04/May/2013
ONM Remembered - prelude to Pokémon Week
"No way! coz my Jigglypuff is at level 39 and is the greatest ever!
(from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 94 (July 2000)
I don't get it. Isn't this what every Pokémon fan looks like?
It's that time again! This Monday will be the start of another seven-day event: POKÉMON WEEK! Yes, every day, all week, there'll be Pocket Monsters related excerpts from the pages of Official Nintendo Magazine and its competitors, highlighting the best and worst of the franchise's rise to fame... or it'll just be some dumb images I make fun of. One or the other!
06/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 1
"POCKET MONSTERS: JUST WHAT THE HELL IS IT...?"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 64 (January 1998)
It's almost scary to believe that at one point in human history, a gaming magazine (for video games!) had to ask what Pokémon was. Welcome to 1998! The two pound coin was redesigned, Pogs were on the way out, and a fat percentage of the planet Earth was still bloody clueless about what all this Pokémon guff was about.
Any time the Ninty mags talked about what was hot in Japan, good ol' Pocket Monsters and its raging popularity was always given a brief mention... though without competent writers, it's hard to really convey why it was such a red-hot property. It's very humble looking, isn't it? Without the reader playing it for themselves or the magazine actually knowing what it was talking about, there was no decent way to prepare the world for the incoming onslaught. Who knew that pokey little Game Boy would set the world on fire?
Also
YOU FATHEADED IDIOTS CAN'T YOU READ
07/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 2
"Pokémaniac of the month"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 89 (February 2000)
Oh, the Pokémon sections. Judging from the sheer amount of reader-submitted content, it must have been one of the most popular features in the mag (though that's hardly an accomplishment - I think kids everywhere were just seeking outlets for their letters of love or fanart. Even Viz's translations of the various manga crammed a few pages of fan stuff into the back pages!). Even when I was a Poké maniac, I admit I found these sections a bit boring. Looking at the teams other people used in competitions was mildly interesting (if a bit pointless; the Pokemon and its level were all that was shared. the movesets are everything, man!), but I didn't care to read about how cool Charizard was or how you put Pokémon wallpaper on every article of furniture in the house.
Every month a "Pokémaniac" would be highlighted; anything from kids with lots of tat, to mums, to babies, to cosplaying adolescents. Pretty humdrum stuff, though the littlest cosplayers were tempting to scan if just for the "har har look at that ludicrous hair" factor. I figured I'd spare them the embarrassment; I mean, I'm no better. I dressed up as a Worm for a birthday party once. The costume consisted of a headband and red pyjamas. It required a bit of imagination, to say the least. Or a serious lack thereof.
Dumb anecdotes aside, let's celebrate the only publicly recognised
chinchilla to have fallen victim to Pokémon fever. God speed, little critter.
(I wonder why its name wasn't printed - don't tell me the chinchilla wanted its
privacy respected?)
08/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 3
"Whip 'em hard."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 91 (April 2000)
JESUS CHRIST
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
...
Every month in the Pokémon section, fans could submit their
"Ultimate Poké Warrior". Not just a made-up Pokemon - a made-up hybrid
Pokémon! Cram all the best bits of other Pokémon into one super warrior! Some
were intelligently thought up and had some mild degree of pleasing aesthetic,
while some of them...
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAA
09/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 4
"Ha ha ha! I am Dodorio! I laugh in the face of my enemies."
from N64 Magazine issue 10 (December 1997)
Official Nintendo Magazine may have tried to explain what this Pokémon malarkey was all about, but those fuckers didn't even play the game, never mind know what a Pikachu looks like. The heathens! Thankfully, N64 Magazine went all-out in covering the franchise: Max Everingham, their go-to guy for anything new in Japan, gave readers of the British Isles an in-depth look at what this strange sensation was all about.
The accuracy of the information is arguable, but you gotta admire Max's gusto. He doesn't just churn out a dodgy summary of the game and remark, "boy, isn't this a popular franchise?" He gives a blow-by-blow of picking up the game for the first time and slowly coming to grips with it, and how accessible it would be for import gamers. And then he hunts down and catalogues heaps of exclusive merchandise, complete with further explanations of not just the Pokémon Trading Card Game, but also the Pokémon Combat Stickers! Which I swear he's gotta be making up. Combat Stickers? Come on, surely the '90s weren't that dorky, right? Not even Japan '90s.
Also, just for amusement's sakes, they include a Japanese popularity chart for
the colourful critters. Surprise! Nobody likes Drowzee.
When will people wise up and learn to respect the baddest tapir
in town?
10/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 5
"Try your hand at Ash and Pikachu!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 89 (February 2000)
Of all the phoned in how to draw tutorials I've seen, this definitely ranks up there. This isn't how to draw, this is disabling layers in a vector art program!
11/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 6
"Make sure you go along to the Pokémon Tour... it's gonna be ace!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 95 (August 2000)
I hope I got the date wrong on this issue, or the printed date is
later than its actual street date... otherwise by the time kiddies picked up
this issue, they'd have missed damn near every venue. They only waited TEN
WHOLE MONTHS to legally get their paws on a Mew, and now they'll have missed
their only chance! THIS IS HOW YOU BREAK
YOUR FANS.
