Nintendo_Powerless- np-1 - First Issue Spectacular Extravaganza!!

author:Justin "RFS" Bardin

 

         Nintendo Power. Back when this magazine came out the Nintendo NES system was having its way with all other competitors. Nolan Bushnell was rolling around in money from the Atari 2600 (I'm lying, he wasn't in charge by then) until Nintendo showed up and started the perpetual motion machine known as "Japan is here to entertain mindless Americans." Getting back to the original point of Nintendo Power, it's a magazine that began in 1988 (Year of the Dragon, and Year of the RFS) to inform players what to buy... and also maybe to help them get through those im-fucking-possible levels in Super Mario Bros 2. I've enjoyed my subscription to Nintendo Power, actually that ended a long time ago what I meant to say was I enjoy my collection of issues 1 through however many I have. I'd estimate up to the 200 mark.

         So what is this dubiously named "Nintendo Powerless" column about? You know me; I like to take the wind out of peoples' sails, especially those in the video game industry. I don't mean to attack Nintendo per say, just the crazy shit inside these magazines. Each of them is like a miniature time capsule to remind us how terribly goofy people looked in the 80's and 90's and how far technology has come. By technology I don't mean NES to Wii, I mean screenshot technology - these old issues look like people were taking pictures of their television with Polaroid cameras or something. Wow.



         And this is it, Issue #1 in all its glory; some kind of glory, huh? Tell me, honestly, is this not the worst fucking cover you have ever seen? I don't even know where to begin with this cover; it is all kinds of wrong. Let's begin with Mario. Where's his hat from? I always assumed his hat was red with a white circle and his clothes were different looking. Take a look at his face too, that is a rape face if I ever saw one; he looks way too happy to be clutching that croissant that he ripped up from the ground (it doesn't look like a carrot at all shut up smart ass). That's also certainly not Bowser behind him either, unless Bowser somehow turned into a frog with a nasty case of Nickelodeon-ism. It took me long enough, but then I realized this entire cover is ass-backwards because it's Super Mario Bros 2, the game in the series that isn't even really a Super Mario game, it was a rehashed version of some piece of crap game that Shigeru Miyamoto tossed our way because he deemed the "real" sequel was too hard. Thanks a lot bro, we really appreciate throwing fucking vegetables around and collecting cherries instead of, you know, picking up coins and jumping on Goombas. Even as a kid I felt cheated when I played this game because it was, at the time, the biggest letdown of my life (the biggest letdown thus far in my life has been the cancellation Space Ghost: Coast to Coast).



         Originally I wanted to include this scan only to point out the premiere issue that they are all fawning over because the cover looks a bit... off. I realize that the people somehow having a real copy of this issue being in the picture when this issue came out would somehow break the space/time continuum so naturally they drew the design with some dollar store markers and that's that, they probably aren't even looking at anything. However, then I realized that the guy on the right has "JIM" embroidered on his shirt, and the guy on the phone that isn't even plugged in is just named "C" (the girl in the box to the left is his imaginary girlfriend). The girl is so fucking stoked to be reading NINTENDO POWER that her shirt is OPEN. Take a look at our buddy C again, he isn't looking at the magazine he is so looking down the chick's open shirt.



         I'm not here to tear into Super Mario Bros 2, because frankly that's not what this is about and who hasn't already gone into Nerd Rage Mode over this game a million times before me? Super Mario Bros 2 was a terrible game and that's that, if you really wanted to I could write a few pages worth of dick jokes and gay references about the game but I'd rather not. I'm more interested in looking at how badly Nintendo tried to market this game to people after word started going around that sounded something like "dude what the fuck is this put the first one back in". They begin this article by explaining each of the four characters' abilities and weaknesses. I think they do a good enough job, but you know what would really be useful? If they paid somebody to draw all four of the characters at the Olympics (without Sonic) participating in events that were tailored to their strengths.



