25/October/2014
ONM Remembered - #191
"Too much beer and drugs, man."
from The D.I.B.S. Productions DVD (Summer 200X)
Well, this is a different way of starting the feature up again - not a magazine clipping, not a pack-in extra, but STILLS FROM HOME MOVIES!!
I was idly going through some dumb home movies my brother, myself and my
chums made years and years and years ago, and I'd totally forgotten how
much my room was decked out in Nintendo rubbish. Exhibit A: my dumb
sticker-slathered door!
I seriously had no screening process for that lump of oak. If it was colourful
and adhesive, I slapped them on. Protect dolphin life? Hell yeah, dude. A Mickey
Mouse anti-littering reminder? You know it, baby. The logo for N64 Magazine? Why
the heck not!
I had reams of these things from top to bottom, though the highlight is
easily the Mario Kart 64 banner, featuring one of its advertising taglines -
"ROAD RAGE. Keep it off the streets." If that was mint on card I could
probably be a thousandaire by this point, but I eventually ended up peeling them
all off because having a sticker of a LEGO ninja on your door does reduce your
credibility a little. Don't worry, I've got a talking doll of Steve Irwin that
fills that void for me. Nobody's going to take me seriously anytime soon.
"It's a mad, mad dog. It's not a not-mad dog, it's a... mad dog. Black, small, it looks just like a puppy. We suspect it might be a cat dressed as a dog. Which is mad."
from The D.A.M.S. Productions VHS (Summer 200X)
Exhibit B: that Mario Kart 64 poster I once talked about ages ago!
This was a great poster. What more could a geeky child ask for than colourful
kart racers crashing into jungle flora? It's a fantastic action shot, and it's a
real pity you just don't see dioramic pieces like for many Nintendo games
nowadays. If I weren't overstocked on credibility-reducing paraphernalia, I'd be
mad keen on finding a reproduction of it.
You'll probably see that I glued cut-outs of Diddy Kong Racing characters
onto the poster... for some reason. I wish I could tell you why, pal, but did I
mention I was a dumb kid? I was a dumb kid, and all dumb-dumbs gotta pay the
repercussions. I could be wrong, but I think I unearthed this poster a year or
two ago, and it was in a sorry state - it had been crumpled and torn and did I
mention it had cut-outs of bloody Diddy Kong Racing characters glued onto
it? It could have been gracing my wall, or even a loving new owner's wall
had I taken care of it, but, well, them's the breaks.
We'll be back to magazine scans and whatnot on our usual schedule of Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from here on, unless I can find some embarrassing photographs of me playing Nintendo All-Star Battle Cards or something.
28/October/2014
ONM Remembered - #192
"If Nintendo (and any other companies) did this more often, I'd be a happy bunny."
It's no embarrassing photograph, but it'll do.
Back in the day when I had nothing better to do (HA!), I wrote an email to ONM's
letters page, apparently up in arms about some issue or another.
Reading it now, I can scarcely make out what point I was trying to make. "The
Game Boy Advance is deluged in ports and rereleases - which I disapprove of -
but please make more ports and rereleases?" I'm almost certain I had a bee in my
bonnet about some game not reaching our shores, but heck if I know what
that was. It's a really lousy letter (the original message I sent
before it got edited
was even wafflier, though mercifully lost to time), but it must have had
enough of a message to get featured. Not that the bar is high - tell 'em you
love Bulbasaur and they'll write back saying "right on".
Games services do seem to be a bit better about making old games more accessible these days - alongside sites like Good Old Games and whatnot, the three big consoles have some sort of outlet for oldies; they've got their problems, but it's a neat gesture. It is such a pain that so many old companies have expired or straight up don't care, and the chance of seeing their old stuff is slim to nil. Where's my Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon rerelease, Konami? >:V
Big ups to Rage Quitter 87 for sending this to me all of eight years ago. And happy birthday to Random Hoo Haas, which turns nine years old today! The maturity of my arguments have not changed one whit in all those years. What a legacy.
30/October/2014
ONM Remembered - #193
"Could Starcube be Dolphin's real name?"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 95 (August 2000)
Peel your peepers around this red hot news from only fourteen years ago!
This page is actually a balanced mix of things that came to be and
things that didn't. Resident Evil Zero did indeed make an eventual
release on GameCube, though Rebecca Chambers lost her delightfully stupid hat
along the way (which I'm almost certain is just because they
used Jill's model with new textures - prove me wrong!).
