Now you're playing with POWER

August 2, 2016 12:37 PM

Archive dot org and Jason Scott have released the complete collection of Nintendo Power magazines, searchable and readable online.
posted by boo_radley (41 comments total)

This is incredibly irresponsible. Can the public really be trusted to be playing with all of that power‽
posted by truex at 12:49 PM on August 2, 2016 [21 favorites]

Oh god, it's my entire childhood.

This is worth it for the Howard & Nester archive alone.
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 12:52 PM on August 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

All users who have published submissions to "Player's Pulse" are requested to identify them herewith this thread.
posted by Think_Long at 12:53 PM on August 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Now I can finally beat Fester's Quest!
posted by drezdn at 12:57 PM on August 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

call me when they have all the issues of Nintendo Fun Club News
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:58 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

did someone pull archive dot org out, blow in the end of it, and put it back in
posted by middleclasstool at 1:00 PM on August 2, 2016 [8 favorites]

*cough* retromags *cough*
posted by griphus at 1:01 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't think this is complete -- it stops at issue #145 (June 2001*) for me, and there are 285 issues in total.
posted by and they trembled before her fury at 1:03 PM on August 2, 2016

Dibs on the Metroid maps. I heard from this kid who knows this kid that goes to the other middle school that if you playthrough fast enough you can see Samus naked!

Oh, also my cousin said to try "Justin Bailey" as a password. I'm gonna try it as soon as I get back from Webelos.
posted by leotrotsky at 1:08 PM on August 2, 2016 [6 favorites]

This is great. But if you want the true holy grail for old school NP mags... you need to find "The Official Nintendo Player's Guide."

Listen to me. The maps in this guide were HAND DRAWN ON GRAPH PAPER. Some are photographed but lots are clearly hand drawn and colored. The entire map of Metroid! Hand drawn, every block! Are you kidding me!

Mario 1 as well, and the Zelda overworld. Commando, Kid Icarus, Castlevania, a bunch.

I have it right here; be jealous.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:18 PM on August 2, 2016 [10 favorites]

"Justin Bailey" is one of my favorite pieces of Nintendo mythology because everyone has a different story on it ("it's someone friend!" "it's 'just in bailey' and 'bailey' is Australian slang for underwear," "it's just a weird coincidence") and no one has been able to actually confirm any of them beyond the shadow of a doubt.
posted by griphus at 1:24 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm just here for Howard & NESTER!!!, thanks.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 1:25 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Still got the copy of Dragon Warrior I got for free from subscribing.
posted by davros42 at 1:25 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

Suck fairy has paid a visit, I see.
posted by infinitewindow at 1:28 PM on August 2, 2016

davros42: "Still got the copy of Dragon Warrior I got for free from subscribing."

what?! That can't be right.
posted by boo_radley at 1:31 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

here's some internal Nintendo docs on that promotion
posted by griphus at 1:35 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I just got to the part of Console Wars where they talk about the origin of Nintendo Power. I never had any copies so I had to read my friends, but I did enjoy them. Now I get to read them all and I just might at least browse through all of them.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 1:46 PM on August 2, 2016

Pg. 95 of the first issue has a really nice celebrity profile piece with Kirk Cameron, also a dedicated Nintendo fan.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 1:54 PM on August 2, 2016

The "Nintendo Players Poll" in issue 1 is filled out, and has the clearly legible name, address, and phone number of (presumably) the person who owned this issue before archive.org got their hands on it. That seems problematic.
posted by namewithoutwords at 2:09 PM on August 2, 2016

I don't think that the magazines are searchable, I think that only the descriptions are searchable. But it's awesome they're scanned!
posted by RubixsQube at 2:12 PM on August 2, 2016

FINALLY.

Now I can look at the issue with MC Kids for the maps. My cousin borrowed it and never gave it back.

And the Dragon Warrior thing is real. Above mentioned cousin got a copy as fallout from that incident. Not that I'm bitter or anything.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 2:31 PM on August 2, 2016

At one point I was working on a complete index of Nintendo Power issues, listing what was on every page of every issue. I'm glad I only did about ten issues, because a search function is even better.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:33 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't have much interest in Nintendo, but this is awesome.
posted by lmfsilva at 2:56 PM on August 2, 2016

I used to really love UK's Future publications PC Gamer and PC Format in the early-to-mid 90s. Great mags. Hope somebody gets those bad boys up online one day.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:09 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

I had totally forgotten what the feeling was when you spent humid, carefree summer afternoons drinking Mt Dew on a waterbed and playing NES Double Dragon on a 13 inch color TV, but I was just able to recollect it.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:25 PM on August 2, 2016 [3 favorites]

I don't know how many hours, afternoon, summers were wasted looping Toadstool around Mario's home track in Mario Kart, but now I should be able to find the fruits of that labor. Screenshots were hard back then!
posted by carsonb at 3:45 PM on August 2, 2016

Even as a kid I remember thinking this cover was pretty damn creepy.
posted by duffell at 3:59 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

By cover alone I can identify where my subscription started (issue 005 Ninja Gaiden) and around the time it ended (027 Dr Wily's Revenge). The really valuable issues to us at the time were the SM3 and Final Fantasy strategy guides. Those things were gold
posted by thecjm at 5:52 PM on August 2, 2016

Still have my Mario 3 strategy guide. The cover has fallen off, and is permanently pressed open to the page with all the memory game solutions on it.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:14 PM on August 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm really, really into how the internet has been slowly invalidating each box in my storage space.
posted by greenland at 7:57 PM on August 2, 2016 [5 favorites]

(I meant to post this hours ago, it's been sitting in the submit form waiting for me to send it!)

