Nintendo Power Issues, All 145 Of Them, Are Now Free To Browse

Archive.org may be best known for preserving sometimes essential web pages that have disappeared from the Interwebs. But of late, it has been performing a valuable service to the gaming community as well. It has also been preserving those same gone but never forgotten legacies, from some classic games themselves, to the literature that has sprung up around them. It latest addition to its growing treasure trove of gaming history is thirteen years' worth of Nintendo Power issues, giving gamers today a look and feel of the video game culture and journalism back in time of the first Marios, Zeldas, and home consoles.

In the days before the Internet and before smartphones, video game players didn't exactly have a wealth of information to guide them in finding painfully hidden treasures or defeat painfully powerful bosses. If they were lucky enough to be living within the vicinity of other players of the same game or console, they can rely on word of mouth.

Nintendo gamers, on the other hand, had Nintendo Power to bank on. A subscription-based physical, yes paper, magazine, Nintendo Power promised gamers, young and old alike, a monthly serving of the latest guides, cheats, and gossip surrounding Nintendo's fast growing repertoire of titles. You know, like what we use the Internet for today. Alongside Nintendo's now iconic characters, the magazine became a staple of the video game culture back then.

Nothing lasts forever, though. Even something as iconic as Nintendo Power. Started in 1988, the magazine eventually saw its end days around 2001, at least as far as a Nintendo-published product. It would offload those duties to an outside contractor later on, but the name wouldn't last beyond 2012.

Now those back issues are available for free to read on archive.org, for the older generation to reminisce the good old days and for today's gamers to learn from the past. The collection contains 145 issues dating from 1988 to 1999, carrying on the magazine's legacy long after the press stopped running.

SOURCE: Archive.org