14/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #461
"Pull on yer baggy trousers and catch some air."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 88 (January 2000)
The Game Boy Color only really promoted its fancy-pants colour display, but it did provide a technological step-up from its monochrome predecessor, with faster processing and other improvements to make it feel slightly less antiquated. Sometimes it's hard to appreciate the advancements it made... but man, would it be a lot easier to appreciate 'em if the GBC didn't haul in a bunch of dodgy pap along with it. £25 for portable bowling?! You'd have more fun imagining yourself bowling.
16/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #462
"OFFICIAL ALWAYS FIRST BIGGEST AND BEST"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 85 (October 1999)
The longer I look at that raptor, the more it looks like a meticulously painted jellybean.
18/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #463
"Look out for these cool Frogger chain games from Tiger. They're fast, furious 'n' fun."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 85 (October 1999)
Oh no, not more pages of assorted video game merch! I wouldn't
consider it my Kryptonite, but it's a big dumb weakness nonetheless!
What's a little sneaky about this page is you get to the bottom, half-expecting
an easy-peasy trivia question to be standing between you and all these glorious
prizes... but no, there's nothing there! It's just showing you what you can buy
on store shelves! With your own money, no less! What, they expect me to
buy a magazine about a consumerist hobby AND pay for my own
Star Wars paraphernalia? BASTARDS!
21/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #464
"COLLECT $200.00 SALARY AS YOU PASS GO"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 148 (January 2005)
Towards the end of the GBA's life it was downright dripping in the strangest
of cookie-cutter shovelware. 3-in-1 cartridges of Connect-4 and other basic
board games? Dodgy ports of Marble Madness? WE GOT IT! Though,
let's be honest, it wasn't nearly as bad as what the Nintendo DS was swamped
with: surely the one-stop shop for anyone seeking games about
smothering
horses.
Some computer versions of Monopoly are actually a lot of fun - I remember
one PC version in the late 90s had prerendered cutscenes showing each of your
houses and hotels being built, often in bizarre locations like on the side of a
cliff or wedged in a tree. It was silly little things like that that helped us
stay invested when we weren't grabbing the mouse and trying to blow each others'
money on worthless auctions. You don't need paper money to end your friendships.
23/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #465
"After finishing this letter, I didn't know whether to congratulate you or call the police."
Some exceptionally daft excerpts from Seal's Mailbag: one sharing a
variety of gross-out get-rich-quick schemes, and the other about airdropping a
muscle-bound martial artist for the simple mission of strapping a games console
to a dog.
... you're right, it was a lucky day if the letters page actually talked about video
games in those days.
25/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #466
"Dropping the joypad after a minute and walking off exclaiming 'What a steaming great dumper!' will not do anything for Anglo-Nippon relations. Unless it's Seta. They're probably used to it."
from N64 Magazine issue 11 (January 1998)
James Ashton presents an amusing guide on travelling to Japan, communicating with zero language skills, and maybe reporting on a games convention like he's being paid to do.
28/February/2017
ONM Remembered - #467
"Bored after saving the world from the nuclear missile crisis, the Blast Corps crew decide to stage a no-holds-barred race through towns and countryside."
Eh, while a destruction-centric racing game does sound appealing, it also sounds like it strips away what made Blast Corps so unique: a vehicle-based puzzle/action game with complex maps and a tight time limit. That said, having a proper 4-player bash-up between the Sideswipe, the Cyclone and whatnot does sound like it'd be a hoot. Sign me up!
02/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #468
"This month's Ultimate Warrior looks like a cutey, but his creator reckons he'd put up quite a fight."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 78 (March 1999)
(big ups to
oldgamemags.com for the scans!)
This looks less like an Ultimate Warrior and more like somebody's slapdash cosplay, though with tree trunk legs like that, I don't think anyone would dare raise that argument to their face.
04/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #469
"When I was conceptualising this mag I dreamt of all the amazing 64bit games I'd be playing. Had this dropped on my desk when I was Editor of Super Action I wouldn't have thought it was all that good. Know what I mean?"
from 64 Magazine issue 4 (February 1998)
As was the norm with their output, 64 Magazine offer a meaty and in-depth review of Aerofighters Assault, covering the game in great detail and featuring opinions from darn near the entire staff - plus a reader review! - and they all boil down to the same conclusion: why aren't you playing Lylat Wars instead?
07/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #470
"Given the massive storage capacity of Nintendo's disk drive, Mother 3 will undoubtedly be the biggest adventure game ever on a home console."
In the early of days of ONM you couldn't go ten pages without it going ARE YOU HYPED FOR MOTHER 3???? And, frankly, it was hard to tell what all the excitement was about. Earthbound never saw release in the UK, and ONM being ONM, it did a poor job of actually conveying what was appealing about the franchise. Seeing nothing but the same features being touted and promotional screenshots rolled out again and again did nothing to help. It was a good day if I could even identify what was pictured in a single screenshot.