"Justin Bailey" is one of my favorite pieces of Nintendo mythology because everyone has a different story on it ("it's someone friend!" "it's 'just in bailey' and 'bailey' is Australian slang for underwear," "it's just a weird coincidence") and no one has been able to actually confirm any of them beyond the shadow of a doubt.

I am here to confirm that it was a coincidence. Metroid's password feature uses a simple checksum to ensure password integrity. There is a vast number of possible Metroid passwords, JUSTIN BAILEY is just a particularly easy to remember one that has interesting effects. Info on Metroid's password system.

As that document reveals, there IS a specific debug password that doesn't follow the system but works:

NARPAS SWORD0
0000

The remainder of the password can be anything and isn't checked.

Metroid is one of a number of games that were originally Famicom Disk System games in Japan, with actual game saves, but were switched over to passwords for their ROM releases. Kid Icarus was another one. Zelda and Zelda II escaped that fate by being among the first games to use battery saves for their ROM versions. Interestingly, the Famicom disk system has extra sound hardware, and so all of these games have rather better music in their original forms.
posted by JHarris at 8:12 PM on August 2, 2016 [7 favorites]

Gods just look at that featured game line-up from issue 28 onwards. Don't like Super Mario World? Just wait two months for Final Fantasy II/IV. Finished that in only a month? Hey good news it's next month and here's Metroid II. Month after that: Super Castlevania IV! Two months after that? Zelda: A Link to the Past! Street Fighter II! Mario Paint! Mario KART.

All of this in the first year or so, and if you keep scrolling it's basically a breathless wonderland of classic games from there all the way to the first year of the Nintendo 64.

I actually really love my Wii U and I think the top-shelf games for it are some of the best Nintendo has ever done, but it's easy to see here why it feels like such a shadow. I've bought maybe 10 Wii U games throughout the console's entire lifespan, where back in the SNES/Gameboy days that would have been a slow year.
posted by greenland at 8:30 PM on August 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Greenland, I may be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure NP was only eight or ten issues a year for the first four or five years. So it's four months in between barn-burning games instead of two.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:13 PM on August 2, 2016

I think NP's first couple of years or so it was six times a year instead of monthly. Might explain it?
posted by JHarris at 10:16 PM on August 2, 2016

Nintendo Power went monthly in 1990; the SNES came out in 1991. SNES really was hit after hit after hit. It really, truly isn't just nostalgia or the warped time of childhood.
posted by explosion at 6:31 AM on August 3, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think NP's first couple of years or so it was six times a year instead of monthly. Might explain it?

Nintendo Power went monthly in 1990;.

The magazine started out as bi-monthly, then in 1990 went to a format where they released a strategy guide (SMB3, Final Fantasy, Ninja Gaiden 2, 4-player games) in the alternate months. In January of 1991 they scrapped the strategy guide approach (though they did add the quarterly guides like the NES Atlas, a successor to the Players Guide) and went to a strictly monthly format.

And explosion said, the SNES really did fire all on all cylinders. (Even if it did only have a V4 under the hood.)
posted by dances with hamsters at 7:21 AM on August 3, 2016

Seeing each cover again after all these years takes me back to specific moments in my childhood: laying in the family recliner and tracing a path through the maps for Mega Man 3 in Issue 20, reading Issue 50 while waiting for a haircut, reading Issue 61 in the backseat of the car... I intended to list a few "greatest hits" issues as recommended reading, but as I browsed the collection I found myself marking down each and every issue, so let me just say to pick a magazine and start reading. You really can't go wrong.

And yes, the Dragon Warrior promotion was real. I still have my copy too!
posted by Servo5678 at 5:23 PM on August 4, 2016

I am here to confirm that it was a coincidence. Metroid's password feature uses a simple checksum to ensure password integrity. There is a vast number of possible Metroid passwords, JUSTIN BAILEY is just a particularly easy to remember one that has interesting effects.

So it's kind of like a hash collision?
posted by Pope Guilty at 5:46 PM on August 4, 2016

Sorta, but there are tons of collisions. I forget how many bits are devoted to the checksum, I think it was like six, that would mean that one in 32 possible combinations of characters would work on some level. (Some represent invalid game situations and would result in crashes or resets, though.)
posted by JHarris at 7:36 PM on August 4, 2016

...And no sooner spoken then broken.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 9:19 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

That's smart, for a company that pretty much survived quite a few rough patches with the power of nostalgia alone.
posted by lmfsilva at 12:37 AM on August 9, 2016