However, there was no new Killer Instinct (not for another decade!), Jacques Villeneuve's game vanished
into the ether, the GameCube never got an Ominusha, and its name wasn't the
bloody Starcube, thank god.
01/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #194
"Reports that Mr Miyamoto jumped on stage and did a karaoke rendition of the Black Eyed Peas' Where Is Love? were unconfirmed at time of going to press."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 137 (February 2004)
I take it most folks remember the orchestral take on the Super Smash Bros. Melee soundtrack? I believe fans in the United States got it when subscribing to Nintendo Power, but readers in the UK got it free with issue 137 of ONM, which they made a big song and dance out of, dedicated at least three pages just to the track listing. Frightfully nice of them! Of course, you can probably grab it now from any number of JRPG-inspired game soundtrack sites where all the files are encoded at a beautifully-fuzzy 128kbps, but where's the magic in that?
04/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #195
"... the fact that a digital TV company and a games publisher are teaming up, could well be the first step towards buying your games via interactive TV."
from N64 Magazine issue 17 (July 1998)
Some amusing little news snippets from the age of tie-dye
dinosaurs. The strange and elusive Donkey Kong cartoon! Rumblings of a TV
channel
dedicated to games! And PAUL'S PLANT!!!
(I will confess I'm resorting to artificial excitement a
lot these days, but I swear on my grave I am never unenthusiastic when it comes
to Paul's Plant)
I was ready to assume this gaming channel was yet another news story that garnered coverage in the game rags (and game sites, it seems), but never actually amounted to anything. After a quick goosey, it turns out this project developed into Game One, a French TV station for video game coverage and anime, and it's still ongoing. I'm sure back in the day this was a real treat to every dorky nerd who had the appropriate television subscription to receive it, but nowadays it seems the equivalent of browsing YouTube's gaming content without having to click any links... which I'm almost surprised they haven't used as a marketing point.
I mentioned Paul's Plant once before, but have shockingly few scans of it. Filling up empty space in whatever sidebar needed filling up, it followed the growth of designer Paul Jarrold's potted plant. Judging by this entry, it seems readers could express their support for the plant by sending in compost and other gubbins for it. You can do it, Paul's Plant!
As for Donkey Kong Country? That show is still a mystery to me. I prefer to keep it that way.
Also on the same page was this announcement for Capcom's Magical Disney
Tetris Disappointment, with the claim that the company was concerned with
being too violent. No quote, unfortunately, but it's the closest follow-up I
have to that one
entry from yonks ago. Don't wanna leave those threads hangin'!
06/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #196
"Take cover and prepare to wet yourself."
A saucy little back-cover ad promoting Virgin Lips, ol' Ricky Brandon's
corporate ambition in carbonated format. It is a little peculiar seeing this on
the back of the magazine when the front is Mario beaming at you and giving a
thumbs-up, but I might just be a raging prude.
(so Mario and Pamela Anderson have had their own cola cans,
graced opposite sides of a magazine, and co-starred in a PETA game. now that's
trivia nobody ever asked for!)
08/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #197
"And not forgetting: Fidel Castro! Idi Amin! That bloke from Mozambique!"
from N64 Magazine issue 9 (December 1997)
Besides being a mighty fine magazine, one thing that netted N64 Magazine further acclaim was its great tradition of swamping readers in pack-in guides, cheat lists and other booklets full of goodies. Although most were a very standard affair, jumping straight into lists of button codes and unlock conditions, some went the extra mile... even though they really didn't need to. I mean, people would've been glad with any Goldeneye coverage in the era before ASCII-free internet, but N64 Magazine supplied in-depth maps with pointers and highlights, a fold-out poster, and some of their best flavour text.
11/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #198
"MAP AT WORK"
from N64 Magazine issue 8 (November 1997)
Some very early footage of Earthworm Jim 3D! There's a lot of weird
and wonderful locales featured here, and only a scant few of them made it into
the finished game - the ziplines between buildings, the columns over green ooze
and the snowboarding sequence are nowhere to be seen in the final product, as
far as I recall. They look a bit too comprehensive to just be mock-ups, but Jim
looks a bit out-of-place to me - sometimes he looks blindingly white, and
sometimes he looks like he has outlines, as if they rigged that promotional
model and plopped him on some scenery. Who am I to say?
I almost wish these old levels could be dug up and restored in some way... but I
also wish they could find a better game to put them in.
