Any Nintendo kid of the late 80s/early 90s has a special place in their heart for Nintendo Power. Gaming magazines were such a huge thing for us as children, and it still makes me sad that, for the most part, they're obsolete. But it still warms my heart to go back and look at the covers of old issues, which is what I did for this list. The 5 covers I chose have nothing to do with my personal feelings on the games featured, and are purely based on how much I liked designs of the covers, and special issues like strategy guides were disqualified.
No list about Nintendo Power would be complete without at least mentioning the final issue. I bought two copies, one to read and one to keep sealed forever. The fact that they recreated the cover of the original issue just does my heart good. I'm a sucker for the clay model artwork that was so prevalent for the magazine at the time. Pour a 40 out for Nintendo Power.
And now, let's begin the countdown...
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I'll admit that I'm not as big of a fan of Yoshi's Island as a lot of the Internet is, although I do enjoy it. One thing I do love, however, is the art style, and this cover shows it off flawlessly. I'm not quite sure why they felt the need to draw attention to Baby Mario's butt with some "Hot News" about Super Mario RPG, or why the yellow Yoshi is laying like he's lounging at a nudist colony (or why it kind of looks like he's flipping me off), but that's not the point. The point is that after the introduction of Yoshi is Super Mario World, I was clamoring for the opportunity to control Yoshi(s) in his (her/their) very own game. And this cover did exactly what it was meant to do for me.
Regardless of how you feel about the Virtual Boy, you can't deny this covers awesomeness. This shows exactly what I thought virtual reality was going to be: Neon all up in ya. And naturally they had to include those weird glowing eyes, because every new console in the 90s had to be accompanied by some sort of monster or otherworldly being. Although I have to say that no matter how hard they tried to make the Virtual Boy seem like a viable counterpart to the handheld powerhouse that was the Game Boy, there was no amount of convincing that could possibly do the trick.
I've already spoken about the clay models used for NP covers, and again, it's on full display here. They even managed to use the right colors on Mario this time. In fact, they did a great job recreating the pose of the box art for Super Mario Bros. 3. Then they throw in the bonuses of Larry Koopa, Chain Chomp, and the Sun. That Sun, guys. I'm not sure who scared me more as a kid, the Sun or Phanto. Both of them traumatized me.
It's a very simplistic cover. The color used for the background reminds me of a sun setting, and that brings back great memories of coming home on a Friday after school, immediately firing up the game and playing until the late evening.
I've written in the past about how I'm just not that big of a Legend of Zelda fan from a gameplay perspective, but I love the story and lore of the series. I mean, the only ones I've ever finished are Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds (more on those in a future Top 5). This cover is for Link's Awakening, the series' first foray into handheld gaming, and boy is it epic. What's great about it is that it doesn't feature either character from the game's title, and instead shows the aptly named character, Owl. I'm not sure if Owl is covering his face because he's an angsty teenager trying to be mysterious or he's covering his mouth to cough, but either way, he looks great.
And that sword is bedazzled like nobody's business. There's so much bling on that sword it would make Master P blush. This is a very fitting cover for Nintendo Power's 50th issue.
Easily the most infamous Nintendo Power cover, so much so that it caused parents to write letters to the magazine exclaiming that the cover gave their child nightmares. And...yeah, I can see that. It's a very macabre and gruesome scene, and definitely not in line with the family friendly image Nintendo has always had. But now that we're 25 years removed from the release of this issue, we can look back on and see how awesome it really is.
By the standards of today, it's pretty tame. But when you consider the type of restrictions that Nintendo had on in-game content at the time, it's kind of amazing that this made it past the editors. Granted, Nintendo Power didn't have to go through an approval process by the company it represented before putting an issue to press, but you'd think they would want to be as in-line with the company as they could. You can't have blood in Mortal Kombat, but you can have a dude holding Dracula's decapitated head.
Thanks for reading everyone. I'm very much looking forward to October, as all of my lists will be Halloween themed, should be a good time.
Don't forget you can follow me on Twitter @TheDustinThomas, and you can listen and subscribe to my podcast on both iTunes & Stitcher.
-Dustin
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