It took watching this janky old trailer to actually comprehend what was going on... and y'know what? Now I can see what the fuss was about! Those early attempts at polygonal spectacle are strangely charming, and being able to plaster my face on an NPC during a dramatic moment would've been worth the price of admission.
09/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #471
"To add the confusion, Virtual Hiryu No Ken has been going by several different names, including Art of Fighting Fist Twin, Flying Dragon Twin, Fly Dragon Fist Twin and various mix 'n match combinations to make whatever name you felt like saying at the time."
from N64 Pro issue 6 (April 1998)
11/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #472
"Apparently, us British love to eat sissy scones with our tea! What a cheek!"
The Nintendo 64 and SEGA Dreamcast both had rather eclectic libraries with a curious amount of overlap between them, and almost always with games that made you breathlessly wonder, who was this made for? Chef's Luv Shack is no doubt closer to the South Park source than a kart racer or dodgy reskin of Turok, but it's still a pretty puzzling tie-in.
The stills in these scans look astoundingly show accurate, though - even if I'd no interest in the show, I was deathly curious to see the game in action back then just to marvel at it getting the look down pat! Well, um, I finally looked up the game on YouTube, and it looks and moves like a cheap Flash game. I mean, I know the show does as well, but-- ah, forget it. (what was i expecting, the cartridge to have genuine paper cutouts inside?)
14/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #473
"Surely this must be quite exciting? Actually, no. We've made more exciting cups of tea."
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 07 (September 2006)
Oh, the DS. What a hive of dodgy multimedia and crappy tie-ins it
was. Sure, we can laugh now, knowing its life has ended and we can scour its
library for worthwhile games after the fact... but when it was alive it was
nothing but frustration, trying to find something decent among the waves of
crap. The
role of "crap" in today's column will be played by Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.
I was about to slam the poor console for having a movie tie-in game, Robots,
among its launch line-up, but then I remembered that's nothing new - the N64 and
GameCube both debuted with a Star Wars game, Shadows of the Empire
and Rogue Squadron! And if you want an impromptu history lesson, licensed
launch games even go as far back as the Colecovision with The Smurfs: Rescue
in Gargamel's Castle and Ken Uston's Blackjack/Poker. Even Nintendo's
own Famicom had Popeye among its first products!
Long story short: I'll take any excuse to shit on Robots.
16/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #474
"Give Daryl online or his GameCube gets it"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 119 (August 2002)
It's almost vexing how long it took for Nintendo to properly hop on
the online bandwagon. Two expensive add-ons for the GameCube that only
saw usage in about three games each, and even once they'd committed to it they
still pussyfooted around adopting conventions everyone else had accepted as
standard.
... yup, that's about all I've got to say! I'm probably the worst person to talk
about this subject, because the only two Nintendo games I've ever played online
were Mario Kart DS and Wii! I never even played Phantasy Star
Online... online! From the sounds of this letter I must be missing out!
18/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #475
"As a result of the explosion, the flourescent orange flight recorder blows out of 'copter and down the hill. D'oh! You're the bloke who has got to find it in the dark!"
from Goldeneye 007 Field Agent's Manual (pack-in with Official Nintendo Magazine
issue 64, January 1998)
A cute little walkthrough gussied up like a secret agent's binder, or what the public are led to believe one would look like. (ring binders? PLEASE! everyone knows that they store their documents as microfilm in secret nostril compartments) The font's admittedly a bit of an eyesore, but they make up for it by including tiny, slightly impractical maps.
21/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #477
"What made you decide now was the right time to bring Speedball II to GB Advance?"
from Official Nintendo Magazine issue 119 (August 2002)
A small preview of Speedball 2 on GBA, plus an interview
with Ed Bartlett of the Bitmap Brothers. I was going to say this was probably
the precursor to Speedball 2 seeing ports to every platform under the
sun, but I think it'd already accomplished that when it got a release on the
Acorn Archimedes. Games by the Bitmap Brothers continue to see rereleases, from
the PSP Mini to Xbox 360 Arcade to iOS, always getting fresh news coverage every
time...
... but I've no idea if the company still exists as a development studio, or if
they're just around to hawk their old wares and get paid for interviews. It's a
bit of a bummer, as I'd like to see what devs from the Amiga era could be making
in this day and age, but it's also good to see them still making money off their
old work and keeping it available.
23/March/2017
ONM Remembered - #478
"Ed's a loopy alien who, while cleaning up his spaceship, accidentally chucked a can of cosmic tonic down to earth. Oops!"
After previews upon
previews of
exciting features and
huge worlds and
64DD
expansions and cutting-edge character animation, we get...
"Tonic Trouble is a little disappointing."
And barely five sentences of review.
If that doesn't say something about hype, then I don't know what does anymore.