The final issue of Nintendo Power has finally hit newsstands. And to commemorate the occasion, Gamastura decided to talk with founding editors Gail Tilden and Howard Phillips, about their memories from the magazine's formative years.
The piece goes way back in time, before the magazine was formed, and traces its roots. Which, not surprisingly, stems from Japan. According to Phillips:
"Looking at Japan with Famitsu and Famicom Tsushin and things like that…I would get these really thick, dense magazines as part of the regular weekly shipments from Japan. I'd get these in the warehouse and I'd crack them open and look at the cool new games that were coming out. I'd almost get down with a magnifying glass to look at screenshots and things like that. It was natural for us to think that the kids in the U.S. would be eager to have that as well."
As for the original appeal of the magazine, Phillips fondly remembers a time that was clearly pre-internet:
"Back then — it's hard to imagine now, because we have so many tools, including YouTube walkthroughs and so on. It's hard to imagine that we were all playing games on little toilet paper tubes — this narrow perspective of what the game world was. To have these maps suddenly spoke to how large the game world was, which then resulted in this tremendous feeling of empowerment, because you could feel it, finally. You could finally know what was beyond the edge of your television screen in the next area.
That was huge. I'm just gaga over it now, thinking of how fun it was to pull out a map of Zelda and see the entire world, and be able to go through it with your fingertip and then say, "Okay, there's where you can burn that tree," or push that rock, or whatever. It was so cool. Getting that in the hands of kids was — from my perspective — the real big win that we were after."
A number of other reasons, behind the magazine's success, are also cited. Including how game development and manufacturing was far slower back in the day, so it was easier to stay on top of news. Whereas today, games are made and published in the blink of an eye, to the point that even website are not able to keep up, let alone the world of print.
