Alt+Tab: Nintendo Power

Alt+Tab posts discuss things not directly related to PC gaming. Hey, it's my blog, so deal with it.

Ars Technica reported today that Nintendo Power would be shutting down after 24 years and 280+ issues.

As I mentioned last week, I was a pretty diehard Nintendo fan throughout the 90's and early 2000's. I subscribed to Nintendo Power in (I think) 1993 and continued to receive new issues monthly for 10 or 12 years. I still have every issue sitting in a box somewhere, including one with my name in it. Nintendo Power issued monthly gaming challenges and encouraged readers to send in pictures of their high scores. After racking up what I thought was a pretty solid score in Yoshi on the Gameboy, I took a picture of the handheld, got the film developed, and mailed it in. A couple of months later my name appeared in the magazine, which seems pretty fantastic when you're 8 years old.

It makes me sad to see the magazine go, though I guess it's a sign of the times. Both print circulation and newsstand sales have been dropping over the past few years and have continued to drop this year. I get pretty much all of my news online, but I still like to flip through a magazine every once in a while. Most of Nintendo Power's content from the 90's consisted of game previews, cheats, and partial walkthroughs, which are definitely easier to digest nowadays in a digital format. Oh well.