         Well wouldn't you know; my wish came true! There's a whole two pages devoted to nothing but the cast of Super Mario Bros 2 participating in Olympic events specially catered to their abilities. Let's break this down piece by piece beginning with Mario, what the hell is he doing? He's supposed to be the average character so I guess they decided that having him run with a bomb while having a heart attack would be the best way to convey his character? They could have just drawn him in as the towel guy or something. Luigi is supposed to be able to jump insanely high so naturally he's doing the pole vaulting event minus the pole (I'm going to be mature and avoid the dick joke here), but look closely he's about to dive-bomb this sleeping Shyguy who has no idea his shit is about to get ruined, and Luigi is freaking out about it. Toad is off to the left and because he's the strongest he's been throwing everything except the shot put for the event. He's going as far as to piss off PeTA by attempting to throw a mouse fifty feet, sure he probably deserves it but look at the guy, he's about to shit himself in that Tupperware bowl that he's wearing. Wart is in the back for no real reason other than to take up space. He's throwing javelins which I guess is supposed to symbolize something but I haven't figured it out. Peach can fly with her magical dress so rather than use it to cheat in the long jump she's decided to try it fairly and looks like she's about to go no further than three or four feet.

         On top of all of this I'd like to point out the imminent death of all of the characters on the page; the entire event is about to be wrecked by a runaway rocket. Fucking Russians.



         Nintendo really wanted to go all out with their issue, so naturally they included a poster to attract some more attention to their magazine. They had virtually infinite ideas on what they could put on this thing that would be absolutely awesome. They could do Mario fighting Bowser, Mario fighting Wart (but they would need explosions or something because that game sucked), Donkey Kong, anything. Instead they decided to do baseball. Baseball. Gotta appeal to that American audience the best way you can, huh? Let's take a look at what's going on in this poster though, because it's advertising three games instead of one so the art has to be all-encompassing.

         Firstly the guy pitching has got to suck or something because he is being pelted with peanuts, hot dogs, and someone's Coke. His right leg is all weird and looks like it's fused with the baseball being smashed with games erupting out of it and this whole thing is floating in the air while the blimp at the bottom exclaims "HOME RUN" with the fucking Batman spotlight in the air right next to it. What the hell? Fucking Batman? What is this Gotham City or something? On top of that the real player at the batting plate at the bottom is swinging a fucking Twizzler. What in the fuck is going on here?

         Illuslation by Kaz Aizawa. Illuslation. That answers it all.



         I never really understood these two guys. Howard, Howard Phillips actually, seems to have an air of egoism around him. He's a real guy who decided to take the role of himself in a comic strip in his own magazine where his character comes off as an arrogant dick who asserts that everything in his magazine is 100% right (except spellchecking their posters). Nester on the other hand is an equally bad brat of a kid who shows up throughout the magazine and rolls his eyes at everything while making an attempt to be sarcastic. If you need an example of what I mean, read any article on this site that was made before 2007, that should do the trick quite nicely.



         This is the first time everyone is exposed to the famed "Konami Code" and these guys could not have presented it any worse than they did. Of course, in their defense at the time it wasn't as legendary as it would later become but really who has to be that meticulous when presenting button commands it took them three sentences when really all they had to do was put something like:

^ ^ V V < > < > B A START
This code is going to rock your fucking face off.

         If there was one other thing the 80's were about it was terrible game shows. Classic Concentration comes to mind; a game show basically based around a game of fucking Memory. Press Your Luck was another completely bizarre game but at least they gave birth to The Whammy, an icon that never seems to leave. Ever. On the other end of the spectrum were some fairly decent shows, and Nintendo Power has the scoop on two of them: Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune; two games that I admittingly play along with at home (with or without pants on).

         I don't know where exactly Nintendo Power screwed up, but overall this part of the magazine looks like the circus of terrible clip art and non-descript cars (starring Nester). Circus banner aside the first thing you're going to notice is either the sports car that has wrecked the Wheel of Fortune stage if that's what you get off to or the Howard & Nester Jeopardy drawing. Howard, being the pompous know-it-all that he is supposed to be is of course winning by a giant margin. $2,500 isn't shit in today's world but back then that was like a fifty-eight story mansion I'm not kidding you. Nester is such a fucking retard that he owes the show a thousand dollars and Annie is some crazy ditz that was thrown in because they remembered Jeopardy needs three people not two, unless you're Ken Jennings in which case you can just replace the other two contestants with appliances or baskets of fruit and no one would know otherwise.

         Moving along I can't resist the urge to play a Sean Connery here after reading over this Jeopardy page. If you take a look at the three examples they give above the fake contestants you'll see they're all from the "4 Letter Words" category. "I've got a four letter word for you, Trebek." Too bad Potent Potables wasn't in the list of categories.



