Nintendo Power Ends [2012]

I really miss Nintendo Power. It’s almost entirely just nostalgia for the magazine era, but I don’t care. I can have nostalgia when I want, and nobody can tell me otherwise!

Sure, Nintendo Power got replaced by Nintendo Directs, just as newspapers got replaced by sanity-destroying-algorithm-based social media feeds. Instant, easy access to information is generally just better than waiting a month for a rumor mill update that already passed by anyway.

But just… I don’t know. Getting monthly installments and articles to pour over is part of my ultimate lifeblood. The fun columns, the curated features, the reviews, the letters… All of it. Between Nintendo Power and Game Informer, plus a few others for brief periods (like Star Wars Insider, or Beckett Pokemon & Yugioh lol), getting new magazine issues really made a huge impact on my life. And I’ve mostly gone without magazines since I moved out for college, so almost a whole decade ago.

Maybe I should find something to replace the fix? Does anything like it really exist in this age of instant news? Do podcasts count? Shrug.

But that’s not really what the article is about anyway. It’s about reflecting on a magazine that barely made it into the 2010s thanks to that device in your palm you’re reading this on.

Just look at the covers and remember how fantastic some of them were. I featured a few in my old clay models article, but even the later ones bring me a lot of nostalgia.

Really, though, Nintendo Power’s end reflects on me like the end of my childhood. Its final issue released literally the month after my 18th birthday, after all. Like so many other things in the 2010s–forums, accounts, traditions, social networks, parasocial relationships–Nintendo Power died and time passed. I’ve written so many of these sorts of posts already! It’s clear to me that the passing of time itself is just as important as the things that actually happened here. Nintendo Power was always going to end, but the real story is how that end affected my life. How I look back on it now in 2022.

Nintendo Power wasn’t the end-all-be-all. But it was something I eagerly awaited every month for most of my childhood. It rocked! It had a time capsule into the past anytime I wanted to look back. The magazine had great art and really fun page layouts. Strategy guides and tantalizing previews of games to come. Who needed anything else back in 2004? In 2022, we crave instant gratification and curated RSS feeds, but I also feel like most of us crave to return to that slower time as well. I know I sure do.

Nintendo Power technically still exists as a podcast. I’ve never listened to it, because “dudes chatting aimlessly” podcasts rarely appeal to me. I don’t have any connection to make here, it’s just something I thought I’d bring up. I guess it’s the closest thing to a magazine Nintendo has now? Once again, shrug.

Well, now I want to go hunt down some old magazines and read them with dinner.