13/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #199
"✓ City saved ✓ Brutes beaten up ✓ Damsel rescued"
A quick and simple review of Final Fight One for GBA. This
was a great release on Capcom's part, in my opinion - porting the arcade brawler
to a handheld for the first time really brought it to life, allowing you to play
a stage or two, revel in the pounding of punks, without having to actually sit
down and play the whole thing in one session.
It makes me wish more of Capcom's
arcade games saw a portable release around this era, such as Black Tiger
and Forgotten Worlds, but despite how rerelease-heavy Capcom were on the
GBA, arcade games were a bridge too far, apparently. Pity!
Great lines in this review: "Sodon the double-sword swinging
samurai."
Notable absences: Making fun of the term "Extra Joy". I can't be the only
one confounded by it, right?
15/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #200
"Did you know that, in GoldenEye 007, you can shoot someone in the leg once and they'll still live? Well, if you didn't, try it on Natalya. She'll appreciate it."
An entertaining piece of fluff from I, Spy, documenting the various
reactions to being shot and a surreal interview with Miss Monnypenny. There's
something very nostalgic about how shooting people in different parts of their
body wasn't just a gameplay feature to be touted, but something actually worth
programming. What was the last shooter that even had reactions to bullets,
instead of just muscling through it?
(now that's a list worth writing - top 10 reactions to being shot
in a video game. You've got Virtua Cop, Virtua Cop 2, Virtua
Cop 3...)
18/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #201
"And you can't trust the weather."
from N64 Magazine issue 23 (December 1998)
I'm sure in these early days of the console, a realistic racing sim was much
appreciated, but it's kind of sad that the selling point it hammers on is "only
on Nintendo 64". Five times that's mentioned! What do those jokers on
PlayStation have? WipeOut? Fuck 'em, you've got V-Rally. On N64.
Only on N64. NO ONE ELSE IS EVER GOING TO HAVE IT. Please
buy our game.
(and for all that trumpeting, it ended up getting a PC port.
should've hyped up the number of tracks instead, dudes!)
20/November/2014
ONM Remembered - #202 - prelude to Pokémon Week II
"How to train a kick ass Pokémon team"
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
The Official Nintendo Magazine Pokémon Master Guide!! This was the bee's
effin' knees for a Poké-nut in the late 90s, though funnily enough, my brother
and I hadn't even got the Pokemon games when we picked this up. Like any
other dopey kid of the era, we were swept up in all the hype, but we were hoping
to find a source that'd just tell us a little something about the franchise:
what it's about, who these guys are - something with a little more detail (and
credibility) than what you'd hear on the schoolyard. Instead it's a hideously
in-depth guide to the video games, and darn-near impenetrable to anyone who
hasn't played them. Well, that certainly forced its hand, didn't it?
Mum, dad, in the off-chance you're reading this, I can only apologise.
We didn't know what we were getting into!
These guides were littering the counter shelves of GAME (or was it still Electronics Boutique at that time?), and came with fancy shiny covers in both red and blue. It looks nicer in person, if you copy hasn't been horribly man-handled for the past fifteen years.
All this week, more Pokémon crap! If you want to believe I'm topical, consider it a countdown until Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire hit European shores, and not just an excuse for me to blow through a stack of backlogged images.
21/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 1
"Unfortunately, these guys don't carry much change in their Speedos, so you won't make a lot of cash from fightin' them."
T'is but a sample of what the guide has to offer! Area maps; tips and pointers; checklists of available Pokémon; trivia, and lots and lots of images! There are never enough images!
As a basic walkthrough it's good enough, though I'm sure pro players would scoff at its rather barebones approach to power levelling and tactics, but what really sells it is just how jam-packed the guide feels. It's pretty irrelevant by now, but the full list of Pokémon, their movesets, the towns and locations you visit, as well as all these random snippets of useless trivia, it was a really unique way of being introduced to a franchise. I'd hardly the foggiest what an Omastar even was, but knowing it was once called Kargo made you think you'd learnt something.
I'm not sure if I love or hate how breezy the vernacular is in the guide. I'm willing to say it's worth it just for marking a Pokémon's rarity not as "common", but "loads". That just tickles me.
22/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 2
"Don't be fooled by this goofy looking Pokémon."
Being the hypest shit of 1998, Pokémon was more than a little bit swamped in dodgy cheats and bogus rumours, and I'm willing to admit I tried a lot of them. I mean, what have you got to lose? Trading a Dragonite ten times in a row to make it evolve into Luigi is hardly going to kill you for time. And collecting 100 rings on the Egg Carrier with the language set to Japanese to unlock Nack the Weasel in Sonic Adventure? Lemme at it!