         In Dragon Power you get to play as Goku, a fighting master in an orange jumpsuit with a monkey tail. Your mission in the game is to find the seven crystal balls so you may have one wish granted by the Dragon Emperor. I'm not a big fan of jumping the gun here, so when I saw this I had to bust out the books (read: Internet) and do my homework to figure out if this was some bizarre Dragon Ball rip off or if Dragon Ball is one of the most unoriginal ideas for a story ever. As it turns out Dragon Ball is based entirely off of the Chinese folk tale that this game is also borrowing. The only difference here is that Dragon Ball took this story, kept the plot and characters, but added in a bunch of guys with muscles coming out of their ass and laser/seizure effects. (For the Dragon Ball Z fanboys wishing to send me hate mail my email address is webmaster@microsoft.com.)

         "I'll make all of your dreams come true, Goku!"



         You know, I really don't know how many times I entered these things when I was a wee little RFS but I never won, not even a crummy T-shirt. This is actually one contest where even the winner is a loser. You win a copy of Super Mario Bros 2. This is the equivalent of winning a brand new car on The Price is Right and having a stage light fall down and smash through the windshield while Bob Barker starts laughing his ass off at you because your prize just got destroyed and you ended up losing anyways. That's how this contest was. Somewhere out there someone (10 someones actually) won this content and really, out of you, me, and everyone else in America, we were the winners, because we didn't get a copy of that damn game sent to our door with a smiling Mario sticker as the return address. Howard can't seem to get enough of that tiny ass Hitachi television set proudly declaring the hellspawn to the world. I don't know who's smiling more, Howard or the NES.



         I have never personally addressed the NES title Top Gun mostly because it's bad but it's not bad enough to bother me into writing an article about it. Perhaps I've just become jaded to the world after Action 52 bent me over and railed me harder than a license plate press. I had no idea that Konami managed to have a Top Gun contest though, have you ever fucking tried to play that game? Gameplay is tedious at best but the real fun comes to landing that god damn plane. I am convinced that I could solve a Rubik's Cube while blindfolded and having people randomly hit me with a baseball bat than land that plane, and here's a guy who can do that. Screw videos on YouTube of people solving Rubik's Cubes in 15 seconds while doing their taxes; I want to see a video of a guy landing that plane (with or without taxes). If you think that I'm making a big deal out of something miniscule then I challenge you to download that ROM and try to land that plane. Don't come crying to me when you cut your own thumbs off to make the pain go away.



         While The Legend of Zelda is rightfully tearing ass all over the place with 214 points (where did this points come from by the way) there are some really odd games sticking out in the rankings, such as Top Gun in the 9th spot while Mega Man is doggin' it back at 17th. Top Gun ranking so high would be understandable if there were only nine games out for the NES, but obviously there are a lot more (at least 30). I can't remember the last time I played Top Gun without wanting to die but I can tell you that between me, RFSHQ writer MATT DAMON!!!, and virtually everyone else, we would rather be playing Mega Man regardless of the fact that the box art for it was the stuff of nightmares. I can't imagine a game starring insane Scientologist Tom Cruise would beat so many games, so the only conclusion that I can draw here is the Church of Scientology was into ballot-stuffing.

         Before you point it out, yes I see Kid Icarus at number five. Fuck Kid Icarus, go choke on a big one Pit.



         The anomalies from the "official" Top 30 are clearly explained in these broken down columns. I don't know how they differentiate between who is a "Player" and who is a "Pro," perhaps they test to see whoever can land a plane in Top Gun to separate the two in which case that puts me in the group labeled "Double Amputee." Clearly the Pros, whoever they are, have their shit together unlike the Players who appear to be gimmicky gamers who buy into whatever is popular or on sale. Let's take a look to compare Top Gun on both lists. The retarded Players stuck it at number nine above pretty much every other good game for the NES that isn't Mario or Zelda related. The Pros probably realized that Top Gun was a thinly veiled movie cash-in that blew horse nads so they stuffed it way down at 27th and probably only bring it out to play the "Top Gun Drinking Game;" a game where you take a drink every time one of your buddies fails to land the jet. Everyone's wasted by the end of the night and its all good clean fun.

         With that out of the way you can just ignore the mess known as the "Dealers" because whatever their "picks" are is nothing more than their stock of games that they can't sell apparently.



         We're at the end of the article and you're probably asking yourself, "Where's the fan mail and all of that goodness, what a cock RFS isn't making with the goods!" Perhaps, but let's just say this brilliant collection of reader mail and questions is something for another day and another article. Power Player "Ace Ebb" will be there to kick off the party by wooing you with his army of attack owls despite the fact that he claims to own no pets. No, I'm not insane. He is. You'll see.

- Justin "RFS" Bardin