I was still a Pokémaniac at this time, but I don't think the tours ever appealed
to me. Even at that age, going to a place stuffed to the gills with obsessed
fans must have sounded a bit much for my liking. And after dragging my dad to
see Pokémon: The First Movie with us, I think I knew I couldn't make him
suffer any more.
That said, I was mad about getting Mew. Another issue around this time had a
contest where you had to describe Pokémon to a kid who'd never even heard
of the franchise before, all in 200 words or less. Explain successfully
(I can't remember if you had to actually win them over into the
Pokémon frenzy, or just allow them to understand what all this fuss was about)
and you could win a Mew! Even as an incompetent adult, I wouldn't have a clue
where to start on a task like that. That contest would've gotten its own entry,
but, well, I've no trace of it. The page had to be cut up and sent away! C'est
la vie.
I was going to say that the combination of Ant, Dec, and a chicken-footed
misshapen Pikachu would be the worst way of promoting your video game tour...
but then I remembered that before they devoted themselves to hosting every
single terrible variety show ITV has to offer, they devoted themselves to
hosting kids shows and getting into
stupid Pokémon-themed
antics.
... my god, that was fourteen years ago, wasn't it?
12/May/2013
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week, day 7
"He may be cute, but he's a brute!"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 92 (May 2000)
I sincerely have no idea what's going on here. Either that Pikachu is karate kicking the camera, or the jumble of polygons that comprise it are waging a desperate battle for independance.
Well, that about does it for Pokémon Week. We're back to business as usual on Tuesday, though this won't be the last we'll see of the colourful critters - this is a Nintendo column, for goodness sake! YOU'RE NEVER SAFE.
14/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #96
Wait for it...
from N64 Pro issue 4 (February 1998)
16/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #97
"LIGHT THE FUSE AND STAND WELL BACK!"
from N64 Pro issue 4 (February 1998)
What else could it be? This amusing little ad appeared in a couple of mags at the time, spread across two pages, and was probably one of my first experiences with the little white and blue terrorist.
All the Nintendo magazines were sort-of-but-not-really hyped about the upcoming game, which meant lots of previews, in-depth features and other snippets to get me chewing at the bit for it. I'd never even known of the series before, but I was excited like you wouldn't believe. My brother and I were churning out all sorts of outrageous fanart and fanfiction to tide us over 'til the game's release, including a lavishly-copied recreation of the first episode of Robotech... with Bombermen. It's all gratefully lost to time, though.
Being my intro the series, I've a big soft spot for Bomberman 64...
even though the game is hokey as all hell. It's got some really lovely sprawling
levels, but over half the area space is dedicated solely to bonus items, and
there's little to no direction regarding your objective. There's some really
inventive usage of bombs for exploration and puzzle solving, but the game is
way too touchy to pull them off comfortably or consistently. I have warm
memories of the game, and respect it in a lot of ways... but holy cow, replaying
it can be an ordeal.
It did act as a jumping-on point for myself and a lot of other fans, and while
its reception remains a bit iffy, it's still widely popular in the fanart and
fanfiction circles... so mission accomplished, I guess!
18/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #98
"What the hell's going on in Turok Evolution...?"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 114 (March 2002)
An excerpt from an otherwise mundane preview of Turok Evolution. Most of it is taken up with glamour shots, but this one in the top corner is striking. Why? There's FOG! Yes, it's the feature that defined a generation of Turok titles, and Evolution finally has the hardware to let you see more than five feet ahead of yourself. It does lose a lot of character without the mist, though. It's not The Lost Land if you can actually see the land ahead of you!
Also, I guess there's not a lot of flat plains in the finished game either, but, shit, who wants to hear me talk about how level the ground is?
21/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #99
"TO TRY IT IS TO LOVE IT."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 85 (October 1999)
Caption competition go! Entry 1:
Congratulations ten outta ten perfect score instant promotion to head chief of all advertising ever good job.
23/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #100
"A LIFE WASTED"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 132 (September 2003)
Why, would you look at that - it's the accomplishment that spawned a feature length documentary! Four years before film critics were calling him pathetic, even a gaming magazine was making fun of him. Never change, guys.
25/May/2013
ONM Remembered - #101
"Rich tries to gain the psychological upper hand with an intimidating chimp impression. It doesn't work."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 95 (August 2000)
Suppose you have a friend who's good at video games. Really, really
good. So much that they are whipping your ass at everything, from
Tetris Attack, to Mario Party, to Mortal Kombat, to Blast
Corps - yes, even games that don't have 2-player modes. They're that
good.
Understandably, you're pissed. You're a bit too pissed off to take
it in stride, but not pissed off enough to start arranging for
their assassination. Well, ONM has you covered - they'll send over their top
letters page answerer Rich to beat them at the game of their choice! If Rich
wins, you walk home with fat stacks of prizes. if Rich loses, well, that's
two people you'll need to dispose of. You can only hope that
Murderous Derek does discounts, otherwise you'll have lost out on this
endeavour.
No, seriously, the Winner Takes All features were a good laugh. If you want to
be pedantic, a lot of N64 multi-player games were just too random and chaotic to
really prove your skill. It probably wasn't quite as luck-based as Brawl, but
the first
Smash Bros. is pretty notorious for how wonky it is; you can forget special
moves entirely and spend the whole match trying to throw people off the damn
stage, those throws are mad strong. Pitching a top-tier champ like Kirby against a complete lug like D.K. is
just asking for trouble.