Magazine Spotlight: Nintendo Power May 2009

 Magazine Spotlight!

Welcome to another magazine spotlight, where I take a look at gaming publications and give some shout outs to articles and games during times when they were most relevant. This time we have another Nintendo Power issue to look at, this time from a few years earlier when I was first subscribed to the magazine. This was a special time for me, I was just starting to get old enough to figure out what kind of games I liked and this was my main way of learning what new games were coming out. Now that being said, I wasn't reading the magazines to their fullest extent until some time later, I mainly just liked looking at the pictures and some of the review scores on games I was looking forward to. However, this was a good way to introduce me to franchises I had never had much experience with and this issue is a prime example with some of the main cover titles being Silent Hill: Shattered Memories and Klonoa. With that being said, lets take a brief look at some of the games and articles

One of the parts that I did read when I was a kid was the Pulse, because I enjoyed reading peoples' letters and some of the funny stories they wrote in, like after Sonic Unleashed asking the question why everyone was turning into a werewolf, also including Link from Twilight Princess. What I want to focus on today is Nintendo Power asking the question of "What's the coolest thing that Nintendo could reveal at E3?". It's neat to see what peoples' ideas were in 2009 and how some of them evolved into games that we would see later and some that would just remain as ideas. For example, someone had thought of the idea for Miitopia waaaay before Nintendo had even thought about that. "One thing I'd like to see at E3 is an RPG starring Miis! Imagine this: the game starts and it tells you to pick the characters that you want to use. So, if there's a box labeled Bad Guy, you'd click on it and then pick the Mii character that you'd want to be the bad guy...When the game starts you see all of the Mii characters that you love." I liked the idea for Miitopia when it was initially announced, I thought along the lines of Find Mii from Streetpass but much more expanded upon, but this guy had the idea about 8 years before the game even came out in the states! 

Prior to this issue, the Download section was solely focused around the Wii Channels and games from the Wii Shop. Starting with this issue they add DsiWare into the mix as well with a preview on Mighty Flip Champs by Wayforward. It was games like Shantae and Mighty Flip Champs that got me interested in Wayforward as a company in the first place and it's awesome to see how far they've come working on the recent Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot Camp. Mighty Flip Champs is a cute puzzle platformer that was one of the must-haves from the Dsi Shop that involved flipping the top screen down to the bottom screen in order to traverse and reach the end of the level. 

On the next page they also have a preview on another game that was very influential on me, Cave Story. Easily one of my top ten favorite games of all time. Here they're previewing the WiiWare version of the game with some characters, weapons, locales etc. with some cute descriptions on them. Cave Story is a metroidvania with some awesome gameplay, some darker story moments, multiple endings that's tightly paced. If you haven't played Cave Story, give it a shot as it's still available on all modern platforms and the original version is free. 

Lastly, in their evaluation station they review a few standout titles along with the first few Commodore 64 titles that were just placed on the Wii Shop. Here we have a handful of shmups in Gradius Rebirth and Life Force, along with Ogre Battle: Macrh of the Black Queen all getting recommended from the NP staff. Their best reviewed C64 game to this point was the Last Ninja which only got a Hmmm... rating from them. They also have poll on which games Nintendo fans wanted the most on virtual console. The readers' choices include some heavy hitters that eventually would be released like Majora's Mask and Smash 64 as well as some games that they would have to wait for the Wii U's virtual console to release like Earthbound and Mother 1. The NP staff have some killer games on their list like Castlevania Rondo of Blood on TG16 and Terranigma! Looking back these guys really were perfect for editing and writing this magazine. 

The cover game on this issue is Silent Hill Shattered Memories, back when Silent Hill was still a relevant franchise. This was somewhat of a weird release at least to me, people tend to look at the Wii as a casual game console, and for the most part it is. So seeing one of the all-time great horror franchises in Silent Hill show up on here was a bit weird at least to me when I first was looking at the magazine. I personally haven't played the game yet, but now its something that I'm looking out for. The article goes in depth with screenshots and descriptions from the first bit of gameplay that you could experience, all standard stuff. They also have several interviews with game staff such as Akira Yamaoka who created the music and sound design for the game, as well as lead designer Sam Barlow, producer Tomm Hulett and game director Mark Simmons which is all awesome stuff to see as well. Going back to how much Nintendo Power loves games and franchises with some history, they have blerb on "a History of Violence" going over each game in the Silent Hill franchise up to this point. I always thought the cover for Silent Hill 4 was crazy looking and a crazy concept, where you wake up one day and the door leading out of your apartment or house is chained shut. I am excited to see what the new Silent Hill 2 remake looks like in the future as well, hopefully it doesn't get canceled.

This game is a perfect example of something that you could only get coverage on in Nintendo Power. Let's Tap is a game developed by Prope, Yuji Naka's company after he left Sega, and this was his first game from the company. The game itself is a minigame collection where the concept is you can play every single game without actually touching the controller. You actually rest the Wii controller down on a flat surface, and as the name implies, tap on the surface to control the minigames. Interesting concept and something you could only find on Nintendo Wii. One thing to note here is that in the promotional art along with the pictures associated in the interview with Yuji Naka a few pages later, the Wii remotes they're using are placed on branded Let's Tap boxes that were released in EU and Japan but not in the USA. Speaking of that interview, Yuji Naka talks about the games development and how he got the initial idea, along with his creation of Prope as a company to create new games. He mentions the size he wants his company to be in terms of employees to be around 50 people, and speaks from experience saying "When I was the head of Sonic Team, we had about 140 employees, and I just wasn't able to talk with each of the developers individually. I don't think that's a good thing". Rereading this article has me on the lookout for a clean copy of Let's Tap that's for sure!

This month has some reviews on some great games, some of which had growing up and were favorites of mine and some that may become future favorites. Starting off with the feature interview of this issue is Rhythm Heaven on DS. They give the game a 9.0 and I couldn't agree more with them. The minigame collection has awesome tunes, a ton of charm in its artstyle and super easy to pick up and play make it one of my favorite games of all time and right up there with Elite Beat Agents for DS games, which the magazine also points out. Other featured reviews this month include Excitebots: Trick Racing, Klonoa, Pokémon Platinum and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars all which scored very well.

 Looking a bit deeper into Pokemon Platinum's 9.0 rating, they mention the updated story and the main hook of the game being the Pokemon you can encounter. They also mention "Platinum's tastiest novelties are reserved for its community features" and dive deeper into the Nintendo Wi-Fi plaza and BattleTower. I would've loved to experience more of the global functionality and Wii communication that the game offered, but I was just too young at this point and I didn't play Platinum until a bit later. Lastly, they give some average reviews to games like The Dark Spire and Dokapon Journey which I appreciated at the time. Review sites now tend to only look at games that will review well or are hyped up, but Nintendo Power looked at a little bit of everything released for Nintendo consoles at the time and weren't afraid to give their opinion. 

This was a pretty standard issue to take a look at, and the magazine doesn't really change a lot in between the issue I did from 2012 previously, but it doesn't need to. Nintendo Power focuses on showing anything and everything Nintendo-related and that is exactly what they do best. I'm happy I was a fan during this era of the magazine because it was such an exciting time where Nintendo was releasing plenty of quality titles and they had great 3rd party support as well. The next magazine spotlight I'm planning on doing will be to a competitor's magazine around this same era that I think will be interesting to compare to.

Thank you for reading!