Nintendo Power

Nintendo Power was a news and strategy magazine published in-house by Nintendo of America. The first issue was released in July/August 1988 and the final issue was released on December 11, 2012. With a span of over 24 years, it was one of the longest lasting video game magazines of all time.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) 285 issues were made during its lifetime.
 * 2) Neat and interesting comics.
 * 3) Before the rise of the internet, the magazine was one of the best sources for tips and walkthroughs.
 * 4) Numerous ads that were often quite silly and entertaining.
 * 5) Several contests allowing for some cool prizes.
 * 6) Neat little comic strips. One was based off The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past which eventually became compiled into its own comic book published by Viz Media, Speaking of Viz Media...
 * 7) The 1992 comic 'Super Mario Adventures' that was in Nintendo Power, was then reprinted by Viz Media in 2016 in its entirety!
 * 8) Readers and subscribers often had their own little comment corner.
 * 9) Many issues came with some posters to decorate any game room. James Rolfe owns quite a few and showed them off in his older AVGN videos.
 * 10) They are back now, but as a podcast.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The posters were often difficult to remove from the magazines.
 * 2) While most of the ads were silly and humorous, some were plain disgusting like a jar of toenail clippings. Even worse, some were so horrifyingly gross that AVGN once stapled the page shut.
 * 3) They would sometimes give bad games and even shovelware games high ratings.
 * 4) One of the contests mentioned above would have allowed the winner to be in the Mask 2, which never truly got made until about 10 years later with Son of the Mask, which is considered one of the worst sequels of all time.
 * 5) The magazine series got cancelled in 2012.