As seen in the last page, the guide took the time to mention obviously fake
Pokémon such as Pikablu... but nebulous tricks such as the Pokéball trick,
Missingno and the Cinnabar Island coast, they're too big to ignore, but run the
risk of either being lies or permanently gamming up your cartridge. What's the safest way of
including them, while expertly avoiding all responsibility?
Blame it on Meowth.
It's genius. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten widely adopted by this point. Forget
disclaimers like "ONM accepts no liability for the loss of save data", they're
secretly shaming you for using them. Oh, your Hall of Fame got glitched up?
That's what you get for trusting Meowth, you dappy fuck. Look at that
untrustworthy piece of shit. He's laughing at you every time you hold Down and
B. You don't want that, do you? Then stick to the rest of the page, you big
palooka, Meowth's leading you down a bad road. It'll be your turn to laugh when
he gets twenty five to life for trading in dodgy tricks.
23/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 3
"This little yella fella screams when you press his tummy."
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
One of the more shameless parts of the Master Guide is its absolutely rampant shilling of merchandise. If it's not talking about the game, it's about the toys, or the card game, or anything that demands you splash some cash. If I recall correctly, not even a single page is dedicated to the TV show, because you can't spend money on that! You could argue that that's not far from a regular issue from Official Nintendo Magazine, since free gaming was hardly a sustainable market at that point in time, but at least it tried to be objectionable, saying what you should and shouldn't be spending your money on. Would I be an overreacting worrywart if I said pages like this almost felt predatory?
But heck if I cared when I was a kid, look at all this sweet stuff! I had absolutely no interest in owning a majority of this tat, but dang if it didn't look good on a two-page spread. I can't imagine ever touching that Pokémon Challenge game more than twice, but I'm sure it'd make a good ornament for a mood table or something.
24/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 4
"Gotta catch 'em all!"
"Yeah, so what if I'm takin' a crap on your head. What're you gonna do about it?"
(if random hoo haas hadn't peaked before then by god it has now)
25/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 5
"You've got the Game Boy game, found all 150 Pokémon and watched the cartoon every day!...But you're still not satisfied."
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
EVEN MORE SHILLING!
When you're all caught up in the hype of a fandom, dopey gadgets and flashy
LEDs seem that much more enticing when it's painted up like the fad of your
choice... though they really knew how to scalp you. You're paying £27 for not
even real miniature pinball, but LED pinball? From Tiger
Electronics, of all people? Gag me with a spoon, why doncha.
The toys at the bottom are pretty cute, though - I can speak from experience that the keychains were pretty nifty (even if the flashing light gimmick was really unnecessary, though it did make them indestructible as all get-out). I'm sad I missed out on the Pikachu clip-on, though. I wish all Pikachus looked like that. Rotund stub-limbed Pikachu is the best Pikachu.
26/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 6
"I'll let you have a swell MAGIKARP"
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
Not even a year after its Western release, and Pokémon was crawling
with rumours and hoaxes of super secret creatures accessible only by the most
tedious of trials (long before Nintendo themselves caught on),
and ONM's Master Guide sought to put the record straight. Not with actual
evidence or anything, just posting pictures (that I wondered how
were made or where they came from for the longest time) and saying, no,
it's fake, your friend was a total fibber.
It's a decent way of breaking up the rumours, but come on, how can we trust
them? These guys don't even work at Nintendo, for crying out loud; how do we
know they're not holding out on these sweet secret Pokémon for themselves? For
that matter, how do we know all our friends' uncles aren't doing the same thing?
I will not stand for secret Pokémon collusion.
Besides being a font of frustration for easily-swindled players, fake Pokémon is apparently a pretty huge subject both among investigative websites and fanart scenes, which I can't help but find particularly cute. It sounds like a greater community for creativity than the Sonic hoaxing scene ever was.
27/November/2014
ONM Remembered - Pokémon Week II, day 7
"ZAP! Theme Deck"
from Pokémon Master Guide (1999)
The Pokémon Master Guide comes to a close, but not without even more consumerism! If you can identify their dodgy Photoshop job, they'll dump a stack of trading cards on your doorstep. Because that's the only way you'll be able to dispose of them in ten years.
I probably haven't been showing the guide's more flattering side, but it was a fantastic thing to have as a Poké nut, and I haven't even broken the surface of it. You can expect to see more pages cropping up occasionally when ONM Remembered resumes it normal schedule on Saturday.