can bookmark codes. I can consult strategies. I can do all of these things without an internet connection or a machine.

Perhaps, if I decide to start building an SNES library, I’ll feel motivated to keep building out this collection of Nintendo Power issues, filling in holes during the mid 1990s. But… that’s a decision for another time.