25 Facts We Learned from Nintendo Power According To Mental Floss

Do you remember Nintendo Power? It may have been the one thing we looked forward to getting in the mail besides birthday cards or those BNI cd packages where you could buy 12 cd’s for a dollar. Nintendo Power was how you learned about new secerts in the games that you had not found yet.

Nintendo Power for the most part was how we figured out ways to complete certain games or how to get past a certain part of the game. We did not have the internet to help us out. We had to figure out what to do through trial and error, learning new things from friends and siblings. Howard Phillips who worked his way through the ranks in the early Nintendo days headed up the magazine.

Mental Floss posted an article written by Jason English back in 2013. They came up with 25 things we learned from the first Nintendo Power magazine. The facts below were written by Jason. You can see his original article here.

1. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start

Contra made The Konami Code famous, but it originated with a programmer on Gradius, Kazuhisa Hashimoto. “There was no way I could finish the game,” said Hashimoto, “so I inserted the so-called Konami Code. There isn’t [a story behind it], really. I mean, I was the one using it, so I just put in something I could remember easily..

2. How to Get Mario 100 Extra Lives

One of Mario’s most famous tricks. Here’s a non-Nintendo Power tip for jumping over the flagpole.

 

3. How to Beat Mike Tyson

If you want to give this a shot but don’t have the patience to beat the King Hippos and Soda Popinskis of the world, remember these magic numbers: 007-373-5963.

 

4. What Games Kirk and Candace Cameron Are Struggling With

“I am having problems getting past the Amoeboids in Gradius,” explained the Growing Pains star. “I think that I’ll have to place a call to the game counselors soon!” His sister Candace, who played D.J. Tanner on Full House, “has yet to rescue Zelda.”

 

5. Before Nintendo Power, There Was Fun Club News

A free publication called Nintendo Fun Club News preceded Nintendo Power.

Image credit: IGN

In an interview with Complex, founding editor Gail Tilden said, “The Fun Club newsletter started as a six page, simple thing in 1987. It was a direct response program to get a database of all our users. By the time we got to the Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! issue, however, we were at 600,000 readers, and it was a bigger bite out the market budget than we had anticipated.” So they expanded it to a paid-subscription magazine.

There were seven issues of Fun Club, which you can find on eBay.

 

6. The First Editor-in-Chief Was a 31-Year-Old Woman Who Kept a Low Profile

“No reader wants their mom to be the person running their video game magazine,” Gail Tilden explained to Complex. “It was very conscious that the editors did not have pictures of themselves in the magazine. It took away from the idea that the magazine was about ‘you,’ the consumer.” Tilden served as editor for the first ten years.

 

7. The Inaugural Power Rankings

 

8. The Rest of the Top 10

 

9. The Dealers LOVED R.C. Pro-Am

 

10. You Could Call for Help

 

11. The Existence of This Awesome Shirt

 

12. The Cast of Characters for SMB2

“Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and the Mushroom Retainer are getting involved in a strange dream world where they must hop, jump, run and find vegetables.” To find out why kids in the U.S. didn’t get the same sequel as kids did in Japan, read this Chris Higgins story.

 

13. Where Everything is on Zelda’s Second Quest

 

14. How to Pull the Goalie

 

15. The Umps in Bases Loaded Were Yuk, Dum, Boo, and Bum

 

16. How to Beat Castlevania

 

17. How to Beat Hewdraw

 

18. What to Do With Pegasus’ Flute

Still one of our favorite games. Here is a recent Rygar complete walk-through tutorial with pop-up notes.

19. There Were Books and Booklets

 

20. The Exact Name of the Theme Song From Spy Hunter

 

21. Someone Thought Double Dribble Was Amazing

 

22. Where to Get Screw Attack

Nothing in this issue about Justin Bailey, however.

 

23. A Few Moves in Double Dragon

Including the devastating “Hair-Pull Kick.”

24. Big Things Were Coming

A few months later, Zelda II made the cover:

 

25. We Were Playing With Power

The final issue of Nintendo Power was published in 2012, and the cover looked very much like the first one. Thanks to Kotaku for linking to the first issue and inspiring this trip down memory lane. Now go read Kevin Wong’s history of Nintendo Power over at Complex Magazine.

Article by: Jason English 2013